Online Encyclopedia

Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.

CONQUEST

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 525 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
» Make a correction to this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Spread the word: del.icio.us del.icio.us it!

CONQUEST  (600-1o66) With the coming of See also:

Augustine to See also:Kent the darkness which for nearly two centuries had enwrapped the See also:history of See also:Britain begins to clear away . From the days of See also:Honorius to those of See also:Gregory the See also:Great the See also:line of See also:vision of the See also:annalists of the See also:continent was bounded by the Channel . As to what was going on beyond it, we have but a few casual gleams of See also:light, just enough to make the darkness visible, from writers such as the author of the See also:life of St Germanus, Prosper Tiro, See also:Procopius, and Gregory of See also:Tours . These notices do not, for the most See also:part, square particularly well with the fragmentary See also:British narrative that can be patched together from See also:Gildas's " lamentable See also:book," or the confused See also:story of See also:Nennius . Nor again do these British See also:sources ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN 597-$25 uOau'a1e See also:English See also:Miles ash . [0 . 50 See also:fit in happily with the English See also:annals constructed See also:long centuries after by See also:King See also:Alfred's See also:scribes in the first edition of the Anglo-Saxon See also:Chronicle . But from the date when the long-lost communication between Britain and See also:Rome was once more resumed, the history of the See also:island becomes clear and fairly continuous . The gaps are neither broader nor more obscure than those which may be found in the contemporary annals of the other kingdoms of See also:Europe . The stream of history in this See also:period is narrow and turbid throughout the See also:West . Quite as much is known of the doings of the English as of those of the Visigoths of See also:Spain, the See also:Lombards, or the later See also:Merovingians . The 7th See also:century was the darkest of all the " dark ages," and See also:England is particularly fortunate in possessing the Ecclesiastica historia of See also:Bede, which, though its author was primarily interested in things religious, yet contains a copious chronicle of things See also:secular .

No Western author, since the See also:

death of Gregory of Tours, wrote on such a See also:scale, or with such vigour and insight . English Territory in 597 Territory oonquered 597.825 See also:Celtic Territory in 825- _f+::`%L Territory partly occupied but lost again before 825 .. 111. denote. annexed to See also:Hernia N.B.- The small names Wessex & Heroic refer to 597, the large names to 825 The See also:conversion of England to See also:Christianity took, from first to last, some ninety years (A.D . S97 to 686), though during the last See also:thirty the ancestral heathenism was only lingering on convey- s;onof in remote corners of the See also:land . The See also:original missionary England impulse came from Rome, and Augustine is rightly regarded as the evangelist of the English; yet only a comparatively small part of the nation owed its Christianity directly to the See also:mission sent out by See also:Pope Gregory . Wessex was won over by an See also:independent adventurer, the See also:Frank Birinus, who had no connexion with the earlier arrivals in Kent . The great See also:kingdom of See also:Northumbria, though its first See also:Christian monarch See also:Edwin was converted by See also:Paulinus, a See also:disciple of Augustine, re-lapsed into heathenism after his death . It was finally evangelized from quite another See also:quarter, by Irish missionaries brought by King See also:Oswald from See also:Columba's monastery of See also:Iona . The See also:church that they founded struck See also:root, as that of Paulinus and Edwin had failed to do, and was not wrecked even by Oswald's dea*.n in See also:battle at the hands of See also:Penda the Mercian, the one strong See also:champion of heathenism that England produced . Moreover, Penda was no sooner dead, smitten down by Oswald's See also:brother See also:Oswio at the battle of the Winwaed (A.D . 655), than his whole kingdom eagerly accepted Christianity, and received missionaries, Irish and Northumbrian, from the victorious Oswio . It is clear that, unlike their king, the Mercians had no profound See also:enthusiasm for the old gods .

See also:

Essex, which had received its first See also:bishop from Augustine's hands but had relapsed into heathenism after a few years, also owed its ultimate conversion to a Northumbrian preacher, Cedd, whom Oswio See also:lent to King Sigeberht after the latter had visited his See also:court and been baptized, hard by the See also:Roman See also:wall, in 653 . Yet even in those English regions where the missionaries from Iona were the founders of the Church, the representatives of Rome were to be its organizers . In 664 the Northumbrian king Oswio, at the See also:synod of See also:Whitby, declared his See also:adhesion to the Roman connexion, whether it was that he saw See also:political See also:advantage therein, or whether he realized the failings and weaknesses of the Celtic church, and preferred the more orderly methods of her See also:rival . Five years later there arrived from Rome the great organizer, See also:Archbishop See also:Theodore of See also:Tarsus, who See also:bound the hitherto isolated churches of the English kingdoms into a well-compacted whole, wherein the tribal bishops paid obedience to the See also:metropolitan at See also:Canterbury, and met him frequently in See also:national See also:councils and synods . England gained a spiritual unity long ere she attained a political unity, for in these meetings, which were often attended by See also:kings as well as by prelates, Northumbrian, West Saxon and Mercian first learnt to See also:work together as See also:brothers . In a few years the English church became the See also:pride of Western Christendom . Not merely did it produce the great See also:band of missionaries who converted See also:heathen See also:Germany—Willi- The h brord, Suidbert, See also:Boniface and the See also:rest—but it excelled churc& the other national churches in learning and culture . It is but necessary to mention Bede and See also:Alcuin . The first, as has been already said, was the one true historian who wrote during the dark See also:time of the 7th-8th centuries; the second became the pride of the court of See also:Charles the Great for his unrivalled scholarship . At the coming of Augustine England had been a barbarous See also:country; a century and a See also:half later she was more than abreast of the See also:civilization of the rest of Europe . But the progress toward national unity was still a slow one . The period when the English kingdoms began to enter into the See also:commonwealth of Christendom, by receiving the missionaries sent out from Rome or from Iona, practically coincides with the period in which the occupation of central Britain was completed, and the kingdoms of the conquerors assumed their final See also:size and shape .

'Ethel-See also:

frith, the last heathen among the Northumbrian kings, cut off the Britons of the See also:North from those of the West, by winning the battle of See also:Chester (A.D . 613), and occupying the land about the mouths of the See also:Mersey and the See also:Dee . Cenwalh, the last monarch who ascended the See also:throne of Wessex unbaptized, carried the boundaries of that kingdom into See also:Mid-See also:Somersetshire, where they halted for a long space . Penda, the last heathen king of See also:Mercia,determined the size and strength of that See also:state, by absorbing into it the territories of the other Anglian kingdoms of the Midlands, and probably also by carrying forward its western border beyond the See also:Severn . By the time when the smallest and most barbarous of the Saxon states—See also:Sussex—accepted Christianity in the See also:year 686, the political See also:geography of England had reached a See also:stage from which it was not to vary in any marked degree for some 200 years . Indeed, there was nothing accomplished in the way of further encroachment on the See also:Celt after 686, See also:save See also:Ine's and Cuthred's See also:extension of Wessex into the valleys of the See also:Tone and the Exe, and See also:Offa's slight expansion of the Mercian frontier beyond the Severn, marked by his famous dyke . The conquests of the Northumbrian kings in Cumbria were ephemeral; what Oswio won was lost after the death of See also:Ecgfrith . That the conversion of the English to Christianity had any-thing to do with their slackening from the work of conquest it would be wrong to assert . Though their See also:wars with the Welsh were not conducted with such ferocious See also:cruelty as of old, and though (as the See also:laws of Ine show) the Celtic inhabitants of newly-won districts were no longer exterminated, but received as the king's subjects, yet the hatred between Welsh and English did not cease because both were now Christians . The westward advance of the invaders would have continued, if only there had remained to attract them lands as desirable as those they had already won . But the mountains of See also:Wales and the See also:moors of See also:Cornwall and Cumbria did not greatly tempt the settler . More-over, the English states, which had seldom turned their swords against each other in the 5th or the 6th centuries, were engaged during the 7th and the 8th in those endless struggles for supremacy which seem so purposeless, because the See also:hegemony which a king of See also:energy and See also:genius won for his kingdom always disappeared with his death .

The " Bretwaldaship," as The „Bret. the English seem to have called it, was the most waldas.” ephemeral of dignities . This was but natural: See also:

con- quest can only be enforced by the extermination of the conquered, or by their consent to amalgamate with the conquerors, or by the garrisoning of the land that has been subdued by settlers or by military posts . None of these courses were possible to a king of the 7th or 8th centuries: even in their heathen days the English were not wont to See also:massacre their beaten kinsmen as they massacred the unfortunate Celt . After their conversion to Christianity the See also:idea of exterminating other English tribes See also:grew even more impossible . On the other See also:hand, See also:local particularism was so strong that the conquered would not, at first, consent to give up their natural See also:independence and See also:merge themselves in the victors . Such amalgamations became possible after a time, when many of the local royal lines died out, and unifying influences, of which a See also:common Christianity was the most powerful, sapped the strength of tribal pride . But it is not till the 9th century that we find this phenomenon growing See also:general . A kingdom like Kent or See also:East Anglia, even after long subjection to a powerful overlord, See also:rose and reasserted its independence immediately on See also:hearing of his death . His successor had to See also:attempt a new conquest, if he See also:felt himself strong enough . To See also:garrison a See also:district that had been overrun was impossible: the military force of an English king consisted of his military See also:house-hold of gesiths, backed by the general See also:levy of the tribe . The strength of Mercia or Northumbria might be mustered for a single battle, but could not See also:supply a See also:standing See also:army to hold down the vanquished . The victorious king had to be content with See also:tribute and obedience, which would cease when he died, or was beaten by a competitor for the position of See also:Bretwalda .

In the ceaseless strife between the old English kingdoms, therefore, it was the See also:

personality of the king which was the See also:main See also:factor in determining the hegemony of one state over another . If in the 7th century the successive great ofNer- acy Northumbrians—Edwin, Oswald, Oswio and Ecgfrith thumbria . —were reckoned the See also:chief monarchs of England, and exercised a widespread See also:influence over the See also:southern realms, yet each had to win his supremacy by his own See also:sword; and when Edwin and Oswald See also:fell before the See also:savage heathen Penda, and Ecgfrith was cut off by the Picts, there was a See also:gap of anarchy Formation of the kingdoms . before another king asserted his See also:superior See also:power . The same phenomenon was seen with regard to the Mercian kings of the 8th century; the long reigns of the two conquerors ./See also:Ethelbald and Offa covered eighty years (716-796), and it might have been supposed that after such a See also:term of supremacy Mercia would have remained permanently at the See also:head of the English kingdoms . It was not so, iEthelbald in his old See also:age lost his hegemony at the battle of See also:Burford (752), and was murdered a few years after by his own See also:people . Off a had to win back by long wars what his kinsman had lost; he became so powerful that we find the pope calling him Rex Anglorum, as if he were the only king in the island . He annexed Kent and East Anglia, overawed Northumbria and Wessex, both hopelessly See also:faction-ridden at the time, was treated almost as an equal by the See also:emperor Charles the Great, and died still at the height of his power . Yet the moment that he was dead all his vassals revolted; his successors could never recover all that was lost . Kent once more became a kingdom, and two successive Mercian sovereigns, Beornwulf and Ludica, fell in battle while vainly trying to recover Offa's supremacy over East Anglia and Wessex . The ablest king in England in the See also:generation that followed Off a was See also:Ecgbert of Wessex, who had long been an See also:exile abroad, and served for thirteen years as one of the captains of suprem- Charles the Great . He See also:beat Beornwulf of Mercia at acy of Wessex .

Ellandune (A.D . 823), permanently annexed Kent, to whose See also:

crown he had a claim by descent, in 829 received the See also:homage of all the other English kings, and was for the See also:remainder of his life reckoned as " Bretwalda." But it is wrong to See also:call him, as some have done, " the first monarch of all England." His power was no greater than that of Oswio or Offa had been, and the supremacy might perhaps have tarried with Wessex no longer than it had tarried with Northumbria or Mercia if it had not chanced that the Danish raids were now beginning, For these 'invasions, paradoxical as it may seem, were the greatest efficient cause in the See also:welding together of England . They seemed about to rend the land in See also:twain, but they really cured the English of their desperate particularism, and drove all the tribes to take as their common rulers the one great line of native kings which survived the Danish See also:storm, and maintained itself for four generations cf desperate fighting against the invaders . On the continent the main effect of the See also:viking invasions was to dash the See also:empire of Charles the Great into fragments, and to aid in producing the numberless See also:petty states of feudal Europe . In this island they did much to help the transformation of. the See also:mere Bretwaldaship of Ecgbert into the See also:monarchy of all England . Already ere Ecgbert ascended the throne of Kent the new enemy had made his first tentative See also:appearance on the British See also:shore . It was in the reign of Beorhtric, Ecgbert's predecessor, that the pirates of the famous " three See also:ships from Heretheland " had appeared on the See also:coast of See also:Dorset, and slain the See also:sheriff " who would See also:fain have known what manner of men they might be." A few years later another band appeared, rising unexpectedly from the See also:sea to See also:sack the famous Northumbrian monastery of Lindisfarne (793) . After that their visits came fast and furious on the shore-line of every English kingdom, and by the end of Ecgbert's reign it was they, and not his former Welsh and Mercian enemies, who were the old monarch's main source of trouble . But he brought his Bretwaldaship to a See also:good end by inflicting a crushing defeat on them at Hingston Down, hard by the Tamar, probably in 836, and died ere the year was out, leaving the ever-growing problem to his son AEthelwulf The cause of the sudden outpouring of the Scandinavian See also:deluge upon the lands of Christendom at this particular date is one of the puzzles of history . So far as memory ran, influence the peoples beyond the North Sea had been seafaring of viking sea powwer. races addicted to piracy . Even See also:Tacitus mentions sea=p their fleets . Yet since the 5th century they had been restricting their operations to their own shores, and are barely heard of in the See also:chronicles of their southern neighbours .

It seems most probable that the actual cause of their sudden activitywas the conquest of the See also:

Saxons by Charles the Great, and his subsequent advance into the See also:peninsula of See also:Denmark . The emperor seemed to be threatening the independence of the North, and in terror and resentment the Scandinavian peoples turned first to strike at the encroaching Frank, and soon after to assail the other Christian kingdoms which See also:lay behind, or on the flank of, the Empire . But their offensive See also:action proved so successful and so profitable that, after a See also:short time, the whole manhood of Denmark and See also:Norway took to the pirate life . Never since history first began to be recorded was there such a supreme example of the potentialities of sea-power . Civilized Europe had been caught at a moment when it was completely destitute of a See also:war-See also:navy; the See also:Franks had never been maritime in their tastes, the English seemed to have forgotten their See also:ancient sea-faring habits . Though their ancestors had been pirates as fierce as the vikings of the 9th century, and though some of their later kings had led See also:naval armaments—Edwin had annexed for a moment See also:Man and .Anglesea, and Ecgfrith had cruelly ravaged part of See also:Ireland—yet by the year Boo they appear to have ceased to be a seafaring See also:race . Perhaps the long predominance of Mercia, an essentially inland state, had something to do with the fact . At any See also:rate England was as helpless as the Empire when first the Danish and See also:Norwegian galleys began to See also:cross the North Sea, and to beat down both sides of Britain seeking for See also:prey . The number of the invaders was not at first very great; their fleets were not national armaments gathered by great kings, but squadrons of a few vessels collected by some active and enterprising adventurer . Their original See also:tactics were merely to land suddenly near some thriving seaport, or See also:rich monastery, to sack it, and to take to the See also:water again before the local See also:militia could turn out in force against them . But such raids proved so profitable that the vikings soon began to take greater things in hand; they began to ally themselves in confederacies: two, six or a dozen " sea-kings" would join their forces for something more than a desultory See also:raid . With fifty or a See also:hundred ships they would fall upon some unhappy region, harry it for many miles inland, and offer battle to the landsfolk unless the latter came out in overpowering force .

And as their crews were trained warriors chosen for their high spirit, contending with a raw militia fresh from the plough, they were generally successful . If the odds' were too great they could always retire to their ships, put to sea, and resume their predatory operations on some other coast three hundred miles away . As long as their enemies were unprovided with a navy they were safe from pursuit and annihilation . The only See also:

chance against them was that, if caught too far from the See also:base-fort where they had run their galleys ashore, they might find their communication with the sea cut off, and be forced to fight for their lives surrounded by an infuriated countryside . But in the earlier years of their struggles with Christendom the vikings seldom suffered a See also:complete disaster; they were often beaten but seldom annihilated . Ere long they grew so bold that they would stay ashore for months, braving the forces of a whole kingdom, and sheltering themselves in great palisaded camps on peninsulas or islands when the enemy pressed them too hard . On well-guarded strongholds like See also:Thanet or See also:Sheppey in England, See also:Noirmoutier at the See also:Loire mouth, or the Isle of Walcheren, they defied the local magnates to evict them . Finally they took to wintering on the coast of England or the Empire, a preliminary to actual See also:settlement and conquest . (See VIKING.) King Ecgbert died long ere the invaders had reached this stage of insolence . IEthelwulf, his weak and kindly son, would undoubtedly have lost the titular supremacy of Wessex over the other English kingdoms if there had been in ofnan progress$ ish Mercia or Northumbria a strong king with leisure to conquest. concentrate his thoughts on domestic wars . But the vikings were now showering such blows on the See also:northern states that their unhappy monarchs could think of nothing but self-See also:defence . They slew Redulf—king of Northumbria—in 844, took See also:London in 851, despite all the efforts of See also:Burgred of Mercia, and forced that See also:sovereign to make repeated appeals for help to IEthelwulf as his overlord .

