CHAPTER III
THE reign of Henry II, called the first of the Plantagenets or Angevins, has all the elements of an epic novel, all the romance, color, conflict, and guile of the Arthurian legends which men began to write at this time. It is the record of a king who had all the qualities of a great monarch together with many of the faults of a bad one, who corrected Stephen’s anarchy with a sure, iron hand, and who governed, part of the time at least, like a medieval Solomon. He dreamed, this great Henry, of making England the center of an empire more powerful than Charlemagne’s and nearly succeeded in making it so. He married the most glamorous woman in Europe after antlering her husband, Louis of France, so that men called the latter cuckold. He was blessed, or cursed, with many sons, including Richard of the Lionheart and the base John. He loved many women and stole the intended bride of one of his own sons. He put his beautiful wife in a prison for sixteen years. His whelps rose up in rebellion against him and made his last years a nightmare of hate and treachery.
In this amazing reign of more than a third of a century, chivalry came to its fullest flowering and the voice of the troubadour was heard as often in the land as the clash of arms. Much more important by far, the first whispers rose of a religious unrest which led to John Wyclif and Lollardism and, eventually, to the Reformation. It was then that men began to dress like men, shortening the long womanly tunic in which they had looked like biblical prophets and encasing their legs in close-fitting hose. The first and only English pope was selected by the conclave at Rome at almost the same time that the Veni, Creator Spiritus was sung over Henry at Westminster. It was the period of the dark story of Irish conquest.
It was, above everything else, the time in which two strong men, Henry himself and that unsolved enigma, Thomas à Becket, split the nation into camps in a contest of wills, giving to history one of its strangest stories.
Henry II was twenty-one years old when he ascended the throne with the staggering responsibility of redeeming the land from the anarchy. He was already married to the beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine, divorced wife of Louis VII of France. He had won two highly creditable campaigns: the invasion which had led to the Treaty of Wallingford, and a whirlwind of march and countermarch in which he had driven out of Normandy a hostile confederacy headed by Louis and his own brother Geoffrey. He had done very well, it would seem, for a man of his years. His chaplain, Peter of Blois, says of him: “He was ruddy but you must understand that my lord the king is sub-rufus, a pale red … His head is round as in token of great wit … His een pykeled and clear as to color, while he is of pleased will, but through disturbance of heart, like sparkling fire or lightning with hastiness. His head of curly hair when clipped square in the forehead, showeth a lyonous visage …”
So much for Peter of Blois, who is quoted only to prove that a true picture of the young King may be gained from direct sources. He was a thickset youth, with the chest of a distance runner, a bull neck, and a leonine head. His color was high and his eyes, which were gray, protruded slightly and were said to show fire beneath the surface. He was a man of furious energy. Partly because of this, partly to fight corpulence to which even then he was prone, he seldom sat down. It was his custom to ramble about at meals, getting up from his gold-backed chair on the dais, to take a chop in his hand and eat as he wandered along the length of the table and tossed remarks here and there; coming back, perhaps, for a slice of beef or the leg of a capon before another saunter. He was sparing of food and drink, and this was a great hardship, for he was a man of enormous appetites, for lands and power and gold and, yes, for women, as well as for the beef of England and the wines of Normandy.
This is the first and most enduring impression one gets of Matilda’s great son, his tremendous and never-ending energy. It shows in everything known of him. It enabled him to carry a burden of administrative detail impossible to any other single individual. Daily he would be seen in the office of the clerks of the chancellery, preparing writs for distribution, a score of them, perhaps, in a single day. Not one escaped the scrutiny of the royal eye. If he found one which was not phrased to his liking, he took it in hand and redrafted it himself, quickly, accurately, his pen traveling at furious speed. He was much more of a scholar than Henry I, although he laid no claims to such laurels, nor have such claims been made for him. He read a great deal and liked to discuss what he learned with scholars and wise men. They were about him all the time—all the time, that is, that he spent in England—John of Salisbury, Hugh of Lincoln, Foliot of London, perhaps the most widely read scholar of the day, and John of Oxford. This was one of the bonds which at first bound him to Becket.
Another proof of Henry’s desire to rule well was his practice of visiting the outlying parts of the kingdom. This habit was a cross which chafed the shoulders and shortened the tempers of the royal entourage. It was no particular hardship on his knights, who spent their days in the saddle anyway, but the priestly clerks and scriveners were a different case. They were not trained to riding, and so it was unfortunate that Henry, that difficult and tumultuous man, did not believe in carriages, holding that their use tended to rob men of strength in their legs. When therefore the word flew through the offices of the Curia Regis and the humbler quarters of the chancellery that another terrible pilgrimage had been ordained, there would be a furious scramble for the gentlest palfreys and the least obstinate mules, and the disconsolate men of the court would pad themselves against the bruises and saddle burns of the canter.
This mad young King! In addition to his accursed belief (to quote his staff) that a ruler should know his country and his people, he was completely unpredictable. The happy word would be circulated at Gloucester, say, that they would be staying all of the next day and night. The grateful servants and scriveners, and the hangers-on who always follow a king in progress—the dancers, the gamesters, the mountebanks, the jugglers, the prostitutes and pimps, all the parasites, in fact—would open their saddlebags in great content and settle themselves down for a rest on their straw pallets in corners of the packed inns. And then suddenly there would be a buzz of voices, a shouting of orders, the snapping of whips and the creaking of leather, and they would learn that their royal master (that rampaging bull of an Angevin!) had changed his mind. They were starting at once for Hereford!
Henry might set ten o’clock of a morning for his departure and be up at dawn, roaring orders and bundling up state papers himself to facilitate an immediate start. He was a hard master, but hardest always on himself.
He had an infallible memory, an inheritance from his otherwise insignificant father. He never forgot a good turn or an ill one, he never entirely lost an affection, and certainly he never relaxed a hatred; more, he carried this prodigious capacity into the smallest details, seeing the mean face of a lawyer and recalling every item of a squabble twenty years before over a hide of land, or hearing the whine of a beggar at Bishops-gate and recognizing him as a man-at-arms who had followed him to Wallingford.
There are conflicting reports on his religious views. In some chronicles he is said to have been pious. It is written of him that he regularly watched with the monks of Merton for three full nights before Easter and that one of his favorite habits was to visit in disguise the churches of the poor. Others say he had no reverence in him, that he talked in church and scribbled on the back of the royal pew, that he seldom if ever confessed. One thing can be set down as true, that when his great temper was roused he blasphemed with all the ingenuity and color of an Arab street beggar. The truth lies somewhere between the extremes of opinion. An impression grows as one reads farther and farther into the fantastic annals of this reign that he had deep down within him the normal religious belief but that he lacked the patience for the observance of its outward forms.
He was rough and ready in everything. It is a fact that he appeared at his coronation in a doublet and short Angevin cloak (which earned him in some chronicles the name of Curtmantle) made of rich brocade and that he fairly blazed with jewels. This was one occasion when a man had to appear at his best. Ordinarily he wore garments of costly materials which did not fit him because he refused to waste time with his tailors. He invariably looked like a king of the vagabonds or a squire who had been handed the used clothes of his master and who found them tight in the waist and cramping in shoulder. He considered it enough tribute to his high station if he wore on his person some insignia of royalty. When he desisted from his sauntering at meals to help himself to wine, his nails might show need of attention, but there would be rings of great value on his fingers, and the flagon from which he drank would be rimmed with rubies and emeralds.
