Читать книгу The Leading Facts of English History - D. H. Montgomery - Страница 18

Consolidation of Norman and Saxon Interests—Rise of the New English

Nation

Henry II, 1154–1189

Richard I, 1189–1199

John, 1199–1216

Henry III, 1216–1272

Edward I, 1272–1307

Edward II, 1307–1327

Edward III, 1327–1377

Richard II, 1377–1399

[1] Reference Books on this Period will be found in the Classified List of Books in the Appendix. The pronunciation of names will be found in the Index. The Leading Dates stand unenclosed; all others are in parentheses.

159. Accession and Dominions of Henry II.

Henry was just of age when the death of Stephen (S141) called him to the throne.

From his father, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, a province of France, came the title of Angevin. The name Plantagenet, by which the family came to be known later, was derived from the count's habit of wearing a sprig of the golden-blossomed broom plant, or Plante-gene^t, as the French called it, in his helmet.

Henry received from his father the dukedoms of Anjou and Maine, from his mother Normandy and the dependent province of Brittany, while through his marriage with Eleanor, the divorced Queen of France, he acquired the great southern dukedom of Aquitaine.

Thus on his accession he became ruler over all England, and over more than half of France besides, his realms extending from the borders of Scorland to the base of the Pyrenees. (See map facing p. 84.)

To these extensive possessions Henry added the eastern half of Ireland.[1] The country was but partially conquered and never justly ruled. The English power there remained "like a spear-point embedded in a living body," inflaming all around it.[2]

[1] Ireland: The population of Ireland at this time consisted mainly of descendants of the Celtic and other prehistoric races which inhabited Britain at the period of the Roman invasion. When the Saxons conquered Britain, many of the natives, who were of the same stock and spoke essentially the same language as the Irish, fled to that country. Later, the Danes formed settlements on the coast, especially in the vicinity of Dublin. The conquest of England by the Normans was practically a victory gained by one branch of the German race over another (Saxons, Normans, and Danes having originally sprung from the same Teutonic stock or from one closely akin to it, and the three soon mingled); but the partial conquest of Ireland by the Normans was a radically different thing. They and the Irish had really nothing in common. The latter refused to accept the feudal system, and continued to split up into savage tribes or clans under the rule of petty chiefs always at war with each other. Thus for centuries after England had established a settled government, Ireland remained, partly through the battles of the clans, and partly through the aggressions of a hostile race, in a state of anarchic confusion which prevented all true national growth. [2] W. E. H. Lecky's "England in the XVIIIth Century," II, 102.

160. Henry II's Charter and Reforms.

On his mother's side Henry was a descendent of Alfred the Great (S51); for this reason he was hailed with enthusiasm by the native English. He at once began a system of reforms worthy of his illustrious ancestor. His first act was to issue a charter confirming the Charter of Liberties or pledges of good government which his grandfather, Henry I, had made (S135). His next was to begin leveling to the ground the castles unlawfully built in Stephen's reign, which had caused such widespread misery to the country[3] (S141). He continued the work of demolition until it is said he destroyed no less than eleven hundred of these strongholds of oppression.

[3] Under William the Conqueror and his immediate successors no one was allowed to erect a castle without a royal license. During Stephen's time the great barons constantly violated this salutory regulation.

The King next turned his attention to the coinage. During the civil war (S141) the barons had issued money debased in quality and deficient in weight. Henry abolished this dishonest currency and issued silver pieces of full weight and value.

161. War with France; Scutage (1160).

Having completed these reforms, the King turned his attention to his Continental possessions. Through his wife, Henry claimed the county of Toulouse in southern France. To enforce this claim he declared war.

Henry's barons, however, refused to furnish troops to fight outside of England. The King wisely compromised the matter by offering to accept from each knight a sum of money in lieu of service, called scutage, or shield money.[1] The proposal was agreed to (1160), and in this way the knights furnished the King the means to hire soldiers for foreign wars.

[1] Scutage: from the Latin scutum, a shield; the understanding being that he who would not take his shield and do battle for the King should pay enough to hire one who would. The scutage was assessed at two marks. Later, the assessment varied. The mark was two thirds of a pound of silver by weight, or thirteen shillings and fourpence ($3.20). Reckoned in modern money, the tax was probably at least twenty times two marks, or about $128.