For though Wessex had its full See also:

share of Danish attacks it met them with a vigour that was not seen in Suprem- acy of Mercia . Danish invasions . the other realms . The defence was often, if not always, successful; and once at least (at AcIea in 851) ,See also:Ethelwulf exterminated a whole Danish army with " the greatest slaughter among the heathen See also:host that had been heard of down to that See also:day," as the Anglo-Saxon chronicler is careful to See also:record . But though he might See also:ward off blows from his own See also:realm, he was helpless to aid Mercia or East Anglia, and still more the distant Northumbria . It was not, however, till after sEthelwulf's death that the attack of the vikings See also:developed its full strength . The fifteen years (856-871) that were covered by the reigns of his three shortlived sons, ,Ethelbald, /Ethelbert and 'See also:Ethelred, were the most miserable that England was to see . Assembling in greater and ever greater confederacies, the Danes fell upon the northern kingdoms, no longer merely to harry but to conquer and occupy them . A See also:league of many sea-kings which called itself the " great army " slew the last two sovereigns of Northumbria and stormed See also:York in 867 . Some of the victors settled down there to See also:lord it over the half-exterminated English See also:population . The rest continued their advance southward . East Anglia was conquered in 87o; its last king, See also:Edmund, having been defeated and taken prisoner, the vikings shot him to death with arrows because he would not See also:worship their gods .

His realm was annexed and partly settled by the conquerors . The See also:

fate of Mercia was hardly better: its king, Burgred, by See also:constant See also:payment of tribute, bought off the invaders for a space, but the eastern half of his realm was reduced to a See also:wilderness . Practically masters of all that lay north of See also:Thames, the " great army " next moved against Wessex, the only quarter where a vigorous resistance was still maintained against them, though its See also:capital, See also:Winchester, had been sacked in 864 . Under two kings named Halfdan and Bacsceg, and six earls, they seized See also:Reading and began to harry See also:Berkshire, See also:Surrey and See also:Hampshire . King ,Ethelred, the third son of ,Ethelwulf, came out against them, with his See also:young brother Alfred and all the levies of Wessex . In the year 871 these two gallant kinsmen fought no less than six pitched battles against the invaders . Some were victories—notably the fight of Ashdown, where Alfred first won his name as a soldier—but the English failed to See also:capture the fortified camps of the vikings at Reading, and were finally beaten at See also:Marten (" Maeretun ") near Bedwyn, where ,Ethelred was mortally wounded . He See also:left young sons, but the men of Wessex crowned Alfred king, because they needed a grown man to See also:lead them in their Alfred the desperate campaigning . Yet his reign opened in-See also:Drew. auspiciously: defeated near See also:Wilton, he offered in despair to pay the vikings to depart . He must have known, from the experience of Mercian, Northumbrian and Frankish kings, that such See also:blackmail only bought a short See also:respite, but the See also:condition of his realm was such that even a moderate time for reorganization might prove valuable . The enemy had suffered so much in the " year of the six battles " that they held off for some space from Wessex, seeking easier prey on the continent and in northern England . In 874 they harried Mercia so cruelly that King Burgred fled in despair to Rome; the victors divided up his realm, taking the eastern half for themselves, and establishing in it a confederacy, whose jarls occupied the " five boroughs " of See also:Stamford, See also:Lincoln, See also:Derby, See also:Nottingham and See also:Leicester .

But the western half they handed over to " an unwise See also:

thegn named Ceolwulf," who bought for a short space the See also:precarious See also:title of king by paying great tribute . Alfred employed the four years of See also:peace, which he had bought in 871, in the endeavour to strengthen his realm against the inevitable return of the raiders . His See also:wisdom was shown by the fact that he concentrated his See also:attention on the one See also:device which must evidently prove effective for defence, if only he were given time to perfect it—the See also:building of a national navy . He began to lay down galleys and " long ships," and hired " pirates "—renegade vikings no doubt—to See also:train crews for him and to See also:teach his men See also:seamanship . The See also:scheme, however, was only partly completed when in 876 three Danish kings entered Wessex and resumed the war . But Alfred blockaded them first in See also:Wareham and then in See also:Exeter . The See also:fleet which was coming to carry themoff, or to bring them reinforcements, fought an indecisive engagement with the English ships, and was wrecked immediately after on the cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck, where more than See also:loo galleys and all their crews perished . On hearing of this disaster the vikings in Exeter surrendered the See also:place on being granted a See also:free departure . Yet within a few months of this successful See also:campaign Alfred was attacked at midwinter by the main Danish army under King See also:Guthrum . He was apparently, taken by surprise by an See also:assault at such an unusual time of the year, and was forced to See also:escape with his military See also:household to the isle of See also:Athelney among the marshes of the Parrett . The invaders harried See also:Wiltshire and Hampshire at their leisure, and vainly thought that Wessex was at last subdued . But with the See also:spring the English rallied: a Danish force was cut to pieces before See also:Easter by the men of See also:Devonshire .

A few See also:

weeks later Alfred had issued from Athelney, had collected a large army in Selwood, and went out to meet the enemy in the open See also:field . He beat them at Edington in Wiltshire, blockaded them in their great See also:camp at See also:Chippenham, and in fourteen days starved them into surrender . The terms were that they should give hostages, that they should depart for ever from Wessex, and that their king Guthrum should do homage to Alfred as overlord, and submit to be baptized, with thirty of his chiefs, Not only were all these conditions punctually fulfilled, but (what is more astonishing) the Danes had been so thoroughly cured of any See also:desire to try their See also:luck against the great king that they left him practically unmolested for fourteen years (878-892) . King Guthrum settled down as a Christian sovereign in East Anglia, with the bulk of the host that had capitulated at Chippenham . Of the rest of the invaders one See also:section established a petty kingdom in See also:Yorkshire, but those in the Midlands were subject to no common sovereign but lived in a loose confederacy under the jarls of the " Five Boroughs " already named above . The boundary between English and Danes established by the peace of 878 is not perfectly ascertainable, but a document of Boundary between Alfred & Guth run, after 88&--,-._ a+++ Under English See also:rule, ... Under Danish & See also:Morse Under Celtic rule..—.- M The See also:floe Boroughs emu . Walk. a& a few years later, called " Alfred and Guthrum's frith," gives the border as lying from Thames northward up the See also:Lea to its source, then across to See also:Bedford, and then along the See also:Ouse to Watling See also:Street, the old Roman road from London to Chester . This gave King Alfred London and See also:Middlesex, most of See also:Hertford-See also:shire and See also:Bedfordshire, and the larger half of Mercia—lands that had never before been an integral part of Wessex, though they had some time been tributary to her kings . They were now taken inside the realm and governed by the ealdorman }Ethelred, the king's son-in-See also:law . The Mercians gladly mingled with the West Saxons, and abandoned all memories of ancient independence . Twenty years of schooling under the hand of the Dane had taught them to forget old particularism .

Alfred's enlarged kingdom was far more powerful than any one of the three new Danish states which lay beyond the Lea and Watling Street: it was to be seen, ere another generation was out, that it was stronger than all three together . But Alfred was not to see the happy day when York and Lincoln, See also:

Colchester and Leicester, were to become mere shire-capitals in the realm of See also:United England . The fourteen years of See also:comparative peace which he now enjoyed were devoted to perfecting the military organization of his enlarged kingdom . His fleet was reconstructed: Alfred's in 882 he went out with it in See also:person and destroyed a reforms . small piratical See also:squadron: in 885 we hear of it See also:coasting all along Danish East Anglia . But his navy was not yet strong enough to hold off all raids: it was not till the very end of his reign that he perfected it by building " long ships that were nigh twice as large as those of the heathen; some had 6o oars, some more; and they were both steadier and swifter and lighter than the others, and were shaped neither after the Frisian nor after the Danish See also:fashion, but as it seemed to himself that they would be most handy." This great war fleet he left as a See also:legacy to his son, but he himself in his later See also:campaigns had only its first beginnings at his disposal . His military reforms were no less important . Warned by the failures of the English against Danish entrenched 'camps, he introduced the long-neglected See also:art of fortification, and built many " burhs " —stockaded fortresses on mounds by the waterside—wherein dwelt permanent garrisons of military settlers . It would seem that the See also:system by which he maintained them was that he assigned to each a region of which the inhabitants were responsible for its See also:manning and its sustentation . The land-owners had either to build a house within it for their own inhabiting, or to provide that a competent substitute dwelt there to represent them . These " burh-See also:ware," or garrison-men, are repeatedly mentioned in Alfred's later years . The old national levy of the " See also:fyrd " was made somewhat more serviceable by an See also:ordinance which divided it into two halves, one of which must take the field when the other was dismissed .

But it would seem that the king paid even more attention to another military reform—the increase of the number of the professional fighting class, the thegnhood as it was now called . All the wealthier men, both in the countryside and in the towns, were required to take up the duties as well as the privileges of membership of the military household of the king . They became " of thegnright worthy " by receiving, really or nominally, a place in the royal See also:

hall, with the See also:obligation to take the field whenever their See also:master raised his banner . The document which defines their duties and privileges sets forth that " every ceorl who throve so that he had fully five hides of land, and a helm, and a See also:mail-See also:shirt, and a sword ornamented with See also:gold, was to be reckoned gesithcund." A second draft allowed the man who had the military equipment complete, but not fully the five hides of land, to slip into the See also:list, and also " the See also:merchant who has fared thrice over the high seas at his own expense." How far the details of the scheme are Alfred's own, how far they were developed by his son See also:Edward the See also:Elder, it is unfortunately impossible to say . But there is small doubt that the system was working to some extent in the later wars of the great king, and that his successes were largely due to the fact that his army contained a larger See also:nucleus of fully armed warriors than those of his predecessors . Military reforms were only one section of the work of King Alfred during the central years of his reign . It was then that he set afoot his numerous schemes for the restoration of the learning and culture of England which had sunk so See also:low during the long years of disaster which had preceded his See also:accession . How he gathered. scholars from the continent, Wales and Ireland; how he collected the old heroic poems of the nation, how he himself translated books from the Latin See also:tongue, started See also:schools, and set his scribes to write up the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is told else-where, as are his See also:mechanical inventions, his buildings, and his dealings with missionaries and explorers (see ALFRED) . The test of the efficiency of his work was that it held See also:firm when, in his later years, the Danish storm once more began to beat against the shores of Wessex . In the years 892-896 Alfred was assailed from many sides at once by viking fleets, of which the most important was that led by the great freebooter Hasting . Moreover, the settled Danes of eastern England See also:broke their oaths and gave the invaders assistance . Yet the king held his own, with perfect success if not with ease .

The enemy was checked, beaten off, followed up rapidly whenever he changed his base of operation, and hunted repeatedly all across England . The campaigning ranged from Appledore in Kent to Exeter, from Chester to See also:

Shoeburyness; but wherever the invaders transferred themselves, either the king, or his son Edward, or his son-in-law Ethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia, was promptly at hand with a competent army . The camps of the Danes were stormed, their fleet was destroyed in the See also:river Lea in 895, and at last the remnant broke up and dispersed, some to seek easier See also:plunder in See also:France, others to See also:settle down among their kinsmen in Northumbria or East Anglia . Alfred survived for four years after his final See also:triumph in 896, to complete the organization of his fleet and to repair the See also:damages done by the last four years of constant fighting . He died on the 26th of See also:October 900, leaving Wessex well armed for the continuance of the struggle, and the inhabitants of the " See also:Danelagh much broken in spirit . They saw that it would never be in their power to subdue all England . Within a few years they were to realize that it was more probable that the English kings would subdue them . The house of Wessex continued to supply a race of hard-fighting and capable monarchs, who went on with Alfred's work . His son, Edward the Elder, and his three grandsons, IEthelstan, Edmund and See also:Edred, devoted themselves BatBeEmewara for fifty-five years (A.D . 900-955) to the task of con- quering n the Danelagh, and ended by making England into a single unified kingdom, not by admitting the conquered to homage and tribute, in the old See also:style of the 7th century, but by their complete absorption . The See also:process was not so hard as might be thought; when once the Danes had settled down, had brought over wives from their native land or taken them from among their English vassals, had built themselves See also:farm-steads and accumulated flocks and herds, they lost their old advantage in contending with the English . Their strength had been their mobility and their undisputed command of the sea .

But now they had possessions of their own to defend, and could not raid at large in Wessex or Mercia without exposing their homes to similar molestation . Moreover, the fleet which Alfred had built, and which his successors kept up, disputed their mastery of the sea, and ended by achieving a clear superiority over them . Unity of See also:

plan and unity of command was also on the See also:side of the English . The inhabitants of the three sections of the Danelagh were at best leagued in a many-headed confederacy . Their opponents were led by kings whose orders were punctually obeyed from See also:Shrewsbury to See also:Dover and from London to Exeter . It must also be remembered that in the greater part of the land which they possessed the Danes were but a small minority of the population . After their first fury was spent they no longer exterminated the conquered, but had been content to make the Mercians and Deirans their subjects, to take the best of the land, and exact tribute for the rest . Only in See also:Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire and parts of See also:Nottinghamshire and See also:Leicestershire do they seem.to have settled thickly and formed a preponderating See also:element in the countryside . In the rest of the Midlands and in East Anglia they were only a governing See also:oligarchy of scanty See also:numbers . Everywhere there was an English See also:lower class which welcomed the See also:advent of the conquering kings of Wessex and the fall of the Danish jarls . Edward the Elder spent twenty-five laborious years first in repelling and repaying Danish raids, then in setting to work to subdue the raiders . He worked forward into the Danelagh, building burhs as he advanced, to hold down each district that he won .

He was helped by his brother-in-law, the Mercian ealdorman "Ethelred, and, after the death of that See also:

magnate, by his warlike See also:sister "Ethelflxd, the ealdorman's widow, who was continued in her See also:husband's place . While Edward, with London as his base, pushed forward into the eastern counties, his sister, starting from See also:Warwick and See also:Stafford, encroached on the Danelagh along the line of the See also:Trent . The last Danish king of East Anglia was slain in battle in 918, and his realm annexed . 'Ethel- won Derby and Leicester, while her brother reduced Stamford and Nottingham . Finally, in 921, not only was the whole land See also:south of. the See also:Humber subdued, but the Yorkshire Danes, the Welsh, and even—it is said—the remote Scots of the North, did homage to Edward and became his men . In 925 Edward was succeeded by his eldest, son 1Ethelstan, who completed the reduction of the Danelagh by See also:driving out Guthfrith, the Danish king of York, and annexing his realm . But this first conquest of the region beyond Humber had to be repeated over and over again; time after time the Danes rebelled and proclaimed a new king, aided sometimes by bands of their kinsmen from Ireland or Norway, sometimes by the Scots and See also:Strathclyde Welsh . "Ethelstan's greatest and best-remembered achievement was his decisive victory in 937 at Brunanburh—an unknown spot, probably by the Solway See also:Firth or the Ribble over a great confederacy of See also:rebel Danes of Yorkshire, Irish Danes from See also:Dublin, the Scottish king, See also:Constantine, and See also:Eugenius, king of Strathclyde . Yet even after such a triumph "Ethelstan had to set up a Danish under-king in Yorkshire, apparently despairing of holding it down as a shire governed by a mere ealdorman . But its over-lordship he never lost, and since he also maintained the supremacy which his See also:father had won over the Welsh and Scots, it was not without See also:reason that he called himself on his coins and in his charters Rex totius Britanniae . Occasionally he even used the title Basileus, as if he claimed a quasi-imperial position . The trampling out of the last embers of Danish particularism in the North was reserved for "Ethelstan's brothers and suc- cessors, Edmund and Edred (940-955), who put down Edmund: several risings of the Yorkshiremen, one of which was Edred .

aided by a See also:

rebellion of the Midland Danes of the Five Boroughs . But the untiring perseverance of the house of Alfred was at last rewarded by success . After the See also:expulsion of the last rebel king of York, See also:Eric Haraldson, by Edred in 948, we cease to hear of trouble in the North . When next there was rebellion in that quarter it was in favour of a Wessex See also:prince, not of a Danish adventurer, and had no sinister national significance . The descendants of the vikings were easily incorporated in the English race, all the more so because of the See also:wise policy of the conquering kings, who readily employed and often promoted to high station men of Danish descent who showed themselves loyal—and this not only in the secular but in spiritual offices . In 942 Oda, a full-blooded Dane, was made archbishop of Canter-See also:bury . The Danelagh became a See also:group of earldoms, ruled by officials who were as often of Danish as of English descent . It is notable that when, after Edred's death, there was See also:civil strife, owing to the See also:quarrel of his See also:nephew See also:Edwy with some of his kinsmen, ministers and bishops, the rebels, who included the See also:majority of the Mercians and Northumbrians, set up as their pretender to the throne not a Dane but Edwy's younger brother See also:Edgar, who ruled for a short time north of Thames, and became See also:sole monarch on the death of his unfortunate kinsman . The reign of Edgar (959-975) saw the See also:culmination of the power of the house of Alfred . It was untroubled by rebellionor by See also:foreign invasions, so that the king won the See also:honourable title of Rex Pacificus . The See also:minor sovereigns of Britain owned him as overlord, as they had owned his grandfather Edgar . Edward and his See also:uncle "Ethelstan .