In an age of mad passions and deep superstitions, Henry was as full of common sense as a modern titan of industry. A story may be told to show how level was the head he carried on his great, muscular shoulders. When he returned from his one journey to Ireland, he stopped at St. David’s in Wales. An old woman approached him to beg for some favor. He did not grant it, and the beldame burst into a loud denunciation of him.
“Avenge us, Lech-laver!” she screeched, waving her skinny arms above her head. “Avenge us this day!”
The knights in Henry’s train turned pale in superstitious dread. Lech-laver had figured in a prophecy by Merlin. A king of England, returning from the conquest of Ireland, would meet his death on a rock of that name. A small stream ran by close at hand, and stretching across it was a rock of the most curious conformation. Clearly it did not owe its position to nature and it probably had been placed there by the Druids. A native, questioned by the uneasy knights, mumbled that this rock was called Lech-laver.
In this day men were so full of superstition that they stared in dread if a shadow fell unexpectedly across the sky, fearing it might mean the end of the world. If a monk in some isolated monastery had a dream involving a king, any king, the abbot would send out mounted messengers to carry the story so that the ruler in question would be in a position to guard against what it portended. There were words which meant death if uttered by human lips, and men would die on the rack rather than speak them. Everyone had heard of Merlin’s prophecy and believed in it implicitly, and so it was no wonder that Henry’s followers looked at the curiously shaped rock and begged him to ride away as fast as his horse could gallop.
Henry laughed. He walked to the end of Lech-laver, mounted it, and crossed the stream to the other side. Then he retraced his steps without any haste. He was cool, amused, a little contemptuous. With an eye on the old woman, who had ceased her screeching and had watched him with fascinated fear, he said to his men:
“Who will now have any faith in that liar Merlin?”
Here, truly, was a man. How fortunate for England that the power fell into his hands at this time when the need was so great for the restoration of order after the anarchy. How much more fortunate it would have been if he had been content to rule the country, if he had not been consumed by an ambition which kept him away from the island for so much of his time. It has been estimated that of the thirty-five years of his reign only thirteen of them were spent in England. For the rest he was following a star which blazed directly above him and so blinded him that he found it hard to see anything else.
A final word about his character: one writer of the day says, “When at peace, there was a great sweetness in his eyes.”
2
The first thing the young King did was to summon back the ministers of his grandfather, Henry I, who had been so recklessly discarded by the simple Stephen. Roger of Salisbury was dead, but his nephew Nigel, now Bishop of Ely, was appointed to the post of treasurer, which he had formerly filled. Robert de Lacey was made justiciar. They were old men but wise in the ways of the wise old King, and Henry showed good judgment in bringing them out of obscurity. At the head of his Council was the Archbishop of Canterbury, gentle and pious old Theobald.
They held their first meeting on Christmas Day, 1154, in a small room of the chancellery. The eyes of Eleanor, his French wife, had been red that morning, and the ladies she had brought with her from the south sat around her in another small room in a dismal circle, extending their feet toward a tub of steaming water. To them Christmas was a day of sunshine and gentle winds softening the peal of the bells; and to see the snow piled up on the sills and to hear a blustering wind about the roofs was just cause for melancholy. The yule log had been dragged into the White-Hall and was blazing there, and the royal officers of minor degree were already gathered about it and in a sufficiendy convivial mood to fill the palace with a hint of revelry.
Henry, one thumb tucked in his belt of blue leather and gold plate, his other hand tossing a walnut in the air, stalked about the room in complete unawareness of the season. It was not a large apartment and it was not comfortable, for the only heat was supplied by a charcoal brazier in the center. The old men clustered around this while their sovereign paced vigorously about. Already he had seen to it that his own armorial bearings were cut into the gray stone of the wall. He had changed the leopards to lions in the insignia of the kings of England and had added a third, some say in honor of Eleanor.
As he strutted, he talked briskly, making it clear to his newly appointed ministers that in dealing with conditions he would not be swayed by weak scruples. The only thing to come out of this Christmas Day conference, however, was another appointment. Theobald sang the praises of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, whose name was Thomas and who was the son of a prosperous merchant of London of Norman descent named Gilbert Becket. Theobald had come to lean on this man in everything and was so insistent on his worth that Henry finally gave in. By the body of God, let him see this prodigy!
The man who entered the room shortly thereafter was verging on his middle years and the most compelling personality Henry had ever encountered. He was very tall, some say over six feet, and of slender build. His nose was long and beautifully modeled, and his eyes were so dark and so intense that the young King fell under their fascination at once.
Henry, it is clear, took an instant liking to Thomas à Becket, realizing that here was a man of unusual parts who would perhaps prove to be the blade of fine steel he had been seeking. The King stood in front of the newcomer, both hands tucked in his belt now, his protuberant gray eyes sparkling excitedly, the jeweled tuft of his hat bobbing as he nodded his head. Then he smiled. After the interval enjoined by deference, Thomas à Becket smiled back. One of the great friendships of history had been born.
Henry had full faith in his own judgment, no matter how quickly it might have been formed and on what slight evidence. He was certain he had found the man he wanted for chancellor. He even considered sending for the Great Seal of England, which was always placed in the possession of the chancellor, and thus settling the matter there and then. But his native caution asserted itself and he went no further, even though his mind was made up. He would take this archdeacon into the offices which clustered around the Curia Regis in a lesser capacity. Later, he was confident, the higher appointment could be made. This was the way it was done.
The post did not have then the importance it was later to carry. It came sixth, in fact, in the list of royal offices. The chief justiciar was ranked at the top, followed by the constable, the marshal, the steward, the chamberlain, and then the chancellor. Becket’s great ability was to raise the post to something approaching the stature of later centuries when it combined home ministership with control of foreign affairs. He was to prove himself the first of the clerical statesmen who played such important roles in history: Wolsey, Richelieu, Mazarin, to name the most obvious.
The young King walked to one of the windows. From here he could look into the main courtyard, where the snow had already been trodden down to the hardness of masonry by all the feet bringing people to see the King, even on Christmas Day. It was filled with men of all stations, skipping and jigging and threshing their arms about and blowing on their fingers. He recognized Godobert the white-tawyer and frowned; the fellow would be here about some costly leather articles for the Queen and, although he was not parsimonious, such trivialities annoyed him. Then he saw the stolid and well-muffled figure of William Cade standing behind the fashioner of fine leather. So Cade had come to see him, after all, about the loan he wanted!
Across the road a sound of chanting rose from the great minster. Henry could see a stretch of the road which ran north and east through the village of Charing to Ludgate. It was black with people coming from and going to London, on foot, on horseback, on runners behind horses. He began to envision many such roads, leading to Rouen, Rennes, Bordeaux, Dublin on the Liffey, all of them black with people coming to see him.
3
The first task facing Henry and his small circle of advisers, now increased by one, was to take from the barons the dictatorial powers they had assumed during the lawless years. This was done in four steps.
The first, and most urgent, was getting rid of the mercenaries. This was accomplished with such dispatch and thoroughness that even William of Ypres, who had been made Earl of Kent by Stephen and believed himself comfortably settled, was bundled out with the rest. He was reported to have wept bitterly when he had himself admitted to a Norman monastery.
Second, new sheriffs were appointed to control the administration of justice and collect taxes.
Third, the clause in the Treaty of Wallingford which provided for the demolition of unlicensed castles was carried out, quickly and relentlessly. Practically all of the eleven hundred were torn down during the early years of the reign.