Later in his reign Henry supplemented this tax by the passage of the Assize of Arms, a law which revived the national militia (SS96, 150) and placed it at his command for home service. By these two measures the King made himself practically independent of the barons, and thus gained a greater degree of power than any previous ruler had possessed.

162. Thomas Becket.

There was, however, one man in Henry's kingdom—his Lord Chancellor (S145), Thomas Becket—who was always ready to serve him. At his own expense the Chancellor now equipped seven hundred knights, and, crossing the Channel, fought valiantly for the suppression of the rebellion in Toulouse (S161) in the south of France. (See map facing p. 84.)

Shortly after Becket's return from the Continent Henry resolved to appoint him Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket knew that the King purposed beginning certain Church reforms with which he was not in sympathy, and declined the office. But Henry would take no denial. At last Becket consented, but he warned the King that he should uphold the rights of the clergy. He now became the head of the Catholic Church in England. He was the first man of English birth called to that exalted position since the Norman Conquest.

This promotion made a decided change in Becket's relation to the King. So long as he was Chancellor he was bound to do what the King ordered, but as soon as he was made Archbishop he became the servant of the Church. Again, on his assumption of this sacred office Becket underwent a remarkable charge of character. He had been a man of the world, fond of pomp and pleasure. He now gave up all luxury and show. He put on sackcloth, lived on bread and water, and spent his nights in prayer, tearing his flesh with a scourge.

163. Becket's First Quarrel with the King.

The new Archbishop's presentiment of trouble soon proved true. Becket had hardly taken his seat when a quarrel broke out between him and the King. In his need for money Henry levied a tax on all lands, whether belonging to the barons or to churchmen. Becket opposed this tax.[1] He was willing, he said, that the clergy should contribute, if they desired to do so, but not that they should be compelled to pay the tax.

[1] See page 76, note 1, on Clergy.

The King declared with an oath that all should pay alike; the

Archbishop vowed with equal determination that not a single penny

should be collected from the Church. From that time the King and

Becket never met again as friends.

164. The Second Quarrel.

Shortly afterward, a much more serious quarrel broke out between the King and the Archbishop. Under the law made by William the Conqueror, the Church had the right to try in its own courts all offenses committed by monks and priests (S118). This privilege, in time, led to great abuses, since even in cases of the commission of the gravest crimes the Church had no direct power to inflict the penalty of death. On the contrary, the heaviest sentence it could give was imprisonment in a monastery, with degradation from the clerical office; while in less serious cases the offenders generally got off with fasting and flogging.

On this account some criminals who deserved to be hanged escaped with a comparatively slight penalty. Such a case now occurred. In one instance a priest had committed an unprovoked murder. Henry commanded him to be brought before the Kings' court; Becket interfered, and ordered the case to be tried by the bishop of the diocese. The bishop simply sentenced the murderer to lose his place for two years.

165. The Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164.

The King determined that such flagrant disregard of justice should no longer go on. He called a council of his chief men at Clarendon, near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, and laid the case before them. He demanded that in future the state or civil courts should be supreme, and that in every instance their judges should decide whether a criminal should be tried by the common law of the land or handed over to the Church courts.

He furthermore required that the clergy should be held strictly responsible to the Crown, so that in case of dispute the final appeal should be neither to the Archbishop nor to the Pope, but to himself. In this respect he went even farther than William the Conqueror had done (S118). After protracted debate the council, composed of a committee of bishops and barons, passed the measures which the King demanded. The new laws were entitled the Constitutions of Clarendon. They consisted of sixteen articles which clearly defined the powers and jurisdiction of the King's courts and the Church courts. Their great object was to secure a more uniform administration of justice for all classes of men. (See the Constitutional Summary in the Appendix, pp. viii and xxxii.)

Becket, though bitterly oppsed to the new laws, finally assented, and swore to obey them. Afterward, feeling that he had conceded too much, he retracted his oath and refused to be bound by the Constitutions. The other Church dignitaries became alarmed at the prospect, and left Becket to settle with the King as best he might. Henceforth it was a battle between the King and the Archbishop, and each resolved that he would never give up until he had won the final victory (S170).

166. The King enforces the New Laws; Becket leaves the Country.

Henry at once proceeded to put the Constitutions of Clarendon into execution without fear or favor. A champion of the Church of that day says, "Then was seen the mournful spectacle of priests and deacons who had committed murder, manslaughter, robbery, theft, and other crimes, carried in carts before the comissioners and punished as thogh they were ordinary men."[1]

[1] William of Newburgh's "Chronicle."