It was long remembered " how all the kings of this island, both the Welsh and the Scots, eight kings, came to him once upon a time on one day and all bowed to his governance." The eight were See also:

Kenneth of See also:Scotland, See also:Malcolm of Strathclyde, Maccus of Man, and five Welsh kings . There is See also:fair authority for the well-known See also:legend that, after this See also:meeting at Chester, he was rowed in his See also:barge down the Dee by these potentates, such a See also:crew as never was seen before or after, and afterwards exclaimed that those who followed him might now truly boast that they were kings of all Britain . Edgar's chief counsellor was the famous archbishop See also:Dunstan, to whom no small part of the See also:glory of his reign has been ascribed . This great See also:prelate was an ecclesiastical reformer—a See also:leader in a See also:movement for the general See also:purification of morals, and especially for the repressing of See also:simony and evil-living among the See also:clergy—a great builder of churches, and a stringent enforcer of the rules of the monastic life . But he was also a busy statesman; he probably had a share in the considerable See also:body of legislation which was enacted in Edgar's reign, and is said to have encouraged him in his policy of treating Dane and Englishman with exact equality, and of investing the one no less than the other with the highest offices in church and state . Edgar's life was too short for the welfare of his people—he was only in his thirty-third year when he died in 975, and his sons were young boys . The hand of a strong man was still needed to keep the peace in the newly-constituted realm of all England, and the evils of a minority were not long in showing themselves . One section of the magnates had See also:possession of the thirteen-yearold king Edward, and used his name to See also:cover their ambitions . The other was led by his step-See also:mother iElfthryth, who was set on pushing the claims of her son, the See also:child "Ethelred . After much factious strife, and many stormy meetings of the See also:Witan, Edward was murdered at Carle in 978 by some thegns of the party of the See also:queen-See also:dowager . The See also:crime provoked universal indignation, but since there was no other prince of the house of Alfred avail-able, the magnates were forced to place "Ethelred on the throne: he was only in his See also:eleventh year, and was at least personally See also:innocent of complicity in his brother's death . With the accession of "Ethelred, the " Redeless," as he was afterwards called from his inability to discern good counsel from evil, and the consistent incapacity of his policy, an evil time began .

The retirement from public life of Edgar's old See also:

minister Dunstan was the first event of the new reign, and no man of capacity came forward to take his place . The factions which had prevailed during the reign of Edward " the See also:Martyr " seem to have continued to rage during his brother's minority, yet'Ethelred's earliest years were his least disastrous . It was hoped that when he came to See also:roan's See also:estate things would improve, but the See also:reverse was the See also:case . The first See also:personal action recorded of him is an unjust harrying of the goods of his own subjects, when he besieged See also:Rochester because he had quarrelled with its bishop over certain lands, and was bribed to depart with Too pounds of See also:silver . Yet from 978 to 991 no irreparable harm came to England; the machinery for See also:government and defence which his ancestors had established seemed fairly competent to defend the realm even under a wayward and incapable king . Two or three small descents o; vikings are recorded, but the ravaging was purely local, and the invader soon departed . No trouble occurred in the Danelagh, where the old tendency of the inhabitants to take sides with their See also:pagan kinsmen from over the sea appears to have completely vanished . But the vikings had apparently learnt by small experiments that England was no longer Danis!' guarded as she had been in the days of Alfred or invasions . "Ethelstan, and in 991 the first serious invasion of .Ethelred's reign took place . A large fleet came ashore in Essex, and, after a hard fight with the ealdorman Brihtnoth at See also:Maldon, slew him and began to ravage the district north of the Thames . .E.thelstan . ,Ethelred the Unready .

Instead of making a desperate attempt to drive them off, the king bribed them to depart with zo,000 pounds of silver, accepting it is said this cowardly See also:

advice from archbishop Sigeric . The fatal precedent soon See also:bore See also:fruit: the invaders came back in larger numbers, headed by See also:Olaf Tryggveson, the celebrated adventurer who afterwards made himself king of Norway, and who was already a pretender to its throne . He was helped by Sweyn, king of Denmark, and the two together laid See also:siege to London in 994, but were beaten off by the citizens . Nevertheless 'Ethelred for a second time stooped to pay tribute, and bought the departure of Dane and Norwegian with 16,000 pounds of silver . There was a precarious See also:interval of peace for three years after, but in 997 began a See also:series of invasions led by Sweyn which lasted for seventeen years, and at last ended in the complete subjection of England and the See also:flight of 'Ethelred to See also:Normandy . It should be noted that the invader during this period was no mere adventurer, but king of all Denmark, and, after Olaf Tryggveson's death in moo, king of Norway also . His power was something far greater than that,of the Guthrums and Anlafs of an earlier generation, and—in the end of his life at least—he was aiming at political conquest, and not either at mere plunder or at finding new settlements for his followers . But if the strength of the invader was greater than that of his predecessors, 'Ethelred also was far better equipped for war than his ancestors of the 9th century . He owned, and he some-times used—but always to little profit—a large fleet, while all England instead of the mere realm of Wessex was at his back . Any one of the great princes of the house of Egbert who had reigned from 871 to 975, would have fought a winning fight with such resources, and it took nearly twenty years of /Ethelred's tried incapacity to lose the See also:game . He did, however, succeed in undoing all the work of his ancestors; partly by his own slackness and See also:sloth, partly by his choice of corrupt and treacherous ministers . For the two ealdormen whom he delighted to See also:honour and placed at the head of his armies, 'Elfric and Eadric Streona, are accused, the one of persistent cowardice, the other of underhand intrigue with the Danes .

Some of the local magnates made a desperate defence of their own regions, especially Ulfkytel of East Anglia, a Dane by descent; but the central government was at See also:

fault. lEthelred's army was always at the wrong place—" if the enemy were east then was the fyrd held west, and if they were north then was our force held south." When 'Ethelred did appear it was more often to pay a bribe to the invaders than to fight . Indeed the See also:Danegeld, the tax which he raised to furnish tribute to the invaders, became a See also:regular institution: on six occasions at least 'Ethelred bought a few months of peace by sums ranging from io,000 to 48,000 pounds of silver . At last in the See also:winter of r0r3-1014, more as it would seem from sheer disgust at their king's cowardice and incompetence than Canwte. because further resistance was impossible, the English gave up the struggle and acknowledged Sweyn as king . First Northumbria, then Wessex, then London yielded, and 'Ethelred was forced to See also:fly over seas to See also:Richard, See also:duke of Nor. mandy, whose sister he had married as his second wife . But Sweyn survived his triumph little over a See also:month; he died suddenly at See also:Gainsborough on the 3rd of See also:February 1014 . The Danes hailed his son Canute, a lad of eighteen, as king, but many of the English, though they had submitted to a hard-handed conqueror like Sweyn, were not prepared to be handed over like slaves to his untried successor . There was a general rising, the old king was brought over from Normandy, and Canute was driven out for a moment by force of arms . He returned next year with a greater army to hear soon after of 'Ethelred's death (ror6) . The witan See also:chose Edmund " Ironside," the See also:late king's eldest son, to succeed him, and as he was a hard-fighting prince of that normal type of his house to which his father had been such a disgraceful exception, it seemed probable that the Danes might be beaten off . But :Ethelred's favourite Eadric Streona adhered to Canute, fearing to lose the See also:office and power that he had. enjoyed for so long under 'Ethelred, and prevailed on the magnates of part of Wessex and Mercia to follow his example . For a moment the HISTORY [994--1o18 curious phenomenon was seen of Canute reigning in Wessex, while Edmund was making head against him with the aid of the Anglo-Danes of the " Five Boroughs and Northumbria . There followed a year of desperate struggle: the two young kings fought five pitched battles, See also:fortune seemed to favour Edmund, and the traitor Eadric submitted to him with all Wessex .

But the last engagement, at Assandun (Ashingdon) in Essex went against the English, mainly because Eadric again betrayed the national catise and deserted to the enemy . Edmund was so hard See also:

hit by this last disaster that he offered to See also:divide the realm with Canute; they met on the isle of Alney near See also:Gloucester, and agreed that the son of }Ethelred should keep Wessex and all the South, London and East Anglia, while the Dane should have Northumbria, the five boroughs " and Eadric's Mercian earldom . But ere the year was out Edmund died: secretly murdered, according to some authorities, by the infamous Eadrie . The witan of Wessex made no attempt to set on the throne either one of the younger sons of 'Ethelred by his See also:Norman wife, or the See also:infant See also:heir of Edmund, but chose Canute as king, preferring to reunite England by submission to the stranger rather than to continue the disastrous war . They were wise in so doing, though their See also:motive may have been despair rather than long-sighted policy . Canute became more of an Englishman than a Dane: he spent more of his time in his island realm than in his native Denmark . He paid off and sent See also:home the great army with whose aid he had won the English crown, retaining only a small bodyguard of " house-carls " and trusting to the See also:loyalty of his new subjects . There was no See also:confiscation of lands for the benefit of intrusive Danish settlers . On the contrary Canute had more English than Danish courtiers and ministers about his person, and sent many Englishmen as bishops and some even as royal See also:officers to Denmark . It is See also:strange to find that—whether from policy or from See also:affection—he married King 'Ethelred's young widow Emma of Normandy, though she was somewhat older than himself-so that his son King Harthacnut and that son's successor Edward the See also:Confessor, the heir of the line of Wessex, were half-brothers . It might have been thought likely that the son of the pagan Sweyn would have turned out a mere hard-fighting viking . But Canute developed into a great See also:administrator and a friend of learning and culture .

Occasionally he committed a harsh and tyrannical See also:

act . Though he need not be blamed for making a prompt end of the traitor Eadric Streona and of Uhtred, the turbulent See also:earl of Northumbria, at the commencement of his reign, there are other and less justifiable deeds of See also:blood to be laid to his See also:account . But they were but few; for the most part his See also:administration was just and wise as well as strong and intelligent . As long as he lived England was the centre of a great Northern empire, for Canute reconquered Norway, which had lapsed into independence after his father's death, and extended his power into the Baltic . Moreover, all the so-called Scandinavian colonists in the Northern Isles and Ireland owned him as over-lord . So did the Scottish king Malcolm, and the princes of Wales and Strathclyde . The one weak point in his policy that can be detected is that he left in the hands of Malcolm the Bernician district of See also:Lothian, which the See also:Scot had conquered during the anarchy that followed the death of 'Ethelred . The battle of Carham (ror8) had given this land to the Scots, and Canute consented to draw the border line of England at the See also:Tweed instead of at the Firth of Forth, when Malcolm did him homage . Strangely enough it was this cession of a Northumbrian earldom to the Northern king that ultimately made Scotland an English-speaking country . For the Scottish kings, deserting their native See also:Highlands, took to dwelling at See also:Edinburgh among their new subjects, and first the court and afterwards the whole of their Low-land subjects were gradually assimilated to the Northumbrian nucleus which formed both the most fertile and the most civilized portion of their enlarged realm . The fact: that England recovered with marvellous rapidity from the evil effects of 'Ethelred's disastrous reign, and achieved great See also:wealth and prosperity under Canute, would seem to show that the ravages of Sweyn, widespread and ruthless though they had been, had yet fallen short of the devastating completeness of those of the earlier vikings . He had been more set on exacting tribute than on perpetrating wanton massacres .

A few years of peace and wise administration seem to have restored the realm to' a satisfactory condition . A considerable See also:

mass of his legislation has survived to show Canute's care for law and See also:order . Canute died in 1035, aged not more than See also:forty or forty-one . The crown was disputed between his two sons, the half-brothers Harold and Harthacnut; it was doubtful whether the See also:birth of the elder prince was legitimate, and Queen Emma strove to get her own son Harthacnut preferred to him . In Denmark the younger claimant was acknowledged by the whole people, but in England the Mercian and Northumbrian earls chose Harold as king, and Wessex only fell to Harthacnut . Both the young kings were cruel, dissolute and wayward, most unworthy sons of a wise father . It was to the great profit of England that they died within two years of each other, the elder in 1040, the younger in 1042 . On Harthacnut's death he was succeeded not by any Danish prince but by his half-brother Edward, the elder son of 'Ethelred and Emma, whom he had entertained at his court, and Edward had apparently designated as his heir, for he had no the offspring . There was an end of the empire of Canute, Confessor . for Denmark fell to the great king's nephew, Sweyn Estrithson, and Norway had thrown off the Danish yoke . En-gaged in wars with each other, Dane and Norseman had no leisure to think of reconquering England . Hence Edward's accession took place without any See also:friction .

He reigned, but did not rule, for twenty-four years, though he was well on in See also:

middle age before he was crowned . Of all the descendants of Alfred he was the only one who lived to see his sixtieth birthday—the house of Wessex were a short-lived race . In See also:character he differed from all his ancestors—he had Alfred's piety without his capacity, and fEthelred's weakness without his vices . The mildest of men, a crowned See also:monk, who let slip the reins of government from his hands while he busied himself in See also:prayer and church building, he lowered the kingly power to a See also:depth to which it had never sunk before in England . His sole See also:positive quality, over and above his piety, was a love for his mother's See also:kin, the See also:Normans . He had spent his whole life from 10r3 to 1040 as an exile at the court of See also:Rouen, and was far more of a Norman than an Englishman . It was but natural, therefore, that he should invite his See also:continental relatives and the See also:friends of his youth to share in his late-coming prosperity . But when he filled his court with them, made them earls and bishops, and appointed one of them, See also:Robert of Jumieges, to the archbishopric of Canterbury, his undisguised preference for strangers gave no small offence to his English subjects . In the main, however, the king's personal likes and dislikes mattered little to the realm, since he had a comparatively small share in its governance . He was habitually overruled and dominated by his earls, of whom three, See also:Leofric, See also:Godwine and See also:Siward—all old servants of Canute—had far more power than their master . Holding respectively the great earldoms of West Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria, they reigned almost like petty sovereigns in their domains, and there seemed some chance that England might fall apart into semi-independent feudal states, just as France had done in the preceding century . The rivalries and intrigues of these three magnates constitute the main part of the domestic politics of Edward's reign .

Godwine, whose Harold. daughter had wedded the king, was the most forcible and ambitious of the three, but his pre-See also:

eminence provoked a general league against him and in 1051 he was See also:cast out of the kingdom with his sons . In the next year he returned in arms, raised Wessex in revolt, and compelled the king to in-law him again, to restore his earldom, and to dismiss with ignominy the Norman favourites who were hunted over seas . The old earl died in 1053, but was succeeded in power by his son Harold, who for thirteen years maintained an unbroken mastery over the king, and ruled England almost with the power of a See also:regent . There seems little doubt that he aspired to be Edward's successor: there was no See also:direct heir to the crown, and the nearest of kin was an infant, Edgar, the great-nephew of the reigning sovereignand See also:grandson of Edmund Ironside . England's experience of minors on the throne had been unhappy—Edwy and Ethelred the Redeless were warnings rather than examples . Moreover, Harold had before his See also:eye as a precedent the displacement of the effete Carolingian line in France, by the new house of Robert the Strong and See also:Hugh See also:Capet, seventy years before, He prepared for the crisis that must come at the death of Edward the Confessor by bestowing the governance of several earldoms upon his brothers . Unfortunately for him, however, the eldest of them, See also:Tostig, proved the greatest hindrance to his plans, provoking wrath and opposition wherever he went by his high-handedness and cruelty . Harold's governance of the realm seems to have been on the whole successful . He put down the Scottish usurper See also:Macbeth with the swords of a Northumbrian army, and restored Malcolm III. to the throne of that kingdom (1o55-1058) . He led an army into the See also:heart of Wales to punish the raids of King See also:Griffith ap See also:Llewelyn, and harried the Welsh so bitterly that they put their leader to death, and renewed their homage to the English crown (1063) . He won enthusiastic devotion from the men of Wessex and the South, but in Northumbria and Mercia he was less liked . His experiment in taking the rule of these earldoms out of the hands of the descendants of Siward and Leofric proved so unsuccessful that he had to resign himself to undoing it .

Ultimately one of Leofric's grandsons, Edwin, was left as earl of Mercia, and the other, See also:

Morcar, became earl of Northumbria instead of Harold's unpopular brother Tostig . It was on this fact that the fortune of England was to turn, for in the See also:hour of crisis Harold was to be betrayed by the lords of the Midlands and the North . Somewhere about the end of his period of ascendancy, perhaps in 1064, Harold was sailing in the Channel when his See also:ship was driven ashore by a See also:tempest near the mouth of the origin See also:Somme . He fell into the hands of See also:William the See also:Bastard, of the duke of Normandy, King Edward's See also:cousin and best- Norman loved relative . The duke brought him to Rouen, and conquest-kept him in a See also:kind of honourable captivity till he had extorted a strange See also:pledge from him . William alleged that his cousin had promised to make him his heir, and to recommend him to the witan as king of England . He demanded that Harold should swear to aid him in the project . Fearing for his personal safety, the earl gave the required See also:oath, and sailed home a perjured man, for he had assuredly no intention of keeping the promise that had been extorted from him . Within two years King Edward expired (See also:Jan . 5, io66) after having recommended Harold as his successor to the thegns and bishops who stood about his deathbed . The witan chose the earl as king without any show of doubt, though the assent of the Mercian and Northumbrian earls must have been half-hearted . Not a word was said in favour of the claim of the child Edgar, the heir of the house of Alfred, nothing (of course) for the preposterous claim of William of Normandy .