Fourth, all grants and concessions made during the previous reign were revoked. His handling of this situation showed the real mettle of the young Henry. A good share of the grants had been made by his mother during the period when she was competing with Stephen for the support of the baronage. They had been to men who had fought for her, whose aid had been given, moreover, in placing him on the throne. To take away from them the rewards of their loyalty would seem to be a rank injustice. But Henry, young though he was both in years and experience, knew there was a broader view than this. If he revoked Stephen’s grants and left those of his mother in force, he would be keeping the schism alive and laying up cause for further strife. He knew, moreover, that Matilda’s largesse had been lavish and that the holders of her bounty had no reasonable claims to the lands and honors she had showered about her. It required the sternest of resolution for Matilda’s son to tell his friends they must disgorge; but he did, and so saved the country from trouble later on.
Despite the sharp medicine of Bloody Christmas in the reign of Henry I, the moneyers had been up to their tricks again and, in addition, the holders of money had fallen more than ever into filing and debasing coins. The anarchy had added to the monetary confusion, and there were many coinages in the country when Henry ascended the throne: Stephen’s own, which had been rudely made with his name spelled wrong, Stiefne or Stefne; Matilda’s, which had been of better design; the coins he had issued himself during his campaigns in England and which were called Duke’s Money; and various others by Eustace, Robert of Gloucester, and a mysterious unknown who had put out an issue in the name of Pereric.
One of Henry’s first acts was to call in all old money and replace it with a new penny issue. According to one historian, he assumed the loss himself, but this seems highly unlikely in view of the great amount involved and the far from healthy condition of the royal finances, as well as the obvious fact that it would have been a stimulant to future clipping and sawing and filing. Although the financial transactions of the day bristle with references to pounds, marks, and shillings, they did not exist. They were “coins of account,” having established values and being used as terms in settling the price of goods and in making calculations. The only money in existence in England was the penny. Soon after this period the need for coins of larger value was felt, and several were turned out at the mint in the Tower of London. The first was a gold penny with a value equaling that of twenty of the established pennies, but it was such a thin and inconvenient coin that the London merchants complained, and it was soon thereafter withdrawn. Next in order came groats, florins, nobles, and rose nobles, all of which continued in circulation through several reigns. The first pound was made in 1487 and was called a sovereign because the King who ordered the minting, Henry VII, one of the least kingly of rulers (Francis Hackett calls him “one of those elderly potentates who bring with him a whiff of the backstairs”), elected to have himself shown on the obverse side seated in state and holding his scepter, orb, and cross. No attempt was made to produce an English mark, but it continued in use for centuries as a term for one hundred pennies. It was Henry VII also who decided to give the shilling, the scilling of Saxon days, an existence of its own after nearly a thousand years of use. The first shilling was minted in 1504.
All coin issues during the days under consideration, therefore, were pennies. The issue which Henry put out to replace the dross of the anarchy was hastily conceived and rudely executed (he did not care about such matters), but it was an honest penny. Most issues had been good for several years only, but this first one to carry the name and the bust of Matilda’s son remained in exclusive use for twenty-three years. The young King saw to it that it continued honest. He cut down the number of licensed mints to fifty and had a continuous inspection made of their output. In 1180 he put out a second issue, a much more artistic one this time. This minting was so sound that no more coins were struck for sixty years. It was so strictly backed up during his lifetime, and his likeness continued even after his death to strike such terror to wrongdoers, that Richard and John, who followed him, both of whom were vain and jealous men, were content with it and issued no money of their own.
Money hoarding was a general tendency in these unsettled years. At the time of the Conquest, when it seemed to the poor Saxons that all security had been lost, and subsequently when civil wars threatened, men would hide their negotiable wealth against the dire needs they anticipated later. Often they died without a chance to divulge the location of the buried money. From time to time these deposits come to light. In London in the year 1872 one supply of more than six thousand pennies was found, all of them newly minted coins of William I. The largest find has been the Eccles Hoard, which was dug up in Lancaster in 1864 and consisted of more than eleven thousand pennies. Nothing could be more indicative than this of the state of mind of the unhappy Saxons in the early days of Norman rule.
All through his reign, when not concerned with war and conquest, Henry continued to improve the laws with dome and ban, by either of which terms royal proclamations were called. He stopped the hideous Norman custom of deciding criminal charges by having the contestants fight it out in full armor, in the belief that God would grant the decision to the one whose cause was right, and of testing the guilt of prisoners by making them lift white-hot irons or walk barefooted over heated plowshares. In the place of these cruel absurdities from the Dark Ages, he went back to trial by jury. It had been tried by the Saxons, sometimes with panels made up of witnesses in the case, sometimes with jurors who had not participated in any way, sometimes a combination. Henry now gave more definite substance to the institution by having jury lists maintained in all counties. This was an important milestone in the growth to present-day conceptions of law enforcement.
That it was difficult to escape entirely from the cruel Norman customs, which had prevailed for two generations, was felt in many ways. One incident may be told in this connection. Eight men were charged with breaking at night into a house in London and killing the owner. The jury decided that their guilt had been established sufficiently to warrant their taking the water test! The water test, ordinarily, consisted of throwing the prisoner into a pool with arms tied. If he floated, he was considered guilty and was taken out and hanged. If he sank, he was judged guiltless but, unfortunately for him, he drowned in the demonstration of his innocence. In the case of the eight prisoners, however, a different form of the test was used. They were required to dip their arms into a vat of boiling water and lift out a bar of iron from the bottom, and moreover they had to show no signs of burn or scald two days later.
Two of the eight had the extreme fortitude, or the lack of nervous sensibility, to lift out the bar. As both failed to show later any serious injuries, they were declared innocent and set free. The other six, none of whom was more guilty than the pair who escaped, if guilty at all, could not stand the excruciating pain of the boiling water and so failed to pass the test. They were taken to the place of execution and hanged in a row.
Much later in the reign, as late as 1176, Henry divided the country into six districts, each with three itinerant judges, a further development of his grandfather’s plan. These judges were responsible for the holding of courts and were expected as well to collect the taxes.
Almost as important was his decision to establish again the militia of the country. This pared the claws of the barons still closer to the quick, because the Crown was no longer dependent on them for levies of troops in time of war and so was not under the necessity of giving great grants of land. When Henry needed troops he issued a general call, and the townsman and the freeman on the land were supposed to respond as well as the baron. It was, therefore, not an unmixed blessing. At that juncture, however, the only important thing was to find ways and means of reducing the barons from lords of their small creations to mere holders of land and privilege, and anything which contributed to that end was acceptable.
From the standpoint of legislative advance the reign of Henry II was quite monumental. If the sturdy, sub-rufus, energetic King had been able to curb his ambition for power and keep out of wars in France and not clutter up his life with shoddy love affairs, the thirty-five years he ruled might well have become the most notable period in all English history.
4
It was amazing how quickly the country recovered from the carnage of the last reign under a ruler like this to plot the course of revival and keep a steady hand on the tiller. None of the hundreds of thousands of sad, starved people who had died under the oppressions of the baronage could be brought back to life. But the country responded with alacrity as soon as evidences of stable government were felt.
Most particularly was this true of London. That city, always of a cosmopolitan aspect, had recovered from the great fire of 1132 and was built up again to a swarming tightness from end to end. The houses were still of frame for the most part (for reasons of economy, not because there was no realization of the danger) and most often also of one story. Where a second story was added—and this was an evidence of the prominence of the owner and perhaps of ostentation—it was called the solar and extended out over the street. The solar had to be a certain height from the ground, prescribed by law, and officials were always going around and measuring and raising great difficulties when a man had transgressed by inches. The idea of numbering the houses had not yet been thought of, and so each residence had a sign of its own suspended over the front door. Gilbert Becket, a citizen of some prominence, had a snipe painted on a board which swung in the wind and creaked in winter; and because of this his young son had been called by playmates Thomas of the Snipe. These signs lent a picturesque note to the old Roman town. Painters must have been kept busy designing them for well-to-do burghers. There was great variety, of course, running from plain household articles like baskets and spades, through such rather costly types as horses’ heads and cows and swine, and ladders and merrytotters, to the very expensive kinds which showed dragons and griffins and ships under full head of sail.