Furthermore, the King sems now to have resolved to ruin Becket or drive him from the kingdom. He accordingly summoned the Archbishop before a royal council at Northampton to answer to certain charges made against him. Becket answered the summons, but he refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the council, and appealed to the Pope. "Traitor!" cried a courtier, as he picked up a bunch of muddy rushes from the floor and flung them at the Archbishop's head. Becket turned and, looking him sternly in the face, said, "Were I not a churchman, I would make you repent that word." Realizing, however, that he was now in serious danger, he soon after left Northampton and fled to France.

167. Banishment versus Excommunication (1164).

Finding Becket beyond his reach, Henry next proceeded to banish the Archbishop's kinsmen and friends, without regard to age or sex, to the number of nearly four hundred. These miserable exiles, many of whom were nearly destitute, were forced to leave the country in midwinter, and excited the pity of all who saw them.

Becket indignantly retaliated. He hurled at the King's counselors the awful sentence of excommunication or expulsion from the Church (S194). It declared the King accursed of God and man, deprived of help in this world, and shut out from hope in the world to come. In this manner the quarrel went on with ever-increasing bitterness for the space of six years.

168. Prince Henry crowned; Reconciliation (1170).

Henry, who had long wished to associate his son, Prince Henry, with him in the government, had him crowned at Westminster by the Archbishop of York, the bishops of London and Salisbury taking part.

By custom, if not indeed by law, Becket alone, as Archbishop of

Canterbury, had the right to perform this ceremony.

When Becket heard of the coronation, he declared it an outrage both against Christianity and the Church. So great an outcry now arose that Henry believed it expedient to recall the absent Archbishop, especially as the King of France was urging the Pope to take up the matter. Henry accordingly went over to the Continent, met Becket, and persuaded him to return.

169. Reneral of the Quarrel; Murder of Becket (1170).

But though the Archbishop and the King had given each other the "kiss of peace," yet the reconciliation was on the surface only; underneath, the old hatred smoldered, ready to burst forth into flame. As soon as he reached England, Becket invoked the thunders of the Church against those who had officiated at the coronation of Prince Henry. He excommunicated the Archbishop of York with his assistant bishops.

The King took their part, and in an outburst of passion against Becket he exclaimed, "Will none of the cowards who eat my bread rid me of that turbulent priest?" In answer to his angry cry for relief, four knights set out without Henry's knowledge for Canterbury, and brutally murdered the Archbishop within the walls of his own cathedral.

170. Results of the Murder.

The crime sent a thrill of horror throughout the realm. The Pope proclaimed Becket a saint with the title of Saint Thomas. The mass of the English people looked upon the dead ecclesiastic as a martyr who had died in the defense of the Church, and of all those—but especially the laboring classes and the poor—around whom the Church cast its protecting power.

The great cathedral of Canterbury was hung in mourning; Becket's shrine became the most famous in England. The stone pavement, and the steps leading to it, still show by their deep-worn hollows where thousands of pilgrims coming from all parts of the kingdom, and from the Continent even, used to creep on their knees to the saint's tomb to pray for his intercession.

Henry himself was so far vanquished by the reaction in Becket's favor, that he gave up any further attempt to formally enforce the Constitutions of Clarendon (S165), by which he had hoped to establish a uniform system of administration of justice. But the attempt, though baffled, was not wholly lost; like seed buried in the soil, it sprang up and bore good fruit in later generations. However, it was not until near the close of the reign of George III (1813) that the civil courts fully and finally prevailed.

171. The King makes his Will; Civil War.

Some years after the murder, the King bequeathed England and Normandy (SS108, 159) to Prince Henry.[1] He at the same time provided for his sons Geoffrey and Richard. To John, the youngest of the brothers, he gave no territory, but requested Henry to grant him several castles, which the latter refused to do. "It is our fate," said one of the sons, "that none should love the rest; that is the only inheritance which will never be taken from us."

[1] After his coronation Prince Henry had the title of Henry III; but as he died before his father, he never properly became king in his own right.

It may be that that legacy of hatred was the result of Henry's unwise marriage with Eleanor, an able but perverse woman, or it may have sprung from her jealousy of "Fair Rosamond" and other favorites of the King.[1] Eventually this feeling burst out into civil war. Brother fought against brother, and Eleanor, conspiring with the King of France, turned against her husband.