Harold accepted the crown without a moment's hesitation, and at once prepared to defend it, for he was aware that the Norman would fight to gain its purpose . He endeavoured to conciliate Edwin and Morcar by marrying their sister Ealdgyth, and trusted that he had bought their loyal support . When the spring came See also:

round it was known that William had begun to collect a great fleet and army . Aware that the resources of his own duchy were inadequate to the conquest of England, he sent all over Europe to hire mercenaries, promising every See also:knight who would join him broad lands beyond the Channel in the event of victory . He gathered beneath his banner thousands of adventurers not only from France, See also:Brittany and See also:Flanders, but even from distant regions such as See also:Aragon, See also:Apulia and Germany . The native Normans were but a third part of his host, and he himself commanded rather as director of a great See also:joint-stock venture than as the feudal chief of his own duchy . He also obtained the blessing of Pope See also:Alexander II. for his enterprise, partly on the plea that Harold was a perjurer, partly because See also:Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury, had acknowledged the late See also:anti-pope See also:Benedict . All through the 'summer Harold held a fleet concentrated under the See also:lee of the Isle of See also:Wight, waiting to intercept William's armament, while the fyrd of Wessex was ready to support him if the enemy should succeed in making a landing . By See also:September the provisions were spent, and the ships were growing ;unseaworthy . Very reluctantly the king bade them go round to London to refit and revictual themselves . William meanwhile had been unable to See also:sail, because for many weeks the See also:wind had been unfavourable . If it had set from the south the fortune of England would have been settled by a sea-fight .

At this moment came a sudden and incalculable diversion; Harold's turbulent brother Tostig, banished for his crimes in 1065, was seeking revenge . He had persuaded Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, almost the last of the great viking adventurers, to take him as See also:

guide for a raid on England . They ran into the Humber with a great fleet, beat the earls Edwin and Morcar in battle, and captured York . Abandoning his See also:watch on the south coast Harold of England flew northward to meet the invaders;. he surprised them at Stamford See also:Bridge, slew both the Norse king and the rebel earl, and almost exterminated their army (See also:Sept . 25 ? Io66) . But while he was absent from the Channel the wind turned, and William of Normandy put to sea . The English fleet -and the English army were both absent, and the Normans came safely to shore on the 28th of September . Harold had to turn hastily southward to meet them . On the 13th of October his host was arrayed on the See also:hill of Senlac, q miles from the duke's camp. at See also:Hastings . The ranks of his thegnhood and house-carles had ,been thinned by the slaughter of Stamford Bridge, and their place was but indifferently supplied by the hasty levies of London, Wessex and the Home Counties . Edwin and Morcar, who should have been at his side with their Mercians and Northumbrians, were still far away—probably from treachery, slackness and See also:jealousy .

Next See also:

morning (October 14) William marched out from Hastings and attacked the English host, which stood at See also:bay in a solid mass of See also:spear and axemen behind a slight breastwork on the hillside . After six See also:hours of desperate fighting the victory fell to the duke, who skilfully alternated the use of archers and See also:cavalry against the unwieldy English See also:phalanx . (See HASTINGS: Battle of.) The disaster was complete, Harold himself was slain, his two brothers had fallen with him, not even the See also:wreck of an army escaped . There was no one to rally the English in the name of the house of Godwine . The witan met and hastily saluted the child Edgar AEtheling as king . But the earls Edwin and Morcar refused to fight for him, and when William appeared in front of the See also:gates of London they were opened almost without resistance . He was elected king in the old English fashion by the surviving magnates, and crowned on See also:Christmas Day Io66 . H . THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN MONARCHY (Io66-1199) When William of Normandy was crowned at See also:Westminster by Archbishop See also:Aldred of York and acknowledged as king by the witan, it is certain that few Englishmen understood wnvam the full importance of the occasion . It is probable theCon- gaeror. that most men recalled the See also:election of Canute, and supposed that the accession of the one See also:alien sovereign would have no more permanent effect on the realm than that of the other . The rule of the Danish king and his two short-lived sons had caused no break in the social or constitutional history of England . Canute had become an Englishman, had accepted all the old institutions of the nation, had dismissed his host of vikings, and had ruled like a native king and for the most part with native ministers .

Within twenty years of his accession the disasters and calamities which had preceded his triumph had been forgotten, and the national life was See also:

running quietly in its old channels . But the accession of William the Bastard meant something very different . Canute had been an impressionable lad of eighteen or nineteen when he was crowned; he was ready and eager to learn and to forget . He had found himself con-fronted in England with a higher civilization and a more advanced social organization than those which he had known in his boyhood, and he accepted them with alacrity, feeling that he was thereby getting advantage . With William the Normanall was different: he was a man well on in middle age, too old to adapt himself easily to new surroundings, even if he had been willing to do so . He never even learnt the See also:language of his English subjects, the first step to comprehending their needs and their views . Moreover, unlike his Danish predecessor, he looked down upon the English from the See also:plane of a higher civilization; the Normans regarded the conquered nation as barbarous and boorish . The difference in customs and culture between the dwellers on the two sides of the Channel was sufficient to make this possible; though it is hard to discern any adequate See also:justification for the Norman attitude . Probably the See also:bar of language was the most prominent cause of estrangement . In five generations the viking settlers of Normandy had not only completely forgotten their old Scandinavian tongue, but had come to look upon those who spoke the kindred English See also:idiom not only as aliens but as inferiors . For three centuries See also:French remained the court speech, and' the See also:mark of civilization and gentility . Despite all this the Conquest would not have had its actual results if William, like Canute, had been able to dismiss his conquering army, and to refrain from a general policy progress of confiscation .

But he had won his crown not as of Norman duke of Normandy, but as the head of a band of cosmo- settlepolitan adventurers, who had to be rewarded with land See also:

meat. in England . Some few received their pay in hard See also:cash, and went off to other wars; but the large majority, See also:Breton and Angevin, French and See also:Fleming, no less than Norman, wanted land . William could only provide it by a wholesale confiscation of the estates of all the thegnhood who had followed the house of Godwine . Almost his first act was to seize on these lands, and to distribute them among his followers . In the regions of the South, which had supplied the army that fell at Hastings, at least four-fifths of the See also:soil passed to new masters . The dispossessed heirs of the old owners had either to sink to the condition of peasants, or to throw themselves upon the See also:world and seek new homes . The friction and hatred thus caused were See also:bitter and long enduring . And this same system of confiscation was gradually extended to the rest of England . At first the English landowners who had not actually served in Harold's host were permitted to " buy back their lands," by paying a heavy See also:fine to the new king and doing him homage . What would have happened supposing that England had made no further stir, and had not vexed William by rebellion, it is impossible to say . But, as a See also:matter of fact, during the first few years of his reign one district after another took up arms and endeavoured to cast out the stranger . As it became gradually evident that William's whole system of government was to be on new and distasteful lines, the English of the Midlands, the North and the West, all went into rebellion .

The risings were sporadic, See also:

ill-organized, badly led, for each section of the realm fought for its own hand . In some parts the insurrections were in favour of the sons of Harold, in others Edgar fEtheling was acclaimed as king: and while the unwise earls Edwin and Morcar fought for their own hand, the Anglo-Danes of the East sent for Sweyn, king of Denmark, who proved of small help, for he See also:abode but a short space in England, and went off after sacking the great See also:abbey of See also:Peterborough and committing other outrages . The rebels cut up several Norman garrisons, and gave King William much trouble for some years, but they could never See also:face him in battle . Their last stronghold, the See also:marsh-fortress of See also:Ely, surrendered in 1071, and not long after their most stubborn chief, See also:Hereward " the See also:Wake," the leader of the fenmen, laid down his arms and became King William's man (see HEREWARD) . The only result of the long series of insurrections was tp, provoke the king to a cruelty which he had not at first shown, and to give him an excuse for confiscating and dividing among his foreign knights and barons the immense majority of the estates of the English thegnhood . William could be pitiless when provoked; to punish the men of the North for persistent rebellion and the destruction of his garrison at York, he harried the whple countryside from the See also:Aire to the See also:Tees with such remorseless ferocity that it did not recover its ancient prosperity for centuries . The population was absolutely exterminated, and the great Domesday survey, made nearly twenty years later, shows the greater part of Yorkshire as "See also:waste." This act was exceptional only in its extent: the king was as cruel on a smaller scale elsewhere, and not contented with the liberal use of the See also:axe and the rope was wont to inflict his favourite punishments of See also:blinding and See also:mutilation on a most reckless scale . The See also:net result of the king's revenge on the rebellious English was that by 1075 the old governing class had almost entirely disappeared, and that their lands, from the Channel to the Tweed, had everywhere been distributed to new holders . To a great extent the same See also:horde of continental adventurers who had obtained the first batch of grants in Wessex and Kent were also the recipients of the later confiscations, so that their newly acquired estates were scattered all over England . Many of them came to own land in ten or a dozen counties remote from each other, a fact which was of the greatest importance in determining the character of English See also:feudalism . While abroad the great vassals of the crown generally held their See also:property in compact blocks, in England their power was weakened by the See also:dispersion of their lands . This tendency was assisted by the fact that even when the king, as was his See also:custom, transferred to a Norman the estates of an English landowner just as they stood, those estates were already for the most part not conterminous .

Even before the Conquest the lands of the magnates were to a large extent held in scattered See also:

units, not in solid patches . Only in two cases did William establish lordships of compact strength, and these were created for the See also:special purpose of guarding the turbulent Welsh See also:March . The " See also:palatine " earls of Chester and Shrewsbury were not only endowed with special See also:powers and rights of See also:jurisdiction, but were almost the only tenants-in-chief within their respective shires . These rare exceptions prove the general rule: William probably foresaw the dangers of such See also:accumulation of territory in private hands . He made a complete end of the old English system by which great earls ruled many shires: there were to be no Godwines or Leofrics under the Norman rule . This particular feudal danger was avoided: where earls were created, and they were but few, their authority was usually restricted to a single shire . It remains to speak of the most important See also:change which William's rearrangements made in the polity of England . It Feudalism. is of course untrue to say—as was so often done by See also:early historians—that he " introduced the feudal system into England." In some aspects feudalism was already in the land before he arrived: in others it may be said 'that it was never introduced at all . He did not introduce the practice by which the smail man commended himself to the great man, and in return for his See also:protection divested himself of the full ownership of his own land, and became a customary See also:tenant in what later ages called a " See also:manor." That system was already in full operation in England before the Conquest . In some districts the wholly free small landowner had already disappeared, though in the regions which had formed the Danelagh he was still to be found in large numbers . Nor did William introduce the system of great earldoms, passing from father to son, which gave over-great subjects a hereditary grip on the countryside . On the contrary, as has been already said, he did much to check that tendency, which had already developed in England .

What he really did do was to reconstruct society on the essentially feudal theory that the land was a See also:

gift from the king, held on conditions of homage and military service . The duties which under the old system were national obligations resting on the individual as a See also:citizen, he made into duties depending on the relation between the king as supreme landowner and the subject as tenant of the land . Military service and the paying of the feudal taxes—See also:aids, reliefs, &c.—are incidents of the bargain between the crown and the grantee to whom land has been given . That grantee, the tenant-in-chief, has the right to demand from his sub-tenants, to whom he has given out fractions of his estate, the same dues that the king exacts from himself . As at least four-fifths of the land of England had fallen into the king's hands between 1066 and 1074, and had been actuallyregranted to new owners—foreigners to whom the feudal system was the only conceivable organization of political existence—the change was not only easy but natural . The few surviving English landholders had to fall into line with the newcomers . England, in short, was reorganized into a state of the continental type, but one differing from France or Germany in that the crown had not lost so many of its regalities as abroad, and that even the greater earls had less power than the See also:ordinary continental tenant-in-chief . The English people became aware of this transformation in the " theory of the state" mainly through the fact that the new tenants-in-chief, bringing with them the ideas in which they had been reared, failed to comprehend the rather complicated status of the rural population on this side of the Channel . To the French or Norman knight all peasants on his manor seemed to be villeins, and he failed to understand the distinction between freemen who had personally commended themselves to his English predecessor but still owned their land, and the mass of ordinary servile tenants . There can be no doubt that the first effect of the Conquest was that the upper strata of the agricultural classes lost the comparative independence which they had hitherto enjoyed, and were in many cases depressed to the level of their inferiors . The number of freemen began to decrease, from the encroachments of the landowner, and continued to dwindle for many years: even indistricts where Domesday Book shows them surviving in considerable numbers, it is clear that a generation or two later they had largely disappeared, and became merged in the villein class . In this sense, therefore, England was turned into a feudal state by the results of the work of William the Conqueror .

But it would be wrong to assert that all traces of the ancient social organization of the realm were swept Domesday. away . The old Saxon customs were not forgotten, though they might in many cases be See also:

twisted to fit new surroundings . Indeed William and his successors not infrequently caused them to be collected and put on record . The famous Domesday Book (q.v.) of Io86 is in its essential nature an inquiry into the state of England at the moment of the Conquest, compiled in order that the king may have a full knowledge of the rights that he possesses as the heir of King Edward . Being primarily intended to facilitate the levy of See also:taxation, it dwells more on the details of the actual wealth and resources of the country in 1066 and ro86, and less on the laws and customs that governed the See also:distribution of that wealth, than could have been wished . But it is nevertheless a See also:monument of the permanence of the old English institutions, even after the ownership of four-fifths of the soil has been changed . The king inquires into the state of things in Io66 because it is on that state of things that his rights of taxation depend . He does not claim to have rearranged the whole realm on a new basis, or to be levying his See also:revenue on a new See also:assessment made at his own See also:pleasure . Nor is it in the See also:sphere of taxation alone that William's organization of the realm stands on the old English customs . In the military sphere, though his normal army is the feudal force composed of the tenants-in-chief and the knights whom they have enfeoffed, he retains the power to call out the fyrd, the old national See also:levee en masse, without regard to whether its members are freemen or villeins of some lord . And in judicial matters the higher rights of royal See also:justice remain intact, except in the fewcases where special privileges have been granted to one or two palatine earls . The villein must See also:sue in his lord's manorial courts, but he is also subject to the royal courts of hundred and shire .

The machinery of the local courts survives for the most part intact . William's dealings with the Church of England were no less important than his dealings with social organization . In the earlier years of his reign he set himself to get rid of the whole of the upper See also:

hierarchy, in order to replace ot the Pos on t them by Normans . In Io7o Archbishop Stigand was antra. deposed as having been uncanonically chosen, and six or seven other bishops after him . All the vacancies, as well as those which kept occurring during the next few years, were immediately filled up with foreigners . By the time that William had been ten years on the throne there were only three English bishops left . At his death there was only one-the saintly See also:Wulfstan of See also:Worcester . The same process was carried out with regard to abbacies, and indeed with all important places of ecclesiastical preferment . By io8o the English Church was officered entirely by aliens . Just as with the lay landholders, the change of personnel made a vast difference, not so much in the legal position of the new-corners as in the way in which they regarded their office . The outlook of a Norman bishop was as unlike that of his English predecessor as that of a Norman See also:baron . The English Church had got out of See also:touch with the ideals and the spiritual movements of the other Western churches .

In especial the great monastic revival which had started from the abbey of See also:

Cluny and spread all over France, See also:Italy and Germany had hardly touched this island . The continental churchmen of the nth century were brimming over with ascetic zeal and militant energy, while the majority of the English hierarchy were slack and easy-going . The typical faults of the dark ages, See also:pluralism, simony, lax observation of the clerical rules, contented See also:ignorance, worldliness in every aspect, were all too prevalent in England . There can be no doubt that the greater part of William's nominees were better men than those who preceded them; his great See also:arch-bishop, See also:Lanfranc, though a busy statesman, was also an energetic reformer and a man of See also:holy life . Osmund, See also:Remigius and others of the first See also:post-Conquest bishops have left a good name behind them . The condition of the church alike in the matter of spiritual zeal, of hard work and of learning was much improved . But there was a danger behind this revival; for the reformers of the rrth century, in their zeal for establishing the Kingdom of See also:God on See also:earth, were not content with raising the moral and intellectual See also:standards prevailing in Christendom, but sought to bring the whole scheme of life under the church, by asserting the See also:absolute supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power, wherever the two came in contact or overlapped . The result, since the feudal and ecclesiastical systems had become closely interwoven, and the frontier between the religious and secular See also:spheres must ever be vague and undefined, was the conflict between the spiritual and temporal powers which, for two centuries to come, was to See also:tear Europe into warring factions (see the articles CHURCH HISTORY; PAPACY; See also:INVESTITURE) . The Norman Conquest of England was contemporaneous with the supreme influence of the greatest exponent of the theory of ecclesiastical supremacy, the See also:archdeacon See also:Hildebrand, who in 1073 mounted the papal throne as Gregory VII . (q.v.) . William, despite all his personal faults, was a sincerely pious man, but it could not be expected that he would acquiesce in these new developments of the religious See also:reformation which he had done his best to forward . Hence we find a divided purpose in the policy which he pursued with regard to church affairs .