It was on these signs that the King’s officers would mark two lines with chalk when it had been decided to use the house for the billeting of troops or the servants of prominent visitors; and a very effective method it was, for the signs were easy to remember and so rubbing the marks off did no good.
The city was so closely packed inside its two-mile bow of wall that some of the parishes covered no more than three or four acres of land. Each parish, however, had its own church and generally it was built of stone, with an imposing gateway and great crossbeams painted red and gold, and with figures of angels suspended from the roofs. There were more than one hundred parishes in all, and the spires of the churches showing above the top of the stout walls gave the city a magical atmosphere.
The badge of budge (lambskin) on which the clothworkers had their insignia of the ram and teasel might very well have carried the arms of London, for the great city on the Thames was founded on wool. The ships which came into the estuary from all the ports of Europe and reached their moorings to the sound of Praise to the Good Christ and Kind Virgin sung by the whole crew (a hymn heard in every language and in every port on the Continent at the end of each safe journey) brought all manner of goods to England—fine fabrics, spices, wines, armor—and what they took back in exchange was wool. There was always more than enough wool for export to balance all the fancier imports which came to England.
It must not be assumed because so much wool was sold abroad that the English had failed to become makers of cloth themselves. The Drapers’ Company in London was the oldest of the guilds and one of the strongest and richest. A draper in those days was a maker of cloth and not a dealer in the finished article. The London drapers not only used much of the best English wool, but they also imported a special variety from Spain. The rich purple cloths for supertunics, the wine-colored varieties, the deep blues, and the tawny yellows so much favored in those days were made right in London. The company had a fine hall in St. Swithin’s Lane, and their annual feasts were of such note that men of high title were glad to be invited as guests.
Henry I granted them a charter for which they paid an annual fee of sixteen pounds. Henry II renewed this and established a yearly cloth fair to be held in the churchyard of the priory of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield.
There was much activity, therefore, in the houses where the drapers lived and carried on their trade. The front of the house was always used as a shop for the display and sale of the cloth. Behind this, and sometimes in full view, the apprentices worked at heddle and shuttle, and reed and treadle, weaving the enduring cloth into handsome patterns.
The drapers had another great distinction. It was from their ranks that the first Lord Mayor of London came. His name was Henry FitzAlwyn, and he was of very considerable wealth. He had a large house near London Stone and he was a sagacious and resolute man, and a popular one, with his ruddy face and waxed beard, his hearty laugh, strutting in clothes as rich as any great nobleman. He was a perfect choice for the new post which was created about the middle of Henry’s reign. That he continued to hold it for twenty-four years was proof that the first of the lord mayors was also one of the best.
FitzAlwyn’s selection was an indication that the fusing of the two races was becoming an accomplished fact in London. The trade of the city had continued largely in Anglo-Saxon hands. All the moneyers of the city seem to have been Saxon, and the heads of the guilds were known by such names as Leofwine and Athelstan and Bricstab. FitzAlwyn, clearly, was of Norman extraction, and it was highly indicative that he had the undivided support of the stout burghers of London Town.
London, of course, was dedicated to trade, and most highly and intricately organized it was. Each trade had its guild, and each guild had its own part of the town, its patron saint, its livery, its insignia. Wherever men gathered would be seen the crescent moon of the mercers, the camel of the grocers, the dolphin of the fishmongers. Most of the proud wearers carried their tallysticks along with them to be used in keeping track of sales and purchases, none being able to read or write. They were not burel men and humble; they were prosperous and a little arrogant. Never before nor perhaps since had the trades been so minutely specialized. If a man was a wimpler, he made wimples, a scarf for women’s heads, and he made nothing else. If he had chosen to be a gorgoaricer, he made gorgets and was not allowed to try his hand at any other part of a knight’s armor. Each section of London, the London of St. Nicholas Shambles, Blowbladder Street, Labor-in-Vain Street, Candlewick, Cordwainer, had special trade associations. The moneylenders lived in Old Jewry, but not all of them, for the William Cade who loaned money to baron and bishop and the King himself, under the very modern-sounding business name of Cade, Cade and Co., was on West Chepe; and the very king of moneylenders he was, charging as high, when he dared, as two-pence on the pound per day!
There was a growing foreign note in the busy, brawling, bellicose Citadel of Wool. Tradesmen had been pouring in since the Conquest, largely from Flanders and the north of France. This was a good thing, for it introduced new ideas and methods and it provided competition. The old Londoners, of course, did not like it. Henry’s marriage to Eleanor had wedded at the same time the island kingdom to the rich lands of western France. Already trade was booming with the merchants of Bordeaux and Bayonne and La Rochelle. Ships from Aquitaine were bringing in goods from the Orient and their own abundant crops of figs. Mostly, however, they brought in the wines of Bordeaux, and some of the shrewd vintners from Gascony were settling down in London. St. Martin being the patron saint of all rubicund fellows who dealt in pipe and tun and cask the world over, the newcomers built St. Martin’s Vintry as their place of worship. They introduced a new wine to English palates, an early form of claret. But it was not their best. It was, in fact, a thin and sourish variety. The best they kept for their own consumption.
Queen Eleanor had been given Stephen’s former home, Tower-Royal, as well as a palace at Bermondsey across the river. She liked the busy life of London, and the presence of the court did much to keep trade in a bouncing condition. Construction was going on all the time, particularly at the Tower of London, where now the walls bristled with the turrets and peaks of smaller towers, the Beauchamp, the Bloody, the Lantern, the Belfry, the Broad Arrow, the Develin. The Cathedral of St. Paul loomed high over the city with its mighty roofs and great bays and its impressive Gothic arches. There was talk of replacing London Bridge with one of stone.
A great city was London by day, a grim and forbidding city by night. The curfew bell rang at eight o’clock from two churches, St. Martin’s le Grand and All Hallows Barking. Trade ceased, the cries of the last regatess with her beer and ale died down, and all citizens of good sense locked their doors and bolted their shutters for the night. After that the only sounds heard were the droning chants of the watch; the occasional jingle of a galilee bell on the porch of a church, which meant someone seeking lodging for the night or sanctuary; the strident “Through!” of wool barges, with lanterns in the rigging, rowing down to unload their great bales at dawn; the more occasional and less assured “ ’Cross! ’Cross!” of river boatmen defying the law by taking some belated noble or churchman over the river. If men had to traverse London at night, they traveled in groups and kept in the wake of the watch, when possible.
In the warm months gardens were full of color along the water front and trees supplied touches of green, even in the densest parts. London kept an almost gay look from spring to autumn. In winter it looked dirty and depressing, and it was cold and raw. But the citizens, even to the poor fripperers who dealt in rags and old clothes and the rakerers who cleaned the streets, had warm cloaks. Wool was king and took that much care of its subjects!
5
And now we must have something to say about Eleanor, the loveliest, the richest, the most fascinating, the most notorious, and most talked-about woman of the age.