[1] "Fair Rosamond" [Rosa mundi, the Rose of the world (as THEN interpreted)] was the daughter of Lord Clifford. According to tradition the King formed an attachment for this lady before his unfortunate marriage with Eleanor, and constructed a place of concealment for her in a forest in Woodstock, near Oxford. Some accounts report that Queen Eleanor discovered her rival and put her to death. She was buried in the nunnery of Godstow near by. When Henry's son John became King, he raised a monument to her memory with the inscription in Latin: "This tomb doth here enclose The world's most beauteous Rose—Rose passing sweet erewhile, Now naught but odor vile."

172. The King's Penance (1173).

The revolt against Henry's power began in Normandy (1173). While he was engaged in quelling it, he received intelligence that Earl Bigod of Norfolk[2] and the bishop of Durham, both of whom hated the King's reforms, since they curtailed their authority, had risen against him.

[2] Hugh Bigod: The Bigods were among the most prominent and also the most turbulent of the Norman barons.

Believing that this new trouble was a judgment from Heaven for Becket's murder, Henry resolved to do penance at his tomb. Leaving the Continent with two prisoners in his charge—one his son Henry's queen, the other his own—he traveled with all speed to Canterbury. There, kneeling abjectly before the grave of his former chancellor and friend, the King submitted to be beaten with rods by the priests, in expiation of his sin.

173. End of the Struggle of the Barons against the Crown.

Henry then moved against the rebels in the north (S171). Convinced of the hopelessness of holding out against his forces, they submitted. With their submission the long struggle of the barons against the Crown came to an end (SS124, 130). It had lasted nearly a hundred years (1087–1174).

The King's victory in this contest was of the greatest importance. It settled the question, once for all, that England was not, like the rest of Europe, to be managed in the interest of a body of great baronial landholders always at war with each other; but was henceforth to be governed by one central power, restrained but not overridden by that of the nobles and the Cuhrch.

174. The King again begins his Reforms (1176).

As soon as order was restored, Henry once more set about completing his legal and judicial reforms (S165). His great object was to secure a uniform system of administering justice which should be effective and impartial.

Henry I had undertaken to divide the kingdom into districts or circuits, which were assigned to a certain number of judges who traveled through them at stated times collecting the royal revenue and administering the law (SS137, 147). Henry II revised and perfected this plan.[1]

[1] This was accomplished by means of two laws called the Grand Assize and the Assize of Clarendon (not to be confounded with the Constitutions of Clarendon). The Assize of Clarendon was the first true code of national law; it was later expanded and made permanent under the name of the Assize of Northampton. (See the Constitutional Summary in the Appendix, p. vii, S8.)

In addition to the private courts which, under feudal law, the barons had set up on their estates (S150), they had in many cases got the entire control of the town and other local courts. There they dealt out such justice or injustice as they pleased. The King's judges now assumed control of these tribunals, and so brought the common law of the realm to every man's door.

175. Grand Juries.

The Norman method of settling disputed was by Trial by Battle, in which the contestants or their champions fought the matter out either with swords or cudgels (S148). There were those who objected to this club law. To them the King offered the privilege of leaving the decision of twelve knights, chosen from the neighborhood, who were supposed to know the facts. (See the Constitutional Summary in the Appendix, p. vi, S8.)

In like manner, when the judges passed through a circuit, a grand jury of not less than sixteen was to report to them the criminals of each district. These the judges forthwith sent to the Church to be examined by the Ordeal (S91). If convicted, they were punished; if not, the judges considered them to be suspicious characters, and ordered them to leave the country within eight days. In that way the rascals of that generation were summarily disposed of.

Henry II may rightfully be regarded as having taken the first step toward founding the system of Trial by Jury, which England, and England alone, fully matured. That method has since been adopted by every civilized country of the globe. (See the Constutional Summary in the Appendix, p. vii, S8.)

176. Origin of the Modern Trial by Jury, 1350.

In the reign of Henry's son John, the Church abolished the Ordeal (S91) throughout Christendom (1215). It then became the custom in England to choose a petty jury, acquainted with the facts, whoch confirmed or denied the accusations brought by the grand jury. When this petty jury could not agree, the decision of a majority was sometimes accepted.