He endeavoured to keep on the best terms with the papacy: he welcomed legates and frequently consulted the pope on purely spiritual matters . He even took the hazardous step of separating ecclesiastical courts and lay courts, giving the church leave to establish See also:

separate tribunals of her own, a right which she had never possessed in Saxon England . The spiritual jurisdiction of the bishop had hitherto been exercised in the ordinary national courts, with lay assessors frequently taking part in the proceedings, and mixing their dooms with the clergy's canonical decisions . William in Io76 granted the church a completely independent set of courts, a step which his successors were to regret for many a generation . At the same time, however, he was not See also:blind to the possibilities of papal interference in domestic matters, and of the danger of conflict between the crown and the recently-strengthened clerical order . To guard against them he laid down three general rules: (r) that no one should be recognized as pope in England till he had himself taken See also:cognizance of the papal election, and that no papal letters should be brought into the realm without his leave; (2) that no decisions of the English ecclesiastical synods should be held valid till he had examined and sanctioned them; (3) that none of his barons or ministers should beexcommunicated unless he approved of such See also:punishment beinginflicted on them . These rules seem to argue a deeply rooted distrust of the possible encroachments of the papacy on the power of the state . The question of ecclesiastic patronage; which was to'be the source of the first great quarrel between the crown and the church in the next generation, is not touched upon . William retained in his own hands the choice of bishops and abbots, and Alexander II. and Gregory VII. seem to have made no objection to his doing so, in spite of the claim that free election was the only canonical way of filling vacancies . The Conqueror was allowed for his lifetime to do as he pleased, since he was recognized as a true friend of the church . But the question was only deferred and not settled . The political history of William's later years is unimportant; his main energy was absorbed in the task of holding down and organizing his new kingdom .

His rather precarious conquest of the See also:

county of See also:Maine, his long quarrels '1111sm's. with See also:Philip I. of France, who suborned against him his :ego. undutiful and rebellious eldest son Robert, his negotiation with Flanders and Germany, deserve no more than a mention . It is more necessary to point out that he reasserted on at least one occasion (when King Malcolm Canmore did him homage) the old See also:suzerainty of the English kings over Scotland . He also began that encroachment on the See also:borders of Wales which was to continue with small interruptions for the next two centuries . The advance was begun by his great vassals, the earls of Chester, Shrewsbury and See also:Hereford, all of whom occupied new districts on the edge of the mountains of Powys and Gwynedd . William himself led an expedition as far as St . Davids in io81, and founded See also:Cardiff See also:Castle to mark the boundary of his realm north of the See also:Bristol Channel . Perhaps the most noteworthy event of the second portion of the Conqueror's reign was a rebellion which, though it made no head and was easily suppressed, marks the commencement of that feudal danger which was to be the constant trouble of the English kings for the next three generations . Two of the greatest of his foreign magnates, See also:Roger, earl of Hereford, and See also:Ralph, earl of See also:Norfolk, rose against him in 1075, with no better cause than personal grievances and ambitions . He put them down with ease; the one was imprisoned for life, the other driven into exile, while See also:Waltheof, the last of the English earls, who had dabbled in a' hesitating way in this See also:plot, was executed . There was never any serious danger, but the fact that under the new regime baronial rebellion was possible, despite of all William's advantages over other feudal kings, and despite of the fact that the rebels were hardly yet settled firmly into their new estates, had a sinister import for the future of England . With the new monarchy there had come into England the anarchic spirit of continental feudalism . If such a man as the Conqueror did not overawe it, what was to be expected in the reigns of his successors ?

William had introduced into his new realm alike the barons, with their personal ambition, and the clerics of the school of Hildebrand, with their intense jealousy for the rights of the church . The See also:

tale of. the dealings of his descendants with these two classes of opponents constitutes the greater part of English history for a full century . William died at Rouen on the 7th of September ro87; on his death-See also:bed he expressed his wish that Normandy should pass to his elder son, Robert, in spite of all his rebellions, but gave his second son William (known by the nick- See also:Rufus . Wu%as.' name of Rufus) the crown of England, and sent him thither with commendatory letters to archbishop Lanfranc and his other ministers . There was at first no sign of opposition to the will of the late king, and William Rufus was crowned within three weeks of his father's decease . But the results of the Conquest had made it hard to tear England and Normandy apart . Almost every baron in the duchy was now the possessor of a smaller or a greater See also:grant of lands in the kingdom, and the possibility of serving two masters was as small in Io87 as at any other period of the world's history . By dividing his two states between his sons the Conqueror undid his own work, and left to his subjects the certainty of civil war . For the brothers Robert and William were, and always had been, enemies, and every intriguing baron had before him the tempting prospect of aggrandizing himself, by making his See also:allegiance to one of the brothers serve as an excuse for betraying the other . Robert was thriftless, volatile and easy-going, a good knight but a most in-competent sovereign . These very facts commended him to the more turbulent section of the baronage; if he succeeded to the whole of the Conqueror's heritage they would have every opportunity of enjoying freedom from all governance . William's private character was detestable: he was cruel, lascivious, greedy of gain, a habitual breaker of oaths and promises, ungrateful and irreligious .

But he was cunning, strong-handed and energetic; clearly the "Red King" would be an undesirable master to those who loved feudal anarchy . Hence every turbulent baron in England soon came to the conclusion that Robert was the sovereign whom his heart desired . The greater part of the reign of William II. was taken up with his fight against the feudal danger . Before he had been six months on the throne he was attacked by a league comprising more than half the baronage, and headed by his uncles, bishop See also:

Odo of See also:Bayeux and . Robert of See also:Mortain . They used the name of the duke of Normandy and had secured his promise to cross the Channel for their assistance . A less capable and unscrupulous king than Rufus might have been swept away, for the rising burst out simultaneously in nearly every corner of the realm . But he made head against it with the aid of See also:mercenary bands, the loyal minority of the barons, and the shire-levies of his English subjects . When he summoned out the fyrd they came in great force to his aid, not so much because they trusted in the promises of good governance and reduced taxation which he made, but because they saw that a horde of greedy barons would be worse to serve than a single king, however hard and selfish he might be . With their assistance William fought down the rebels, expelled his uncle Odo and several other leaders from the realm, confiscated a certain amount of estates, and then pardoned the remainder of the rebels . Such See also:mercy, as he was to discover, was misplaced . In 1095 the same body of barons made a second and a more formidable rising, headed by the earls of Shrewsbury, Eu and See also:Northumberland .

It was put down with the same decisive energy that William had shown in 1088, and this time he was merciless; he blinded and mutilated William of Ett, shut up See also:

Mowbray of Northumberland for life in a monastery, and hanged many men of lesser See also:rank . Of the other rebels some were deprived of their English estates altogether, See also:ethers restored to part of them after paying crushing fines . This second feudal rebellion was only a See also:distraction to William from his war with his brother Robert, which continued intermittently all through the earlier years of his reign . It was raging from ro88 to 1091, and again from 1093 to 1096, when Robert tired of the losing game, pawned his duchy to his brother and went off on the First Crusade . Down to this moment William's position had been somewhat precarious; with the Norman war generally on hand, feudal rebellion always imminent, and Scottish invasions occasionally to be repelled, he had no easy life . But he fought through his troubles, conquered See also:Cumberland from the Scots (1092), in dealing with his domestic enemies used cunning where force failed, and generally got his will in the end . His rule was expensive, and he made himself hated by every class of his subjects, baronage, clergy and people alike, by his ingenious and oppressive taxation . His chosen See also:instrument, a clerical lawyer named Ranulf See also:Flambard (q.v.), whom he presently made bishop of See also:Durham, was shameless in his methods of twisting feudal or national law to the detriment of the taxpayer . William sup-ported him in every device, however unjust, with a cynical frankness which was the distinguishing trait of his character; for he loved to display openly all the vices and meannesses which most men take care to disguise . In dealing with the baronage Ranulf and his master extorted excessive and arbitrary "reliefs" when-ever land passed in See also:succession to heirs . When the church was a landholder their conduct was even more unwarrantable; every clerk installed in a new preferment was forced to pay a large sum down—which in that age was considered a clear case of simony by all conscientious men . But-in addition the king keptall wealthy. posts, such as bishoprics and abbacies, vacant for years at a time and appropriated the revenue meanwhile .

This policy, when pursued with regard to the archbishopric of Canterbury, brought on Rufus the most troublesome of his quarrels . When the wise See also:

primate Lanfranc, his father's friend, died in 1089, he made no See also:appointment See also:Anselm. till ro93, extracting meanwhile great plunder from the see . In a moment of sickness, when his See also:conscience was for a space trouba See also:ling him or his will was weak, he nominated the saintly Anselm (q.v.) to the archbishopric . When enthroned the new primate refused to make the enormous gift which the king expected from every recipient of preferment . Soon after he began to See also:press for leave to hold a national synod, and when it was denied him, spoke out boldly on the personal vices as well as the immoral policy of the king . From this time William and Anselm became open enemies . They fought first upon the question of acknowledging See also:Urban II. as pope-for the king, taking advantage of the fact that there was an antipope in existence, refused to allow that there was any certain and, legitimate head of the Western church at the moment . Then, after William had reluctantly yielded on this point, the far more important question of lay investitures cropped up . The See also:council of Clermont (Nov . 1095) had just issued its famous See also:decree to the effect that bishops must be chosen by free election, and not invested with their spiritual insignia or enfeoffed with their estates by the hands of a secular prince; Anselm felt himself obliged to accept this decision, and refused to accept his own See also:pallium from William when Urban sent it across the sea by the hands of a See also:legate . The king replied by harrying him on charges of having failed in his feudal obligation to provide well-equipped knights for a Welsh expedition, and imposed ruinous fines on him . It was even said that his life was threatened, and he fled to Rome in 1097, not to return till his adversary was dead .

There was much to be said for the theory of the king as to the relations between church and state; he was indeed only carrying on in a harsh See also:

form his father's old policy . But the fact that he was a See also:tyrant and an evil-See also:liver, while Anselm was a See also:saint, so much influenced public See also:opinion that William was universally regarded as in the wrong, and the sympathy of the laity no less than the clergy was with the archbishop . For the remaining three years of his life the Red King was considered to be in a state of reprobation and at open strife with righteousness . Yet so far as secular affairs went William seemed prosperous enough . Since his brother had pawned the duchy of Normandy to him, so that he reigned at Rouen no less than at London, the danger of rebellion was almost removed . His foreign policy was successful: he installed a nominee of his own, Edgar, the son of Malcolm Canmore, on the throne of Scotland (1097) ; he reconquered Maine, which his brother Robert had lost; he made successful war upon King Philip of France . His barons subdued much of South Wales, though his own expeditions into North Wales, which he had designed to conquer and annex, had a less fortunate ending . He dreamed, we are told, of attacking Ireland, even of crowning himself king at See also:Paris . But on the 2nd of See also:August 1100 he was suddenly cut off in the midst of his sins . While See also:hunting with some of his godless companions in the New See also:Forest, he was struck by an arrow, unskilfully shot by one of the party . The knight See also:Walter See also:Tyrrell, who was persistently accused of being the author of his master's death, as persistently denied his responsibility for it; and whether the arrow was his or no, it was not alleged that malice guided it . William's favourites had all to lose by his death .

The king's death was unexpected: he was only in his fortieth year, and men's minds had not even begun to ponder over the question of who would succeed him . The crown of England was left vacant for the boldest kinsman to succHenry ofenry 1 . snatch at, if he dared . William had two surviving brothers, beside several nephews . Robert's claim seemed the more likely to succeed, for not only was he the elder, but England was full of barons who desired his accession, and had already taken up arms for him in 1087 or 1095 . But he was far away—being at the moment on his return See also:

journey from See also:Jerusalem—while on the spot was his brother See also:Henry, an ambitious prince, whose previous efforts to secure himself a territorial endowment had failed more from ill-luck than from want of enterprise or ability . Seeing his opportunity, Henry left his brother's body unburied, rode straight off to Winchester with a handful of companions, and seized the royal treasure . This and his ready tongue were the main arguments by which he convinced the few magnates See also:present, and persuaded them to back him, despite the protests of some supporters of Robert . There was hardly the semblance of an election, and the earl of Warwick and the See also:chancellor William See also:Giffard were almost the only persons of importance on the spot . But Henry, once hailed as king, rode hard for London and persuaded bishop See also:Maurice to crown him without delay at Westminster, since the primate Anselm was absent beyond seas . He certainly lost no time: Rufus was shot on See also:Thursday, the 2nd of August—his successor was crowned on See also:Sunday the 5th of August ! The realm heard almost by the same messengers that it had lost one king and that it had gained another .

Henry at once issued a See also:

proclamation and See also:charter promising the redress of all the grievances with which his brother had afflicted his feudal tenants, the clergy and the whole nation . He would keep the ancient laws of King Edward, as amended by his father the Conqueror, and give all men good justice . These promises he observed more faithfully than Norman kings were wont to do; if the pledge was not redeemed in every detail, he yet kept England free from anarchy, abandoned the arbitrary and unjust taxation of his brother, and set up a government that worked by rule and order, not by the fits and starts of tyrannical caprice . He was a man of a See also:cold and hard disposition, but full of See also:practical wisdom, and conscious that his precarious claim to the crown must be secured by winning the confidence of his subjects . Almost the first and quite the wisest of his inspirations was to wed a princess of the old English line—Edith,' the niece of Edgar See also:iEtheling, the child of his sister See also:Margaret of Scotland and Malcolm Canmore . The match, though his Norman barons sneered at it, gave him the See also:hearts of all his English subjects, who supported him with enthusiasm, and not merely (as had been the case with Rufus) because they saw that a strong king would oppress them less than a factious and turbulent baronage . Henry won much See also:applause at the same time by filling up all the bishoprics and abbacies which his brother had kept so long vacant, by inviting the exiled Anselm to return to England, and by imprisoning William's odious minister Ranulf Flambard . He had just time to create a favourable impression by his first proceedings, when his brother Robert, who had returned from See also:Palestine and resumed possession of Normandy, landed at Ports-mouth to claim the crown and to rouse his partisans among the English baronage . Henry bought him off, before the would-be rebels had time to join him, by promising him an See also:annual tribute of 3000 marks and surrendering to him all his estates in Normandy (See also:Ito') . His policy seemed tame and cautious, but was entirely justifiable, for within a few months of Robert's departure the inevitable feudal rebellion broke out . If the duke and his army had been on the spot to support it, things might have gone hardly with the king . The rising was led by Robert of See also:Belesme, earl of Shrewsbury, a petty tyrant of the most ruffianly type, the terror of the Welsh See also:marches .

He was backed by his kinsmen and many other barons, but proved unable to stand before the king, who was loyally supported by the English shire levies . After taking the strong castles of See also:

Arundel, Tickhill, See also:Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury, Henry forced the rebels to submit . He confiscated their estates and drove them out of the realm; they fled for the most part to Normandy, to See also:spur on duke Robert to make another bid for the English crown . From the broad lands which they forfeited Henry made haste to See also:reward his own servants, new men who owed all to him and served him faithfully . From them he chose the sheriffs, castellans and councillors through whom he administered the realm during the rest of his long reign . ' As the name Edith (Eadgyth) sounded uncouth to Norman ears, she assumed the continental name Maheut or Mahelt (Eng . Mahald, later See also:Mold and Maud), in Latin Matildis or See also:Matilda . See also:Sir J . H . See also:Ramsay, See also:Foundations of England, ii . 235 . (Ed.) This minor See also:official See also:nobility was the strength of the crown, and was sharply divided in spirit and ambition from the older feudal See also:aristocracy which descended from the original adventurers who had followed William the Conqueror .

Yet the latter still remained strong enough to constitute a danger to the crown when-ever it should fall to a king less wary and resolute than Henry himself . Henry was by nature more of an administrator and organizer than of a fighting man . He was a competent soldier, but his wish was rather to be a strong king at home than a great conqueror abroad . Nevertheless he was driven by the See also:

logic of events to attack Normandy, for as long as his brother reigned there, and as long as many English barons retained great holdings on both sides of the Channel and were subjects of the duke as well as of the king, intrigues and plots never ceased . The Norman war ended in the battle of Tenchebrai (Sept . 28, rio6), where Duke Robert was taken prisoner . His brother shut him up in honourable confinement for the rest of his life, though other-wise he was not ill-treated . For the rest of his reign Henry was ruler of all the old dominions of the Conqueror, and none of his subjects could cloak disloyalty by the pretence of owing a divided allegiance to two masters . With this he was content, and made no great effort to extend his dominions farther; his desirewastoreignas a true king in EnglandandNormandy, rather than to build up a loosely compacted empire around them . Throughout the time of Henry's Norman war, he was engaged in a tiresome controversy with the primate on the question of lay investitures, the continuation of the struggle which Henry's had begun in his brother's reign . Every English king difficulties for five generations had to face the danger from the with the church, no less than the danger from the barons. church . Anselm had come back from Rome confirmed in the theories for which he had contended with Rufus—See also:nay, taught to extend them to a further extreme .