Extending along the western coast of France from Brittany to the wild barrier of the Pyrenees, taking in the fat meadows and the rich vineyards of Poitou, Lusignan, Angoumois, Saintonge, and Perigord, terminating in the south with that country of shrewd men and valiant fighters called Gascony, and then jutting far over into the midriff of France to include Limousin and Auvergne, was a land of fabulous richness which was then called Aquitaine. The kings of France, hunched over charcoal braziers in their drafty Paris palaces or smarting from the smoke of the reredos (fire pots without chimneys) in their gaunt castles thereabouts, had accepted the homage of the Duke of Aquitaine but would have changed places with their fortunate vassals who lived in this land where the cattle were fat and the trees were laden with figs and the evenings were warm and scented. Aquitaine had become the world center of Courts of Love.
Duke William ruled Aquitaine and he was very old. He had one son who had gone to the Crusades and who was so good that the people called him St. William. The old man had not been a saint by any means but had spent a large part of his life wandering up and down his broad domain looking for romance, and always finding it. He now wanted to abdicate and spend his last years as a pilgrim and penitent, having in full degree that fear of the hereafter and the torments of hell which motivated so much of what happened in those days. His saintly son had two daughters only, Eleanor and Petronille, both of whom took after their grandfather.
When Eleanor was fifteen and already recognized as Queen of the Courts of Love, her father died and the unsaintly grandfather would no longer delay his plan to balance a lifetime of lechery with a year or two of penitence. The question of a husband for the luscious little beauty became, therefore, an issue of international importance. The husband selected for her would assume the title of duke and rule the country in her right. Louis the Fat was King of France at this juncture, and his avoirdupois made it impossible for him to be lifted out of bed. The mind functioning in this mass of fatty degeneration was keen, nonetheless, and fully conscious of the necessity of finding a French husband for the vivacious Eleanor. He finally decided to marry her to his own son, who was to rule after him as Louis VII.
This Louis was a nice young prince with a great reputation for saintliness, although in reality his piety was more a love of ordered ritual. He had enough of worldly appetites to become enamoured of the dark-eyed, long-lashed Eleanor. It would have been hard for him not to fall in love with her, for the Lady of Aquitaine was lively and amusing as well. She dressed herself well, and the first time Prince Louis saw her she swept into the room in a skirt which was fifteen yards around at the hem, one for each year of her age, and which swayed and rustled voluptuously as she walked. For her part, she liked the idea of being Queen of France, and so on August 1, 1137, the marriage took place.
It was not a success, not even at the start. A saint in the nuptial couch was not Eleanor’s idea of a marriage. To make matters worse, her sister Petronille, who took after that philandering old grandfather even more than Eleanor, fell in love with a married man, the Count of Vermandois. He secured a divorce and married Petronille, and this led to a war in the course of which Louis led some troops against the family of the set-aside wife, on Eleanor’s urging, and it happened that more than a thousand innocent people were burned to death in a church. Louis, who was a man of much fine feeling, never did escape the sense of guilt which possessed him because of this. His persistent melancholy made him less and less a suitable match for Eleanor. She had borne him two daughters, however, when the saintly firebrand, Bernard of Clairvaux, began to preach the need for another crusade. Louis, now King, decided to go, and he was so imbued with fervor that he gave in to Eleanor when she decided she would accompany him and take a troop of lady crusaders with her.
There was a scramble to join the Queen’s detachment. She wanted young ladies only, and it was necessary, of course, for them to be noble and married. The Countess of Toulouse joined and Sibyelle of Flanders and the Duchess of Boulogne. They were to be a mounted division and they drilled in public and created a great deal of admiring comment. There was much consultation and secret discussion over the question of uniforms. When the King and his military advisers came to inspect them finally, it was found they had adopted something so distinctly masculine that the advisers gasped. They were wearing over-all white tunics, slit up the sides to permit freedom in walking and riding, and with a red cross stamped in front and back. Over their tight-fitting hose they had red leather shoes which came to the knee and turned over to show the orange shade of the lining. Eleanor, as their leader, had some special touches of her own, the royal crest on her arm and a plume in her hat.
The dismay of the King and his officers must have been hard to conceal. There was nothing to be done about it, however. The King’s word had been given; they were all ladies of high degree and not to be offended; they had to be allowed to go with the army, in their amazonish hose and their gay red shoes. There was, to be sure, much shaking of heads and muttering, all of which was fully justified in the light of subsequent events.
Queen Eleanor’s Guard, as they called themselves, proved a drawback from the start. They had so much luggage that they slowed up the marches, and the younger knights were always so conscious of their presence that they paid too little attention to duty. They were directly responsible for one great military disaster. Finding a cool, green valley much to their liking, they insisted on camping there. The King and his generals were weak enough to give in, even though they knew the place might be a deathtrap. The valley was surrounded by high wooded slopes on which a hostile army could lurk unseen. The wooded slopes were filled with Saracen forces, who waited until the French were engaged in pitching tents, setting up the horse lines, and drawing water. Then they struck, coming down on the startled Crusaders like an avalanche and shouting their battle cry of “Allah! Allah!” The French were caught off guard so completely that it seemed they might be wiped out, Queen Eleanor’s ladies with the rest. However, they managed to pull themselves together, and Louis fought with considerable courage in his fervid desire to atone for the great error he had been cajoled into making, and finally the screeching white-turbaned hordes were beaten off. Seven thousand Frenchmen had been killed.
Eleanor seldom saw the King, who was kept busy in futile efforts to drive the Saracens back far enough from the coast to relieve the strain on Christian-held Jerusalem. It was inevitable that she would get into trouble. She discovered that her uncle Robert, who ruled in Antioch, was a handsome man of impeccable manners and ingratiating address, and very little older than herself. Robert, in fact, had inherited all the bad qualities of his father, the wicked old rogue of a duke. He and his beautiful niece were in each other’s company a great deal. Robert had grandiose ideas and had been hatching a scheme to weld all of the Near East into one strong confederation (with himself at the head, of course), and to aid in working this out he wanted to get his niece free of the good Louis and marry her to the Sultan of Iconium, as the price of that potentate’s support. From the reports which were current, Eleanor would have preferred to remain in close relationship with the handsome Robert to being head wife in the harem of a heathen ruler. At any rate, the gossip about them became so great that it even reached the ears of the fatuous Louis. There was also a Saracen sheik who saw her and was so ensnared that he came to the French camp many times in various disguises and was always admitted to see her. Some historians say this was the great Saladin himself. Inasmuch as the future opponent of her still unborn son Richard was then barely out of swaddling clothes, it must be assumed that the mysterious visitor was someone else.
Through one cause and another the Crusade was an unqualified failure. When Louis and his disgruntled army and Eleanor and her complaining guard (their cheeks tanned to leather, their hands rough and broken, their tempers short) turned about to slink back to France, it was thoroughly understood from Louis down to the lowliest scullion scraping grease in the kitchen tents that there would be a divorce.
In such an exalted place, however, there were grave difficulties attached to getting a divorce. If it were granted for adultery, neither of them would be allowed to remarry. Eleanor would not have wanted it on those terms, nor would Louis, who had not yet been blessed with an heir. Under the circumstances they decided to patch things up, and if the next child she bore him had been a boy, the whole face of history would have been changed. She would have remained Queen of France, and the Hundred Years’ War might not have been fought. But the child was a girl.
It was during this period of indecision that Henry came to the court of France with his father Geoffrey, who was renewing his oath of fealty to the French monarch. Geoffrey was still a handsome man, and the Queen coquetted with him openly. She even looked under her long lashes at the son, who was only seventeen but a well-set-up fellow with an eye bold enough to look back at a queen. Two years later Henry returned alone. His father was dead and, although Louis was giving Stephen’s son Eustace a somewhat halfhearted advocacy, it was generally expected that the next King of England would be Matilda’s son. Eleanor now saw him with new eyes and with a sudden intentness. Young men find beautiful wives of other men attractive, especially when they are older than themselves, and Henry’s interest in Eleanor was at least the equal of hers. An agreement was made between them that as soon as she could achieve her freedom they would be married.
It may seem hard to believe that a woman would thus arrange to take as her second husband a man nearly twelve years younger than herself, but the explanation is clear enough. Eleanor did not want to relinquish her crown as Queen of France unless something equally good was obtainable. She would not have married Henry unless she had been sure he would be the next King of England.
Henry had seen in Eleanor more than a beautiful and willing woman. She represented to him the chance for an empire. All of Aquitaine and its allied provinces, added to England and Normandy and Anjou, would make him ruler over lands twice as extensive as those of Louis of France. Her tarnished reputation meant little to him under these circumstances, her greater years even less.
The marriage between Louis and Eleanor was finally dissolved on March 18, 1152, at Beaugency, the grounds being consanguinity. Her patrimony was returned to Eleanor without any restrictions. This was a surprise, for she now became again Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right and the greatest catch in Europe. If Louis had entertained any suspicion of what was coming, he would not have acted with such generosity, for France could not tolerate willingly the union of this great territory with the kingdom of the north. The news when it came was like a thunderbolt.
Disguised as a private gentleman and with a small train of attendants, Henry crossed French territory into the domain of his lady and arrived at Bordeaux in time to marry her on the first day of May. A stunned world heard that the ceremony had been solemnized with great pomp and a lavish display of ducal wealth. The news caused alarm, chagrin, and fear in French high circles. The councilors of the King wanted Louis to invade Aquitaine immediately and dislodge the errant duchess and her youthful bridegroom before any trouble for France could be planned. Louis, however, shared the unreadiness which had made Ethelred of England such a failure as a king. He fumed and raged and did nothing. The next disturbing piece of news to reach his ears was that the bridal couple were in Normandy and that Eleanor had assembled a fleet of thirty-six ships with which Henry would invade England. The invasion was successful, as has been told, resulting in the Treaty of Wallingford.
At Rouen on August 17, Eleanor gave birth to a son who was named William, after the Conqueror, it is to be hoped, and not the old gander of Aquitaine.
6
The Eleanor who came to England was not the vivacious girl who presided over the Courts of Love in her own warm southland, nor was she the vain and passionate woman who had kept the household of Louis in such turmoil. She had not changed entirely. Her temper was still high, she was as vain as ever, she thought more of the adornment of her person than of the state of her immortal soul. But she had steadied in purpose and she meant to comport herself as a queen should. Like the astringent persimmon which becomes sweet after the ripening period or a touch of frost, Eleanor of Aquitaine was showing signs of mellowing. In addition to her more obvious and material reasons for marrying Henry, there was certainly another one: that she hoped to recapture her youth and live over the years she had wasted with a man for whom she had nothing but contempt. She was in most respects a good wife to her youthful spouse, presenting him with eight children. The infidelities were all on his side, and he was at least equally to blame with her for the differences which led to her confinement at Woodstock. When he left her in the role of regent while he went to the Continent, she acquitted herself well. At any rate, she did not interfere with the Norman officials he placed beside her to make sure she did nothing wrong, such being Henry’s way.
But the people of England did not know of this change in the character of the notorious Queen Eleanor, nor were they able to look into the future and see her as a wise and tolerant old woman trying to keep her sons in the path of good kingship. They had been shocked by the circumstances of the marriage and they watched for her arrival with not a little dread, as well as the most intense curiosity.
The royal couple landed at a small fishing village on the Sussex coast early in December, having waited a month for favorable winds. A dismal rain was falling and they took to horse at once to reach more comfortable quarters for the night. There was, of course, a large crowd in the village to see the young King and his wicked wife as they cantered through. Henry looked rather savage, setting the pace in the van of the party, his head in a hood, his silver spurs jingling as he urged his mount forward. All they could see of Eleanor was a pair of dark eyes in a face of ivory pallor. She was wearing a barbette, a close-fitting cover for the head with a strap under the chin; the first seen in England, without a doubt. Despite the very bad opinion they had of her, they cheered her as she rode past them. If the smile with which she acknowledged this welcome was somewhat casual and wintry, it must be borne in mind that her first sight of England was proving a most depressing one and that she undoubtedly was thinking of the blue waters of Biscay rolling in to smooth white shingle and above this a palace wide open to the sun.
The first real look that England had of her was at the coronation. Henry rushed it along, being in a furious impatience to get at the neglected tasks of government, and it was held a fortnight after their arrival at Westminster, on a Sunday, in fact, December 19.
The sun had sulked since the advent of the royal party, but on this most important of days it came out and shone in splendid vigor. If Henry had entertained any fears of opposition, they were quickly dispelled, for all the nobility came to the Court of Claims held by the steward with their petitions of right to perform certain parts in the ceremony. The Earl of Chester was on hand to carry the sword Curtana. The head of the house of Bohun arrived to officiate as constable. The current incumbent of the manor of Addington, Bartholomew de Chesney, was seeing to it that a fine dish of dilligrout was being prepared for the coronation feast. Of ill will or signs of a preference for the surviving son of Stephen, not a trace.
All medieval coronations were intensely colorful, and this one, in spite of the haste with which it had been arranged, was one of the most spectacular. The sanctuary seekers who at all times infested the grounds and the chapels of Westminster (sometimes there were as many as a hundred assorted thieves and murderers defying the law within the abbey) had been forcibly rounded up and locked into a single chapel on the east side, where they sat in a glum silence, some bristling with insolence, some sunk in hangdog despair. This gave more room in the limited space between the White-Hall and the great church, and it seemed as though all London was packed therein, pushing and shouldering and standing on tiptoe.
The nobles headed the procession, carrying the regalia: the cross of Alfred, the scepter, the orb, the four swords, St. Edward’s staff, the ring of the Confessor, and the crown. There was a story about the ring which everyone believed and which made the spectators crane their necks to get a glimpse of it. The Confessor had given it to an old man who asked him for alms, and more than a century afterward two weary and hungry English pilgrims in the Holy Land had it returned to them by a strange patriarch who said to them, “I am Johan Theuangelyst.” The crown was a new one, a circlet of gold with four strawberry leaves between which were pearls and precious stones.
Next in line were the churchmen, the bishops and abbots and priors, all in full vestment and lending a note of solemnity. The lesser nobility followed, walking slowly along the blue cloth which had been stretched from the White-Hall to the western entrance of the abbey, wearing richly colored garments, brocaded and furred and jeweled, their coronets sparkling in the welcome sun.
There followed lesser men: plain knights, aldermen, portreeves, wealthy merchants. There was little interest in this part of the procession, for all eyes were fixed on the White-Hall entrance where the coronation canopy had appeared, held by knights in armor at each corner, under which the Sang and his Queen would walk to the crowning. The resonant chords of the organ and the chant of monkish voices coming from the interior of the abbey seemed to swell to higher volume when the royal couple appeared and came slowly up the blue walk under the golden tasseling and jeweled bands of the canopy.
The young King wore his short Angevin cloak, the novelty of which might have caused amusement if first seen on a lesser man. He looked kingly enough, tall and strong and hard, and, as he was not at peace at such moments, with no hint of sweetness in his eyes. They liked him, the pushing and struggling Londoners, having no desire left for amiability and easy charm in their rulers.