He now maintained not only that it was a See also:

sin that kings should invest prelates with their spiritual insignia, the pallium, the See also:staff, the See also:ring, but claimed that no clerk ought to do homage to the king for the lands of his See also:benefice, though he himself seven years before had not scrupled to make his oath to his earlier master . He now refused to swear allegiance to the new monarch, though he had recalled him and had restored him to the possession of his see . He also refused to consecrate Henry's nominees to certain bishoprics and abbacies on the ground that they had not been chosen by free election by their chapters or their monks . The king was loath to take up the quarrel, for he highly respected the archbishop; yet he was still more loath to surrender the ancient claims and privileges of the crown . Anselm was equally reluctant to force matters to an open See also:breach, yet would not shift from his position . There followed an interminable series of arguments, interrupted by truces, till at last Anselm, at the king's See also:suggestion, went to Rome to see if the pope could arrange some modus vivendi . See also:Paschal II. for some time refused to withdraw from his fixed theory of the relation of church and state, and Anselm, in despair, preferred to remain abroad rather than to press matters to the rupture that seemed the only logical issue of the controversy . But in 1107 the pope consented to a See also:compromise, which satisfied the king, and yet was acceptable to the church . Bishops and abbots were for the future to be canonically elected by the clergy, and were no longer to receive the ring and staff from lay hands . But they were to do homage to the king for their lands, and since they thus acknowledged him as their temporal lord Henry was content . Moreover, he retained in practice, if not in theory, his power to nominate to the vacant offices; chapters and monasteries seldom dared to resist the pressure which the sovereign could bring to See also:bear upon them in favour of the See also:candidate whom he had selected . The arrangement was satisfactory, and served as the See also:model for the similar compromise arrived at between Pope See also:Calixtus II. and the emperor Henry V. fifteen years later .

From 1107 onward Henry was freed from both the dangers which had threatened him in his earlier years, and was free to develop his policy as he pleased . He had yet twenty-eight years to reign, for he survived to the age of sixty-seven, an age unparalleled by any of his predecessors, and by all his successors till Edward I . It is to Henry, aided by his great See also:

justiciar, Roger, bishop of See also:Salisbury, that England owed the institution of the machinery of government by which it was to be ruled during the Canstftn- earlier middle ages . This may be described as a primi-See also:Eland machinery. tive kind of bureaucracy, which gradually developed mac into a much more complicated system of courts and offices . Around the sovereign was his See also:Curia Regis or body of councillors, of whom the most important were the justiciar, the chancellor and the treasurer, though the feudal officers, the See also:constable and See also:marshal, were also to be found there . The bulk of the council, however, was composed of knights and clerks selected by the king for their administrative or See also:financial ability . The Curia, besides advising the king on ordinary matters of state, had two special functions . It sat, or certain members of it sat, under the See also:presidency of the king or the justiciar, as the supreme court of justice of the realm . In this capacity it tried the suits of tenants-in-chief, and all appeals from the local courts . But Henry, not contented with this, adopted the custom of sending forth certain members of the Curia throughout the realm at intervals, to sit in the shire court, along with or in place of the sheriff, and to hear and See also:judge all the cases of which the court had cognizance . From these itinerant commissioners (justices in See also:eyre) descend the See also:modern justices of See also:assize . The sheriff, the original See also:president of the shire court, was gradually extruded by them from all important business .

But there were other developments of the Curia . The justiciar, chancellor and treasurer sat with certain other members of the council as the court of See also:

exchequer, not only to receive and See also:audit the accounts of the royal revenue, but to give legal decisions on all questions connected with See also:finance . Twice in every year the sheriffs and other royal officials came up to the exchequer court, which originally sat at Winchester, with their bags of See also:money and their sheaves of accounts . Their figures were subjected to a severe See also:scrutiny, and the law was laid down on all points in which the interests of the sheriff and the king, or the sheriff and the taxpayer, came into conflict . In this way the exchequer grew into a law court of See also:primary importance, instead of remaining merely a court of See also:receipt . Though its members were originally the same men who sat in the Curia Regis, the character of the question to be tried settled the capacity in which they should sit, and two separate courts were evolved . (See EXCHEQUER.) Under the superintendence of the Curia Regis and the ex-chequer, the sheriff still remained the king's factotum in local affairs . He led the shire-levies, collected the royal revenues both feudal and non-feudal, and presided in the shire-court as judge, till in the course of years his functions in that sphere were gradually taken over by the itinerant justices . On his fidelity the king had to rely both for military aid in times of baronial revolt and for the collection of the money which formed the sinews of war . Hence the position was one of the highest importance, and Henry's new nobility, the men of ability whom he selected and promoted, found their special occupation in holding the office of sheriff . It was they who had to see that the shire court, and in minor affairs the hundred court, did not allow cases to slip away into the jurisdiction of the feudal courts of the baronage . Henry I. must See also:count not merely as the father of the English bureaucracy, but as a fosterer of the municipal independence of the towns .

He gave charters of a very liberal character to many places, and in especial to London, where the citizens were allowed to choose their own sheriff, and to See also:

deal directly with the ex-chequer in matters of revenue . He even farmed out to them the See also:charge of the taxes of the whole shire of Middlesex, outside the See also:city walls . Such a grant was exceptional—though Lincoln also seems to have been granted the See also:privilege of dealing directly with the exchequer . But in many other smaller towns the first grants —the smaller beginnings of See also:autonomy—may be traced back to this period (see See also:BoRoUGH) . Though Henry was an autocrat, and governed throughbureaucratic officials who were entirely under his hand, yet a reign of law and order such as his was indirectly favourable to the growth of constitutional See also:liberty . It was equally favourable to the growth of national unity: it was in his time that Norman and English began to melt together: intermarriage in all classes became common, and only thirty years after his death a con-temporary writer could remark that it was hard for any man to call himself either Norman or English, so much had blood been intermingled . It is unnecessary to go into the very uninteresting and unimportant history of Henry's later years . A long war with France, prosecuted without much energy, led to no results, for the French king's attempts to stir up rebellions in the name of William the Clito (q.v.), the son of Duke Robert, came to an end with that prince's death in 1129 . But the extension of the English borders in South Wales by the conquests of the lords marcher as far as See also:Pembroke and See also:Cardigan deserves a word of See also:notice . The question of the succession was the main thing which occupied the mind of the king and the whole nation in Henry's later years . It had a real See also:interest for every man in an age when any doubt as to the heir meant the out- Henry's heit, break of civil war such as had occurred at the death of the Conqueror and of Rufus . There was now a problem of some difficulty to be solved .

Henry's only son William had been drowned at sea in 1120 . He had no other child See also:

born in wedlock save a daughter, Matilda, who married the emperor Henry V., but had no issue by him . On the emperor's decease she wedded as her second husband See also:Geoffrey of See also:Anjou (1127), to whom during her father's last years she bore two sons . But the succession of a woman to the crown was as unfamiliar to English as to Norman ideas, nor did it seem natural to either to place a young child on the throne . Moreover, Matilda's husband Geoffrey was unpopular among the Normans; the Angevins had been the chief enemies of the duchy for several generations, and the idea that one of them might become its practical ruler was deeply resented . The old king, as was but natural, had determined that his daughter should be his successor; he made the great council do homage to her in 1126, and always kept her before the eyes of his people as his destined heir . But though he had forced or cajoled every leading man in England and Normandy to take his oath to serve her, he must have been conscious that there was a large chance that such pledges would be forgotten at his death .. The See also:prejudice against a See also:female heir was strong, and there were too many turbulent magnates to whom the anarchy that would follow a disputed succession presented temptations which could not be resisted . Henry died suddenly on the 25th of See also:November 1135, while he was on a visit to his duchy of Normandy . The moment that his death was reported the futility of oaths became apparent . A majority of the Norman barons ap- Mand atttda, pealed to See also:Theobald, count of See also:Blois, son of the Con- See also:Stephen. queror's daughter Adela, to be their duke, and to save them from the yoke of the hated Angevin . His supporters and those of Matilda were soon at blows all along the frontier of Normandy .

Meanwhile in England another pretender had appeared . Stephen, count of See also:

Boulogne, the younger brother of Theobald, had landed at Dover within a few days of Henry's death, determined to make a snatch at the crown, though he had been one of the first who had taken the oath to his cousin a few years before . The citizens of London welcomed him, but he was not secure of his success till by a See also:swift swoop on Winchester he obtained possession of the royal treasure—an all-important factor in a crisis, as Henry I. had shown in 1100 . At Winchester he was acknowledged as king by the bishop, his own brother Henry of Blois, and by the great justiciar, Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and the archbishop, William of See also:Corbeil . The allegiance of these prelates was bought by an unwise promise to grant all the demands of the church party, which his predecessor had denied, or conceded only in part . He would permit free election to all benefices, and free legislation by ecclesiastical synods, and would surrender any claims of the royal courts to have jurisdiction over clerks or the property of clerks . It then remained necessary to buy the baronage, of which only a few members had as yet committed themselves to his side . It was done by grants of lands and privileges, the first See also:instalment of a never-ending See also:crop of ruinous concessions which Stephen continued to make from the day of his accession down to the day of his death . The pretender was crowned at Westminster on the 22nd of See also:December 1135—less than a month after his uncle's death . No one yet openly withstood him, but he was well aware that his position was precarious, and that the claims of Matilda would he brought forward ere long by the section of the baronage which had not yet got from him all they desired . Meanwhile, however, he was encouraged to persevere by the fact that his brother Theobald had withdrawn his claim to the duchy of Normandy, and retired in his favour . For a space he was to be duke as well as king; but this meant merely that he would have two wars, not one, in hand ere long .

Matilda's adherents were already in the field in Normandy; in England their rising was only delayed for a few months . Stephen, though he had shown some enterprise and capacity in his successful snatch at the crown, was a man far below his three predecessors on the throne in the matter of perseverance and foresight . He was a good fighter, a liberal giver, and a faithful friend, but he lacked wisdom, caution and the power to organize . Starting his career as a perjurer, it is curious that he was singularly slow to suspect See also:

perjury in others; he was the most systematically betrayed of all English kings, because he was the least suspicious, and the most ready to buy off and to forgive rebels . His troubles began in 1136, when. sporadic rebellions, raised in the name of Matilda, began to appear; they grew steadily worse, though Stephen showed no lack of energy, posting about his realm with a band of mercenary knights whenever trouble broke out . But in 1138 the crisis came; the baronage had tried the capacity of their new master and found him wanting . The outbreak was now widespread and systematic OW/ war . —caused not by the turbulence of a few See also:wild See also:spirits, but by the deliberate See also:conspiracy of all who saw their advantage in anarchy . Matilda had a few genuine partisans, such as her half-brother Robert, earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I., brit the large majority of those who took arms in her name were ready to sell their allegiance to either candidate in return for lands, or grants of rank or privilege . A long list of doubly and triply forsworn nobles, led by Geoffrey de See also:Mandeville, See also:Aubrey de See also:Vere and Ralph of Chester, made the See also:balance of war sway alternately from side to side, as they transferred themselves to the camp of the highest See also:bidder . It is hard to trace any meaning in the civil war—it was not a contest between the principle of hereditary succession and the principle of elective kingship, as might be supposed . It was rather, if some explanation must be found for it, a strife between the kingly power and feudal anarchy .

Unfortunately for England the kingly power was in the hands of an incapable holder, and feudal anarchy found a plausible See also:

mask by adopting the disguise of loyalty to the rightful heiress . The civil war was not Stephen's only trouble; foreign invasion was added . See also:David I., king of Scotland, was the uncle of Matilda, and used her wrongs as the plea for thrice invading northern England, which he ravaged with great cruelty . His most formidable raid was checked by the Yorkshire shire levies, at the battle of the See also:Standard (Aug . 22, 1138) . Yet in the following year he had to be bought off by the grant of all Northumberland (save See also:Newcastle and Bamborough) to his son Earl Henry . See also:Car-See also:lisle and Cumberland were already in his hands . Some years later the Scottish prince also got possession of the great " Honour of See also:Lancaster." It was not Stephen's fault that the boundary of England did not permanently recede from the Tweed and the Solway to the See also:Tyne and the Ribble . But the affairs of the North attracted little attention while the civil war was at its height in the South . In 1139 Stephen had wrought himself fatal damage by quarrelling with the ecclesiastical bureaucrats, the kinsmen and See also:allies of Roger of Salisbury,who had been among his earliest adherents . Jealous of their, power and their arrogance, and doubting their loyalty, he imprisoned them ; and confiscated their lands . This threw the whole church party on to the side of Matilda; even Henry, bishop of Winchester, the king's own brother, disowned him and passed over to the other side .

Moreover, the whole machinery of local government in the realm fell out of See also:

gear, when the experienced ministers who were wont to See also:control it were removed from power . Matilda had landed in England in the winter of 1139–1140; for a year her partisans made steady progress against the king, and on the 2nd of February 1141 Stephen was defeated and taken. prisoner at the battle of Lincoln . All England, save the county of Kent and a few isolated castles elsewhere, submitted to, Matilda . She was hailed as a sovereign by a great See also:assembly at Winchester, over which Stephen's own brother Bishop Henry presided (See also:April 7, 1141) and entered London in triumph in See also:June . It is doubtful whether she would have obtained complete possession of the realm if she had played her See also:cards well, for there were too many powerful personages who were interested in the perpetuation of the civil war . But she certainly did her best to ruin her own chances by showing an unwise arrogance, and a determination to resume at once all the powers that her father had possessed . When she annulled all the royal acts of the last six years, declared charters forfeited and lands confiscated, and began to raise heavy and arbitrary taxes, she made the partisans of Stephen desperate, and estranged many of her own supporters . A sudden rising of the citizens drove her out of London, while she was making preparations for her See also:coronation . The party of the imprisoned king rallied under the wise guidance of his wife Matilda of Boulogne and his brother Henry, and many other of the late deserters adhered to it . Their army drove the lately triumphant party out of Winchester, and captured its military chief, Robert, earl of Gloucester . So much was his loss felt that his sister exchanged him a few months later for King Stephen . . After this the war went on interminably, without complete advantage to either side, Stephen for the most part dominating the eastern and Matilda the western shires .

It was the See also:

zenith of the power of the baronial anarchists, who moved from camp to camp with shameless rapidity, wresting from one or other of the two rival sovereigns some royal castle, or some dangerous grant of financial or judicial rights, at each change of allegiance . The kingdom was in the desperate state described in the last See also:melancholy pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, when life and property were nowhere safe from the objectless ferocity of feudal tyrants —when " every shire was full of castles and every castle filled with devils and evil men," and the people murmured that " See also:Christ and his See also:saints slept." Such was England's fate till 1153, when Matilda had retired from the strife in favour of her son, Henry of Anjou, and Stephen was grown an old man, and had just lost his heir, Eustace, to whom he had desired to pass on the crown . Both parties were exhausted, both were sick of the incessant treachery of their more unscrupulous barons, and at last they came to the compromise of See also:Wallingford (October 1153), by which it was agreed that Stephen should reign for the remainder of his life, but that on his death the crown should pass to Henry . Both sides promised to lay down their arms, to dismiss their mercenaries, and to acquiesce in the destruction of unlicensed castles, of which it is said, with no very great exaggeration, that there were at the moment over x000 in the realm . Henry then returned to Normandy, of which his mother had been in possession since 1145, while Stephen turned his small remaining strength to the weary task of endeavouring to restore the foundations of law and order . But he had accomplished little when he died in October 1154 . The task of reconstruction was to be left to Henry of Anjou: his predecessor was only remembered as an example of the evil that may be done by a weak man who has been reckless enough to seize a throne which he is incapable of defending . England has had many worse kings, but never one who wrought her more harm . If his successor had been like him, feudal anarchy might have become as permanent in England as in See also:Poland . 1154-1162j Fortunately the young king to whom Stephen's battered crown now fell was energetic and capable, if somewhat self- Henry M willed and hasty . He was inferior in caution and self-control to his grandfather Henry I., though he resembled him in his love of strong and systematic governance . From the point of view of his English subJects his main achievement was that he restored in almost every detail the well-organized bureaucracy which his ancestor had created, and with it the law and order that had disappeared during Stephen's unhappy reign .

But there was this essential difference between the position of the two Henries, that the elder aspired to be no more than king of England and duke of Normandy, while the younger strove all his life for an imperial position in western Europe . Such an ambition was almost forced upon him by the consequences of his descent and his See also:

marriage . Besides his grandfather's Anglo-Norman See also:inheritance, he had received from his father Geoffrey the counties of Anjou and See also:Touraine, and the predominance in the valley of the Lower Loire . But it was his marriage to Eleanor of See also:Aquitaine, two years before his ac-cession to the English throne, which gave him the right to See also:dream of greatness such as his Norman forbears had never enjoyed . This See also:lady, the divorced wife of See also:Louis VII. of France, brought to her second husband the whole of the lands from See also:Poitou to the See also:Pyrenees, the accumulated gains of many warlike ancestors . In wealth and fighting strength the duchy of Aquitaine was a full third of France . Added to Anjou and Normandy it made a realm far more important than England . Hence it came that Henry's ambitions and interests were continental more than English . Unlike his grandfather he dwelt for the greater part of his time beyond seas . It must be remembered, too, that his youth had been spent abroad, and that England only came to him when he was already a grown man . The concerns of his island realm were a matter of high importance to him, but only formed a part of his cares . Essentially he was an Angevin, neither a Norman nor an Englishman, and his primary ambition was to make the house of Anjou supreme in France .