The Queen was in white and gold, her head uncovered and her hair in four plaits, as the fashion of the moment demanded. She looked radiant and as beautiful as the first time she had been crowned, which was nearly seventeen years before. English eyes were well accustomed to feminine beauty but mostly of the fair and rose-cheeked variety. They were not accustomed to the soft duskiness of hair, the ivory luster of brow and cheek, the sparkling brown of eye of this Queen from the south. They paid tribute to her loveliness at once, glad she was not what they had expected, cold and brilliant and disdainful. Perhaps the jostling crowds, stretching their necks for a closer look at her, were a little proud that their burly young King had taken her away from her foreign suitors.
Her coronation robes must be described: a kirtle of white, closely form-fitting to the waist and with tight sleeves, over this a pelisse of gold bordered with fur, the sleeves lined with ermine and so gracefully bell-shaped that they allowed the white of the kirtle to show beneath. The wide rustling skirt of white had a train (another innovation she had brought with her), carried by two pages fairly strutting with importance. There was none of the almost barbaric splendor about it which was a part of the times, but it was a courageous costume for a woman of thirty-three who wanted to take ten years off her age in order to look as young as her husband. Her maids, needless to state, had worked long and earnestly over her face before she donned the gold and white, kneading the first pucker of fine lines around her eyes, removing as far as possible the traces of encroachment by lovely woman’s worst enemy, time. They seem to have succeeded.
What thoughts fill the heads of monarchs when they stand up for the ceremony which seals the relationship between themselves and their subjects is a matter, naturally, of temperament and mentality. As Henry sat on the faldstool for the sermon and litany and then later, when he had taken possession of the coronation chair on the high platform raised for the purpose in the upper part of the chancel and heard Theobald proclaim Si ipsi consentire vellent, he was not thinking of the meaning of this, that he was assuming the crown with the consent of the people. More likely his thoughts had leaped far ahead to a more important crowning, perhaps, and the conferring of a much greater title than King of England. Eleanor’s thoughts may have been keeping him company in this glimpse of future greatness. More certainly, however, she kept in her mind some realization of the glaring errors of the past, of the need to make this a lasting marriage.
Immediately after the coronation Henry set about crushing all traces of disaffection which existed in the country. He settled the pretensions of the Count of Aumale, who had been ruling the north with a high hand, and of the lords of Hereford and Wigmore in the west. The youthful King of Scotland, another Malcolm, paid homage to him and restored Northumberland and Cumberland, which had been appropriated during the civil war. He invaded Wales and forced Rhys-ap-Grythyff to give hostages for peaceful behavior. In a short space of time all England was brought to acceptance of his rule. In gratitude for his uninterrupted successes, Henry took Eleanor to Worcester Cathedral, and on the shrine of St. Wulfstan they laid down their crowns, swearing never to wear them again.
This act was one of considerable significance. Renunciation of the showiest aspect of kingship was not in keeping with the spirit of the times, but it was a first step to something which occurred later, the crowning of their eldest son while Henry himself was alive. Henry, who gave up nothing willingly, was already thinking of the English throne as a steppingstone. Of still greater significance, however, was the fact that the crowns had been laid on the shrine of the only English prelate retained by the Conqueror, saintly old Wulfstan. The best of the many stories told of him was that, when William’s Norman archbishop Lanfranc had demanded of him his pastoral staff in token of resignation, the old man said he had received the staff from his master Edward and would gladly give it back to him. Advancing to the Confessor’s tomb, he said, “Take this, my master, and deliver it to whom thou wilt.” He placed the staff on the tomb, bowed, and began to rid himself of his episcopal robes. The staff, however, was firmly embedded in the stone when Lanfranc tried to pick it up. It remained there until Wulfstan himself stretched out a hand, when it yielded itself into his grasp. They did not interfere with such a doer of miracles after that.
That Henry and his bride, who was already beginning to have a little popularity, went to this shrine for the purpose was the surest indication of what was happening in England. The two races were beginning to merge; Norman was wedding Saxon, and Saxon Norman; both were inclined to think of themselves as Englishmen and to use the term. So far it was no more than a beginning, but the evidences were unmistakable.
7
It has been said already that Eleanor gave her husband eight children. The second was a boy, born soon after the death of the sickly little William, who had escaped the stigma of illegitimacy by such a narrow margin. The new son was called Henry, and he was healthy and strong. His father conceived for him a love which nothing could break, not even the boy’s early assumption of the role of Absalom. The sweetness in the King’s eyes was apparent to everyone when little Henry was about. The King was an indulgent and affectionate father to all his children, but his own namesake remained the favorite through all the stresses of the bitter years ahead.
A daughter was born next. She was named Matilda, inevitably, and in course of time she was married to Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony. This fine knight had been given his nickname because of his amazing personal bravery and strength, but he seemed to lack political sense. At any rate, he set himself up against his cousin Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, and twice that great juggernaut rolled him right out of his dominions. This made it necessary for him to seek refuge in England with his young consort and their growing brood of children. Finally, after Matilda had shared many vicissitudes, the Lion agreed to settle down in Brunswick and give up any attempts at ruling. Matilda was a second wife, but she seems to have been happy with her unruly spouse and brought five sons and a daughter into the world.
Then came a great, handsome boy who was named Richard. If the gods and the heroes of legend still inhabited Valhalla, there must have been much stamping of feet and boisterous drinking of toasts when this infant found his breath and uttered his first cry. Little Richard was his mother’s favorite, and her love deepened as he grew into big Richard and finally became a tall and inordinately strong man with yellow curly hair and flashing blue eyes: the famous Coeur de Lion, who soon put Henry the Lion in the shade; Richard Yea and Nay, most fabulous of Crusaders, whose memory by the name of Melech-Ric was used to frighten Saracen babies into obedience for centuries after. “My Richard!” his mother called him proudly when he lorded it over other boys and when he grew up and crashed all opposition down in the tilting grounds. All the passion of her nature went into her worship of this golden son. It was to become one of the causes of bitter family troubles later.
Next was a daughter named Joanna, who became the Queen of William II of Sicily and went with Richard and his bride Berengaria to the Crusades. A son followed, who was given the name of Geoffrey and who married the heiress of Brittany. The seventh child was a daughter named Eleanor, who married the King of Castile, reputedly the wealthiest man in the world. The importance England had assumed in the eyes of the world may be judged by the fine matches each of Henry’s daughters made. Every monarch in Europe wanted an English bride and the share she might bring him in the fast-rising power of the three lions.
The last child was a son, who differed from the other boys in having a dark cast of countenance and rather fine features, and who tended to a slight degree of fattishness. He was christened John, and of all men born of woman he least deserved the name of the gentle and holy companion of Christ.
With the exception of the unfortunate infant William, sleeping now at the feet of his great-grandfather, Henry I, they were all healthy and handsome children, full of their father’s strength and will, blessed with something of their mother’s beauty and charm.
It had been an axiom that a wife who gave her husband sons was a good wife. Eleanor, the notorious beauty, the woman put away by Louis of France, was, then, a good wife to Henry.
8
The boy born to the Brakespeare family in the village of Abbots Langley, which lies close to St. Albans in Hertfordshire, was named Nicholas and he was a fine child from all accounts. A later description makes him “elegant in person, pleasant in countenance, prudent in conversation.” Any young man answering to that description in those days had his feet set in the direction of prosperity and even greatness. At first, however, there seemed some doubt of it in the case of young Nicholas Brakespeare. He was rejected when he applied for admission to the Benedictine monastery at St. Albans, one of the largest and richest and most influential in the country. This circumstance, which seemed most unfortunate to his parents and relatives, proved to be the most favorable thing which could have happened to him. He went to France and studied at Paris before taking holy orders at St. Rufus. Advancing to abbot there, he came under the notice of Pope Eugenius III and was summoned to Rome, where he filled various important posts. He became the second English cardinal, the first to receive that honor being Robert Pulleyn, who is sometimes called the father of Oxford University.
Brakespeare’s great opportunity came when a most delicate situation developed in the Scandinavian countries. No longer content to be governed from the see of Hamburg-Bremen, the people of the north were clamoring for archbishops of their own. As their conversion had been accomplished for the most part by English missionaries, it was deemed wise to send an Englishman as papal legate. Brakespeare, accordingly, was selected.
The Scandinavian countries included Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Orkneys, and Sodor, and the legate had to please all of them if possible. He had, in the first place, to make a choice among three embattled antagonists in Norway: Sigurd of the Mouth, Inge the Hunchback, and Eyestein. His choice fell on Inge, but he found means somehow of placating the unsuccessful candidates. In Sweden he could not set up a parent see because of the racial enmity between the Sviars of the north and the Gautors of the south. This difficulty he solved by placing Sweden temporarily under the Danish see he established at Lund. Brakespeare acted with such vision and discretion, in fact, and with such supreme tact that the northern countries, when he left, were satisfied with everything and so well disposed to him personally that a friendly recollection of him seems to have been retained for a long period of time after.
His success on this trying mission led to his selection as Pope in succession to Anastasius, when he assumed the name of Adrian IV. This was in 1154, and it thus happened that he and Henry came into power in the same year.
If the new Pope had been no more than a suave diplomat, he would have failed miserably in his exalted post. His elevation came at a juncture when a firm hand and a cool and resolute head were needed at the Vatican. Under the leadership of Arnold of Brescia, a devout and fanatical reformer, Rome was in revolt against the temporal power of the Church. A republic had been declared and it had been found advisable, and perhaps necessary, to withdraw the papal offices from the Leonine City. There were dynastic difficulties as well. William of Sicily had been crowned without any attempt being made to obtain apostolic sanction. In Germany the young Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, called Barbarossa because of his flaring red beard, was showing the early symptoms of a boundless ambition and a willingness to swallow all Italy.
The rather frail cardinal, who had been such a success in the field of diplomacy, brought to these trying problems a strength of will and determination which could hardly have been anticipated. When he first met Barbarossa, that haughty monarch refused to hold the papal stirrup while he dismounted. Adrian remained sternly in his saddle, withholding the kiss of peace. The anger of the Emperor was so violently expressed that all the papal officials, who had ridden out with the Pope, turned and fled for their lives. Adrian was not disturbed, and wiser second thoughts replaced the rage of the red Frederick. He asked Adrian to meet him the following day and he then performed the ceremony of the stirrup. After that, Pope and Emperor seemed to work in concert and even amity. TheEnglish-born Adrian went to the length of crowning Frederick Emperor at St. Peter’s in spite of the violent protests of the people of Rome. Earlier he had dared to lay an interdict on the Eternal City. Now, with Barbarossa, he succeeded in driving Arnold of Brescia out of Rome and later in having him captured. Arnold, who had called the Curia “a house of merchandise and a den of thieves,” was brought back to Rome a prisoner and was hanged by the prefect, if not on instructions of Adrian, at least with his full consent.
Certain parallels can be drawn between the ruler at Rome and the young ruler at London. They possessed in common the gift of decision; they believed equally in vigorous action when their judgment said it was necessary; they were not held back by scruples, nor did they balk at risks. There were dealings between them, of course. Adrian’s decisions on English problems seem to have been entirely those of the Pope of Rome without any prompting from Nicholas Brakespeare of Abbots Langley. In the matter of Henry’s ambition to invade and conquer Ireland, however, he may have been less completely detached. Henry’s ambassador in this matter was John of Salisbury, with whom the Pope had always enjoyed the most cordial relations. John of Salisbury based his plea on the desire of the English King to enlarge the bounds of the Church and to bring a higher degree of civilization to the savage Irish tribes. Adrian listened, was convinced, and was supposed to have issued his bull Laudabiliter, putting the papal sanction on the project. The authenticity of the document is now doubted. A paper was in existence, however, which reads as follows:
Adrian, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his very dear son in Jesus Christ, the illustrious king of England, apostolical greeting and benediction.
Thou hast communicated unto us, our very dear son in Jesus Christ, that thou wouldst enter the island of Hibernia, to subdue that people to the yoke of the laws, to root out from among them the seeds of vice, and also to procure to payment there to the blessed apostle Peter of the annual pension of a penny for each house. Granting to this thy laudable and pious desire the favor which it merits, we hold it acceptable that, for the extension of the limits of the holy church, the propagation of the Christian religion, the correction of morals, and the sowing of the seeds of virtue, thou make thy entrance into that island, and there execute, at thy discretion, whatever thou think proper for the honor of God and the salvation of the country. And that the people of that country receive and honor thee as their sovereign lord and master, saving the rights of the churches which must remain untouched, and the annual pension of one penny per house due to the blessed Peter; for it is beyond a doubt, and has been acknowledged, that all the islands upon which Christ the sun of justice hath shone, and which have been taught the faith, belong of lawful right to St. Peter and the most holy and sacred church of Rome.
If then thou think it fit to put in execution what thou hast conceived in thy thoughts, use thy endeavors to form that people in good morals, and let the church in that country, as well by thy own efforts as by those men of acknowledged sufficiency in faith and words and life, be adorned with new lustre. Let the true religion of Christ be planted there and increase. In a word, let everything which concerns the honor of God and the salvation of souls be, by thy prudence, so ordered that thou shalt become worthy of obtaining in Heaven a reward everlasting, and upon earth a name illustrious and glorious in all ages.
The morality of the King’s plea and the Pope’s compliance will be discussed later. Henry, as it happened, found himself too concerned with other matters to proceed with his designs on the sister island. The project languished for many years, and the Pope had been at rest for a decade in his red sarcophagus of Egyptian granite when Henry finally made a move.
Adrian’s early death may have been due to the extraordinary difficulties which confronted him at every stage of his brief incumbency. It was a tired and unhappy man who closed his eyes on September 1, 1159, at Anagni.
The only Englishman to wear the rochet and the red mozetta and to hold spiritual sway over the Christian world was a strong pope, but he could not be listed among the great men of the papacy. He was too much a product of his times for that. Adrian’s policy was that of Thomas à Becket, who died to elevate the Church above the authority of kings. Because of the Pope’s determination on that score, Arnold of Brescia’s body was burned and his ashes, the ashes of a great man, were consigned to the waters of the Tiber. This can be said for English Adrian, he was pure to the point of austerity and as free of personal corruption as any man who ever held the vast resources of the papacy in his hands. One of the charges hurled at Becket when he was Archbishop of Canterbury was that he had failed to do anything for the old mother of Adrian, who lived, long after her great son’s death, in unrelieved poverty in the small house in Abbots Langley where he had been born.
An interesting speculation is raised by the early death of Adrian. If he had lived longer and had seen Henry’s ambitions mature, would he have been disposed to grant what was so clearly in the English King’s mind, though never expressed in word or the scratch of a paper, the creation of an empire of the west? Hail, Caesar! And if it had so come about, where would the new emperor have established himself in a capital city? London, Rouen, Bordeaux? It would almost certainly have been London, for that city always had capacity for greatness.