Nor did this seem impossible; he owned a far broader and wealthier domain beyond the Channel than did his nominal suzerain King Louis VII., and—what was of more importance—he far excelled that prince both in vigour and in capacity .. On succeeding to the English crown, however, he came over at once to take possession of the realm, and abode there for over a year, displaying the most restless energy in setting to rights the governance of the realm . He expelled all Stephen's mercenaries, took back into his hands the royal lands and castles which his predecessor had granted away, and destroyed hundreds of the " adulterine " castles which the barons and knights had built without leave during the years of the anarchy . Hardly a single magnate dared to oppose him—Bridgnorth, now a castle of the Mortimers, was the only place which he had to take by force . His next care was to restore the bureaucracy by which Henry I. had been wont to govern . He handed over the exchequer to See also:

Nigel, bishop of Ely, the nephew of the old justiciar Roger of Salisbury, and the heir of his traditions . His chancellor was a young clerk, See also:Thomas See also:Becket, who was recommended to him by archbishop Theobald as the most capable official in the realm . A short experience of his work convinced the king that his merits had not been exaggerated . He proved a zealous and capable minister, and such a strong exponent of the claims of the crown that no one could have foreseen the later developments by which he was to become their greatest enemy . The See also:machine of government was beginning to work in a satis-4actory fashion, and the realm was already settling down into order, when Henry was called abroad by a rebellion raised in Anjou by his brother Geoffrey—the first of the innumerable dynastic troubles abroad which continued throughout his reign to distract his attention from his duties as an English king . He did not return for fifteen months; but when he did reappear it was to complete the work which he had begun in 1155, to extort from the greater barons the last of the royal fortresses which still remained in their hands, and to restore the northern boundaries of the realm . Malcolm IV., the young king of Scotland, ix .

16481 was compelled to give up the earldoms of Northumberland and Cumberland, which his father Henry had received from Stephen . He received instead only the earldom of See also:

Huntingdon, too far from the border to be a dangerous possession, to which he had a hereditary right as descending from Earl Waltheof . He did homage to the king of England, and actually followed him with a great See also:retinue on his next continental expedition . In the same year (1157) Henry made an expedition into North Wales, and forced its prince See also:Owen to become his See also:vassal, not without some fighting, in which the English army received several See also:sharp checks at the commencement of the campaign . Yet once more Henry's stay on the English side of the Channel was but for a year . In 1158 he again departed to plunge into schemes of continental conquest . This time it was an attempt to annex the great county of See also:Toulouse, and so to carry the borders of Aquitaine to the Mediterranean, which distracted him . Naturally Louis of France was unwilling to see his great vassal striding all across his realm, and did what he could to hinder him . Into the endless skirmishes and negotiations which followed the raising of the question of Toulouse it would be fruit-less to enter . Henry did not achieve his purpose, indeed he seems to have failed to use his strength to its best advantage, and allowed himself to be bought off by a futile marriage treaty by which his eldest son was to marry the French king's daughter (s 16o) . This was to be but the first of many disappointments in this direction; there was apparently some fatal See also:scruple, both in Henry's own mind and in that of his continental subjects, as to pressing their suzerain too hard . But it must also be remembered that a feudal army was an inefficient weapon for long wars, and that the mercenaries, by whom alone it could be replaced, were both expensive and untrustworthy .

Henry developed as far as he was able the system of " See also:

scutage " (q.v.) which his grandfather had apparently invented; by this the vassal compounded for his forty days' personal service by paying money, with which the king could hire professional soldiers . But even with this help he could never keep a large enough army together . Meanwhile England, though somewhat heavily taxed, was at least enjoying quiet and strong governance . There is every sign that Henry's early years were a time of returning prosperity . But there was also much friction between Quarrel the crown and its subjects . The more turbulent part with the church . of the baronage, looking back to the boisterous times of Stephen with regret, was reserving itself for a favourable opportunity . The danger of feudal rebellion was not yet past, as was to be shown ten years later . The towns did not find Henry an easy master . He took away from London some of the exceptional privileges which his grandfather had granted, such as the free election of sheriffs of Middlesex, and the right of farming the shire at a fixed See also:rent . He asserted his power to raise tallages "—arbitrary taxation—from the citizens on occasion . Yet he left the foundations of municipal liberty untouched, and he was fairly liberal in granting charters which contained moderate privileges to smaller towns .

His most difficult task, however, was to come to a settlement with the Church . The lavish grants of Stephen had made an end of the old authority which the Conqueror and Henry I. had exercised over the clergy . Their successor was well aware of the fact, and was resolved to put back the See also:

clock, so far as it was in his power . It was not, however, on the old problems of free election, of lay investiture, that his quarrel with the clerical body broke out, but on the comparatively new question of the conflicting claims of ecclesiastical and secular courts . The separate tribunals of the church, whose erection William I. had favoured, had been developing in power ever since, and had begun to encroach on the sphere of the courts of the state . This was more than ever the case since Stephen had formally granted them jurisdiction over all suits concerning clerics and clerical property . During the first few years of his reign Henry had already been in collision with the ecclesiastical authorities over several such cases; he had chafed at seeing two clerks accused of See also:murder and See also:black-mailing claimed by and acquitted in the church courts; and II most of all at the frequency of unlicensed appeals to Rome—a flagrant breach of one of the three rules laid down by William the Conqueror . Being comparatively at leisure after the pacification with France, he resolved to turn his whole attention to the arrangement of a new modus vivendi with the church . As a preliminary move he appointed his able chancellor Thomas Becket to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which fell vacant in Becket . 1162 . This was the greatest See also:mistake of his reign . Becket was one of those men who, without being either hypocrites or consciously ambitious, live only to magnify their office .

While chancellor he was the most zealous servant of the crown, and had seemed rather secular than clerical in his habits and his outlook on life . But no sooner had he been promoted to the archbishopric than he put away his former See also:

manners, became the most formal and austere of men, and set himself to be the champion of the church party in all its claims, reasonable or unreasonable, against the state . The king's astonishment was even greater than his indignation when he saw the late chancellor setting himself to oppose him in all things . Their first quarrel was about a proposed change in some details of taxation, which seems to have had no specially ecclesiastical bearing at all . But Becket vehemently opposed it, and got so much support when the great council met at See also:Woodstock that Henry withdrew his schemes . This was only a preliminary skirmish; the main battle opened in the following year, when the king, quite aware that he must for the future look on Thomas as his enemy, brought forward the famous Constitutions of See also:Clarendon, of which the main purport was to assert the jurisdiction of the state over clerical offenders by a rather complicated See also:procedure, while other clauses provided that appeals to Rome must not be made without the king's leave, that suits about land or the presentation to benefices, in which clerics were concerned, should be tried before the royal courts, and that bishops should not quit the realm unless they had obtained permission to do so from the king (see CLARENDON, CONSTITUTIONS OF) . Some-what to the king's surprise, Becket yielded for a moment to his pressure, and declared his assent to the constitutions . But he had no sooner left the court than he proclaimed that he had grievously sinned in giving way, suspended himself from his archiepiscopal functions, and wrote to the pope to beg for See also:pardon and See also:absolution . He then made a clandestine attempt to escape from the realm, but was detected on the seashore and forced to return . Incensed with Becket for his repudiation of his original sub-mission, Henry proceeded to open a campaign of lawsuits against him, in order to force him to plead in secular courts . He also took the very mean step of declaring that he should call him to account for all the moneys that had passed through his hands when he was chancellor, though Becket had been given a quittance for them when he resigned the office more than two years before . The business came up at the council of See also:Northampton (October 1164), when the archbishop was tried for refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of the king's courts, and declared to have forfeited his movable goods .

The See also:

sentence was passed by the lay members of the Curia Regis alone, the bishops having been forbidden to sit, and threatened with See also:excommunication if they did so, by the accused primate . When Becket was visited by the justiciar who came to rehearse the See also:judgment, he started to his feet, refused to listen to a word, declared his repudiation of all lay courts and left the hall . That same See also:night he made a second attempt to escape from England and this time succeeded in getting off to Flanders . From thence he fled to the court of the pope, where he received less support than he had expected . Alexander III. privately approved of all that he had done, and regarded him as the champion of the Church, but he did not wish to quarrel with King Henry . He had lately been driven from Rome by the emperor See also:Frederick I., who had installed an antipope in his place, and had been forced to retire to France . If he sided with Becket and thundered against hispersecutor, there wassmalldoubt that the king of England would adhere to the See also:schism . Accordingly he endeavoured to temporize and to avoid a rupture, to the archbishop's great disgust . But since he also declared the Consti-tutions of Clarendon uncanonical and invalid, Henry was equally offended, and opened negotiations with the emperor and the anti-pope . This conduct forced Alexander's hand, and he gave Becket leave to excommunicate his enemies . The exile, who had taken See also:refuge in a French abbey, placed the justiciar and six other of the king's chief councillors under the See also:ban of the Church, and intimated that he should add Henry himself to the list unless he showed speedy signs of repentance (April 1166) . Thus the quarrel had come to a head .

Church and State were at open war . Henry soon found that Becket's threats had more effect than he liked . Many of the English clergy were naturally on the side of the primate in a dispute which touched their loyalty to the Church and their class feeling . Several bishops declared to the king that, since his ministers had been duly ex-communicated, they did not see how they could avoid regarding them as men placed outside the See also:

pale of Christendom . Fortunately the pope interfered for a moment to lighten the friction; being threatened with a new invasion by the emperor Frederick, he suspended the sentences and sent legates to patch up a peace . They failed, for neither the king nor the archbishop would give way . At this juncture Henry was desirous of getting his eldest son and namesake crowned as his colleague, the best mode that he could devise for avoiding the dangers of a disputed succession at his death . He induced the archbishop of York, assisted by the bishops of London and Salisbury, to perform the ceremony . This was a clear invasion of the ancient rights of the primate, and Becket took it more to heart than any other of his grievances . Yet the next move in the struggle was a hollow reconciliation between the combatants—a most inexplicable act on both sides . The king offered to allow Becket to return from exile, and to restore him to his possessions, without exacting from him any promise of submission, or even a pledge that he would not reopen the dispute on his return . Apparently he had made a wrong See also:interpretation of the primate's See also:mental attitude, and thought him desirous of a truce, if not ready for a compromise .

He had wholly misjudged the situation; Becket made neither promises nor threats, but three weeks after he reached Canterbury publicly excommunicated the bishops of London and Salisbury for the part that they had taken in the coronation of the young king, and suspended from their functions the other prelates who had been present at the ceremony . He then proceeded to excommunicate a number of his minor lay enemies . The See also:

news was carried overseas to Henry, who was then in Normandy . It roused one of the fits of wild rage to which he was not unfrequently liable; he burst out into ejaculations of wrath, and cursed " the cowardly idle See also:ser- m Becket' urders vants who suffered their master to be made the laughing-stock of a low-born See also:priest." Among those who stood about him were four knights, some of whom had personal grudges against Becket, and all of whom were reckless ruffians, who were eager to win their master's favour by fair means or foul . They crossed the Channel with astonishing See also:speed; two days after the king's outburst they stood before Becket at Canterbury and threatened him with death unless he should remove the excommunications and submit to his master . The archbishop answered with words as scornful as their own, and took his way to the See also:minster to attend See also:vespers . The knights went out to seek their weapons, and when armed followed him into the north See also:transept, where they fell upon him and brutally slew him with many sword-strokes (December 29, 1170) . Thomas had been given time to fly, and his followers had endeavoured to persuade him to do so . It seems that he deliberately courted martyrdom, anxious apparently that his death should deal the king the bitterest See also:blow that it was in his power to inflict (see BECKET) . Nothing could have put Henry in such an evil See also:plight; the whole world held him responsible for the murder, and he was forced to buy pardon for it by surrendering many Its results. of the advantages over the Church which he had hoped to gain by enforcing the Constitutions of Clarendon . Especially the See also:immunity of clerical offenders from the jurisdiction of lay courts had to be conceded; for the rest of the middle ages the clerk guilty of See also:theft or assault, See also:riot or murder, could plead his orders, and escape from the harsh justice of the king's officers to the milder penalties of the bishop's tribunal . " Benefit of clergy " became an intolerable See also:anomaly, all the more so because the privilege was extended in practice not only to all persons actually in minor orders, but to all who claimed them; any criminal who could read had a fair chance of being reckoned a clerk .

Another concession which Henry was forced to make was that the appeals to Rome of litigants in ecclesiastical suits should be freely permitted, provided that they made an oath that they were not contemplating any wrong to the English crown or the English church, a sufficiently easy condition . Such appeals became, and remained, innumerable and vexatious . Pope Alexander also extorted from the king a pledge that he would relinquish any customs prejudicial to the rights of the Church which had been introduced since his accession . To the pope this meant that the Constitutions of Clarendon were disavowed; to the king, who maintained that they were in the main a mere restatement of the customs of William I., it bore no such general interpretation . The points were fought out in detail, and not settled for many years . Practically it became the rule to regard suits regarding land, or presentations to benefices, as pertaining to the king's court, while those regarding See also:

probate, marriage and See also:divorce fell to the ecclesiastical tribunal . The question of election to bishoprics and abbacies went back to the stage which it had reached in the time of Henry I.; the choice was made in canonical form, by the chapters or the monasteries, but the king's recommendation was a primary factor in that choice . When the See also:electors disregarded it, as was sometimes the case, there was friction; a weak king was some-times overruled; a strong one generally got his way in the end . Becket's death, then, gave a qualified triumph to the church party, and he was rightly regarded as the successful champion of his See also:caste . Hence they held his death in grateful remembrance; the pope canonized him in 1173, and more churches were dedicated to him during the next two centuries than to any other English saint . In the eyes of most men his martyrdom had put the king so much in the wrong that the obstinacy and provocative conduct which had brought it about passed out of memory . His life of ostentatious austerity, and the courage with which he met his death, had caused all his faults to be forgotten .

Henry himself felt so much the invidious position in which he was placed that even after making his submission to the pope's legates at See also:

Avranches in 1172, he thought it necessary to do See also:penance before Becket's See also:tomb in 11i4, on which occasion he allowed himself to be publicly scourged by the monks of Canter-bury, who inflicted on him three cuts apiece . Between the outbreak of the king's quarrel with Becket at the council of Woodstock and the compromise of Avranches no less than ten years had elapsed—the best years of Henry's manhood . During this period his struggle with the Church had been but one of his distractions . His policy of imperial aggrandisement had been in progress . In 1163 he had completed the conquest of South Wales; the marcher lords were now in possession of the greater part of the land; the surviving Welsh princes did homage for the rest . In 1166 Henry got practical possession of the duchy of Brittany, the only remaining large district of western France which was not already in his hands . Conan, the last prince of the old Breton house, recognized him as his lord, and gave the hand of his heiress See also:Constance to Geoffrey, the king's third son . When the count died in 1171 Henry did not See also:transfer the administration of the land to the young pair, who were still but See also:children, but retained it for himself, and clung to it jealously long after his son came of age . Intermittent wars with France during these years were of small importance; Henry never pushed his suzerain to extremity . But the Angevin dominions were extended in a new direction, where no English king had yet made his power felt . The distressful island of Ireland was at this moment enjoying the anarchy which had reigned therein since the See also:dawn of history . Its state had grown even more unhappy than before since the Danish invasions of the loth century, which had notwelded the native' kingdoms into unity by pressure from without —as had been the case in England—but had simply complicated affairs, by setting up two or three alien principalities on the coastline .

As in England the vikin s had of I ~ g Ireland. destroyed much of the old civilization; but they had neither succeeded in occupying the whole country nor had they been absorbed by the natives . The state of the island was much like that of England in the days of the See also:

Heptarchy: occasionally a " High King " succeeded in forcing his rivals into a precarious submission; more usually there was not even a pretence of a central authority in the island, and the annals of objectless tribal wars formed its sole history . King Henry's eyes had been fixed on the faction-ridden land since the first years of his reign . As early as 1155 he had asked and obtained the approval of Pope See also:Adrian IV., the only Englishman who ever sat upon the papal throne, for a scheme for the conquest of Ireland . The Holy See had always regarded with distaste the existence in the West of a nation who repudiated the Roman obedience, and lived in schismatical independence, under local ecclesiastical customs which dated back to the 5th century, and had never been brought into line with those of the rest of Christendom . Hence it was natural to See also:sanction an invasion which might bring the Irish within the See also:fold . But Henry made no endeavour for many years to utilize the papal grant of Ireland, which seems to have been made under the preposterous " Donation of Constantine," the forged document which gave the bishop of Rome authority over all islands . It was conveniently forgotten that Ireland had never been in the Roman empire, and so had not even been Constantine's to give away . Not till 1168, thirteen years after the agreement with Pope Adrian, did the interference of the English king in Ireland actually begin . Even then he did not take the conquest in hand himself, but merely sanctioned a private See also:adventure of some of his subjects . Dermot MacMorrough, king of See also:Leinster, an unquiet Irish prince who for good reasons had been expelled by his neighbours, came to Henry's court in Normandy, proffering his allegiance in return for restoration to his lost dominions . The quarrel with Becket, and the French war, were both distracting the English king at the moment .

He could not spare attention for the matter, but gave Dermot leave to enlist auxiliaries among the turbulent barons of the South Welsh Marches . The Irish exile enlisted first the services of Maurice See also:

Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzstephen, two half-brothers, both noted fighting men, and afterwards those of Richard de See also:Clare, earl of Pembroke, an ambitious and impecunious magnate of broken fortunes . The two barons were promised lands, the earl a greater bribe—the hand of Dermot's only daughter Eva and the inheritance of the kingdom of Leinster . Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen crossed to Ireland in 1169 with a mere handful of followers . But they achieved victories of an almost incredible' completeness over Dermot's enemies . The undisciplined hordes of the king of See also:Ossory and the Danes of See also:Wexford could not stand before the Anglo-Norman tactics—the charge of the knights and the arrow-flight of the archers, skilfully combined by the adventurous invaders . Dermot was triumphant, and sent for more auxiliaries, aspiring to evict Roderic O'See also:Connor of See also:Connaught from the precarious throne of High King of Ireland . In 1170 the earl of Pembroke came over with a larger force, celebrated his marriage with Dermot's daughter, and commenced a series of conquests . He took See also:Waterford and Dublin from the Danes, and scattered the hosts of the native princes . Early in the next spring Dermot died, and Earl Richard, in virtue of his marriage, claimed the kingship of Leinster . He held his own, despite the assaults of a great army gathered by Roderic the High King, and of a viking fleet which came to help the conquered jarls of Waterford and Dublin . At this moment King Henry thought it necessary to interfere; if he let more time slip away, Earl Richard would become a powerful king and forget his English allegiance .

Accordingly, with a large army at his back, he landed at Water-See also:

ford in 1171 and marched on Dublin . Richard did him homage for Leinster, engaging to hold it as a palatine earldom, and not to claim the name or rights of a king . The other adventurers followed his example, as did, after an interval, most of the native Irish princes . Only Roderic of Connaught held aloof in- his western solitudes, asserting his independence . The clergy, almost without a murmur, submitted themselves to the Roman Church . Such was the first conquest of Ireland, a conquest too facile to be secure . Four years later it appeared to be completed by the submission of the king of Connaught, who did homage like the rest of the island chiefs . But their oaths were as easily broken as made, and the real subjection of the island was not to be completed for 400 years . What happened was that the Anglo-Norman invaders pushed gradually west, occupying the best of the land and holding it down by castles, but leaving the profitless bogs and mountains to the local princes . The king's See also:writ only ran in and about Dublin and a few other See also:harbour fortresses . Inland, the intruding barons and the Irish chiefs fought perpetually, with varying fortunes . The conquest hardly touched central and western See also:Ulster, and left half Connaught unsubdued: even in the immediate vicinity of Dublin the tribes of the See also:Wicklow Hills were never properly tamed .

The English conquest was incomplete; it failed to introduce either unity or strong governance . After a century and It half it began to recede rather than to advance . Many of the districts which had been overrun in the time of the Angevin kings were lost; many of the Anglo-Norman families intermarried with and became absorbed by the Irish; they grew as careless of their. allegiance to the crown as any of the native chiefs . The " Lordship of Ireland " was never a reality till the times of the Tudors . But as long as Henry II. lived this could not have been foreseen . The first generation of the conquerors pushed their advance with such Vigour that it seemed likely that they would complete the adventure . (See IRELAND: History.) It was in 1173, the year after his return from Ireland and his submission to the papal legates at Avranches, that King Henry became- involved in the first of a series of troublefi Rebellion which were to pursue him for the rest of his life—the of Henry's rebellions of his graceless sons . His wife Eleanor of sons . Aquitaine had See also:

borne him many children . Henry, the eldest surviving son, had already been crowned in 1170 as his father's colleague and successor; not only he; but Richard the second, and Geoffrey the third son, were now old enough to chafe against the restraints imposed upon them by an imperious and strong-willed father . The old king very naturally preferred to keep his dominions united under his own immediate government, but he had designated his eldest son'as his successor in England and Normandy, while Richard was to have his mother's heritage of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey's wife's See also:dowry, the duchy of Brittany, was due to him, now that he had reached the See also:verge of manhood . The princes were shamelessly eager to enter on their inheritance, the king was loath to understand that by conferring a titular See also:sovereignty on his sons he had given them a sort of right to expect some share of real power .

Their grudge against their father was sedulously fostered by their mother Eleanor, a See also:

clever and revengeful woman, who could never forgive her husband for keeping her in the background in political matters and insulting her by his frequent amours . Her old subjects in Aquitaine were secretly encouraged by her to follow her son Richard against his father, whom the barons of the south always regarded as an alien and an intruder . The Bretons were equally willing to rise in the name of Geoffrey and Constance against the See also:guardian who was keeping their prince too long waiting for his inheritance . In England the younger Henry had built himself up a party among the more turbulent section of the baronage, who remembered with regret and longing the See also:carnival of See also:licence which their fathers had enjoyed under King Stephen . See also:Secret agreements had also been made with the kings of France and Scotland, who were eager to take advantage of tha troubles which were about to break out . In 1173 the plot was complete, and Henry's three elder sons all took arms against him, See also:collecting Norman, Breton and Gascon rebels in great numbers, and being backed by a French army . At the same moment the king of Scots hie aded Northumberland,and the earls of Norfolk, Chester and Leicester rose in the name of the younger Henry . This was in all essentials a feudal rebellion of the old type . The English barons were simply desirous of getting rid of the strong and effective governance of the king, and the alleged wrongs of his sons were an empty excuse . For precisely the same reason all classes in England, save the more turbulent section of the baronage, remained faithful to the eldea king . The bureaucracy, the minor. landholders, the towns, and the clergy refused to join in the rising, and lent their aid for its suppression, because they were unwilling to see anarchy re-commence . Hence, though the rebellious princes made head for a time against their father abroad, the insurrection of their partisans in England was suppressed without much difficulty .

The justiciar, Richard de See also:

Lucy, routed the army of the earl of Leicester at Fornham in Snffolk, the castles of the rebel earls were subdued one after another, and William of Scotland was surprised and captured by a force of northern See also:loyalists while he was besieging See also:Alnwick (1173-1174) . The war lingered on for a space on the continent; but Henry raised the siege of Rouen, which was being attacked by his eldest son and the king of France; captured most of Richard's castles in Poitou, and then received the submission of his undutiful children . Showing considerable magnanimity, he promised to grant to each of them half the revenues of the lands in which they were his destined heirs, and a certain number of castles to hold as their own . Their allies fared less well; the rebel earls were subjected to heavy fines, and their strongholds were demolished . The king of Scots was forced to buy his liberty by doing homage to Henry for the whole of his kingdom . Queen Eleanor, whom her husband regarded as responsible for the whole rebellion, was placed in a sort of honourable captivity, or retirement, and denied her royal state . Henry appeared completely triumphant; but the fourteen years which he had yet to live were for the most part to be times of trouble and frustrated hopes . He was growing old; the indoinitable energy of his early career was beginning to slacken; his dreams of extended empire were vanishing . In the last period of his life he was more set on defending what he already enjoyed, and perfecting the details of administration in his realms, than on taking new adventures in hand . Probably the consciousness that his dominions would be broken up among his sons after his death had a disheartening effect upon him . At any rate his later years bear a considerable resemblance to the corresponding period of his grandfather's reign . The machinery of government which the one had sketched out the other completed .

Under Henry II. the circuits of the itinerant justices became regular instead of intermittent; the judicial functions of the Curia Regis were delegated to a permanent See also:

committee of that body which took form as the court of king's See also:bench (Curia Regis in Banco) . The sheriffs were kept very tightly in hand, and under incessant supervision; once in 1170 nearly the whole body of them were dismissed for misuse of their office . The shire levies which had served the king so well against the feudal rebels of 1173 were reorganized, with uniformity of weapons and See also:armour, by the Assize of Arms of 1181 . There was also a considerable amount of new legislation with the See also:object of protecting the minor subjects of the crown, and the system of trial by jurors was advanced to the detriment of the absurd old practices of trial by See also:ordeal and trial by See also:wager of battle . The 13th-century See also:jury was a rough and See also:primitive institution, which acted at once as accuser, See also:witness and judge—but it was at any rate preferable to the chances of the red-hot See also:iron, or the See also:club of the duellist . The best See also:proof that King Henry's orderly if autocratic regime was appreciated at its true value by his English subjects, is that when the second series of rebellions raised by his undutiful sons began in 1182, there was no stir whatever in England, though in Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine the barons rose in full force to support the young princes, whose success would mean the triumph of particularism and the destruction of the Angevin empire . Among the many troubles which broke down King Henry's strong will and great bodily vigour in those unhappy years, rebellion in England was not one . For this reason he was almost constantly abroad, leaving the administration of the one loyal section of his realm to his great justiciar . Hence the story of the unnatural war between father and sons has no part in English history . It is but necessary to See also:note that the younger Henry died in 1183, that Geoffrey perished by See also:accident at a See also:tournament in 1186, and that in 1189, when the old king's strength finally gave out, it was Richard who was leading the rebellion, to which See also:John, the youngest and least worthy of the four undutiful sons, was giving secret countenance . It was the See also:discovery of the treachery of this one child whom he had deemed faithful, and loved over well, that broke Henry's heart . " Let things go as they will; I have nothing to care for in the world now," he murmured on his death-bed, and turned his face to the wall to breathe his last .

The death of the younger Henry had made Richard heir to all his father's lands from the Tweed to the Bidassoa save Brittany, f khard t which had fallen to See also:

Arthur, the infant son of the un- lucky Geoffrey . John, the new king's only surviving brother, had been declared " Lord of Ireland " by his father in 1185, but Henry had been forced to remove him for persistent misconduct, and had left him nothing more than a titular sovereignty in the • newly conquered island . In this Richard confirmed him at his accession, and gave him a more tangible endowment by allowing him to marry See also:Isabella, the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester, and by bestowing on him the honour of Lancaster and the shires of Derby, See also:Devon, See also:Corn-wall and See also:Somerset . The gift was over-liberal and the recipient was thankless; but John was distinctly treated as a vassal, not granted the position of an independent sovereign . Of all the See also:medieval kings of England, Richard I . (known as Coeur de See also:Lion) cared least for his realm on the English side of the Channel; and spent least time within it . Though he chanced to have been born in See also:Oxford, he was far more of a foreigner than his father; his soul was that of a south French baron, not that of an English king . Indeed he looked upon England more as a rich See also:area for taxation than as the centre of a possible empire . His ambitions were continental: so far as he had a policy at all it was Angevin—he would gladly have increased his. dominions on the side of the upper Loire and See also:Garonne, and was set on keeping in check the young king of France, Philip See also:Augustus,, though the latter had been his ally during his long struggle with. his father . Naturally the policy of Richard as a newly crowned king was bound to differ from that which he had pursued as a rebellious prince . As regards his personal character he has been described, not without truth, as a typical man of his time and nothing more . He was at heart a chivalrous adventurer delighting in war for war's See also:sake; he was not destitute of a conscience—his undutiful conduct to his father sat heavily on his soul when that father was once dead; he had a strong sense of knightly honour and a certain magnanimity of soul in times of crisis; but he was harsh, thriftless, often cruel, generally lacking in firmness and continuity of purpose, always careless of his subjects' welfare when it interfered with his pleasure or his ambitions of the moment .

If he had,stayed long in England he would have made himself hated; but he was nearly always absent; it was only as a reckless and spasmodic extorter of taxation, not as a personal tyrant, that he was known on the English side of the Channel . At the opening of his reign Richard had one all-See also:

engrossing desire; he was set on going forth to the Crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem which had been proclaimed in 1187, crusade. partly from chivalrous instincts, partly as a penance crusade. for his misconduct to his father . He visited England in 1189 only in order to be crowned, and to raise as much money for the expedition as he could procure . He obtained enormous sums, by the most unwise and iniquitous expedients, mainly by selling to any buyer that he could find valuable pieces of crown property, high offices and dangerous rights and privileges . The king of Scotland bought for 15,000 marks a See also:release from the homage to the English crown which had been imposed upon him by Henry II . The chancellorship, one of the two chief offices in the realm, was sold to William See also:Longchamp, bishop of Ely, for £3000, though he was well known as a tactless, arrogant and incapable person . The earldom of Northumberland, with palatine rights, was bought by Hugh Puiset, bishop of Durham . Countless, other instances of unwise bargains could be quoted . Having raised every See also:penny that he could procure by legal or illegal means, Richard crossed the Channel, and embarked at See also:Marseilles with a great army on the 7th of August 1190 . The only See also:security which he had for the safety of his dominions in his See also:absence was that his most dangerous See also:neighbour, the king of France, was also setting out on the Crusade, and- that his brother John, whose shifty and treacherous character gave sure promise of trouble, enjoyed a well-merited unpopularity both in England and in the continental dominions of the crown . Richard's crusading exploits have no connexion with the history of England . He showed himself a good knight and a capable general—the capture of See also:Acre and the victory of, See also:Arsuf werehighly to his See also:credit as a soldier .

But he quarrelled with all the other princes of the Crusade, and showed himself as lacking in tact and See also:

diplomatic ability as he was full of military capacity . The king of France departed in wrath, to raise trouble at home; the army gradually melted away, the prospect of recovering Jerusalem disappeared, and finally Richard must be reckoned fortunate in that he obtained from See also:Sultan See also:Saladin a peace, by which the coastland of Palestine was preserved for the Christians, while the Holy City and the inland was sacrificed (Sept . 2, 1192) . While returning to his dominions by the way of the Adriatic, the king was shipwrecked, and found himself obliged to enter the dominions of See also:Leopold, duke of See also:Austria, a prince whom he had offended at Acre during the Crusade . Though he disguised himelf,.he was detected by his old enemy and imprisoned . The duke then: sold him to the emperor Henry VI., who found pre-texts for forcing him to buy hisfreedom by the promise of a See also:ransom of 150,000 marks . It was not till February 1194 that he got loose, after paying. a considerable instalment of this vast sum . The main bulk of it, as was to be expected, ,was never made over; indeed it could not have been raised, as Richard was well aware . But, once :free, he had no scruple in See also:cheating the imperial. brigand of his blackmail . - For five years Richard was away from his dominions as a crusader or a- See also:captive . There was plenty of trouble during his absence, but less than might have been expected. john's The strong governance set up by Henry II. proved treachery. competent to maintain itself, even when Richard's ministers were tactless and his brother treacherous . A generation before it is certain that England would have been convulsed by a great feudal rising when such an opportunity was granted to the barons .

Nothing of the kind happened between 1190 and 1194 . The chancellor William Longchamp made himself odious by his vanity and autocratic behaviour, and was overthrown in 1191 by a general rising, which was headed by Prince John, and approved by Walter, archbishop of Rouen, whom Richard had sent to England with a See also:

commission to assume the justiciarship if William should prove impossible as an administrator . Longchamp fled to the continent, and John then hoped to seize on supreme power, even perhaps to grasp the crown . But he was bitterly, disappointed• to find that he could gather few sup-porters; the justiciar and the bureaucrats of the Curia Regis would give him no assistance; they worked on honestly in the name of the absent king . Among the baronage hardly a man would commit himself to See also:treason . In vain John hi-red foreign mercenaries, garrisoned his castles, and leagued himself with the king of France when the latter returned from the Crusade . It was only the news of his brother's captivity in Austria which gave the intriguing prince a transient See also:hope of success . Boldly asserting that Richard would never be seen alive again he went to France, and did homage to King Philip for Normandy and Aquitaine, as if they were already his own . Then he crossed to England with a band of mercenaries, and seized See also:Windsor and Wallingford castles . But no one rose to aid him, and his garrisons were soon being besieged by. loyal levies, headed by the j-usticiar and byHubertW alter,thenewly elected archbishop of Canterbury . At the same time King Philip's invasion of Normandy was repulsed by the barons of the duchy . Richard's faithful ministers, despite of all their distractions, succeeded in raising the first instalment of his ransom by grinding taxation—a See also:fourth part of the revenue of all lay persons, a tithe from ecclesiastical land, was raised, and in addition much church See also:plate was seized, though the officials who exacted it were themselves prelates .

John and Philip wrote to the emperor to beg him to detain his captive at all See also:

costs, but Henry VI. pocketed the ransom money and set Richard free . He reached England in March 1194, just in time to receive the surrender of the last two castles which were holding out in his treacherous brother's name . With astonishing, and indeed misplaced, magnanimity, Richard pardoned his brother, when he made a grovelling submission, and restored him to his lordship of Ireland and to a great part of his English lands . The king abode for no more than three months in England; he got himself recrowned at Winchester, apparently to wipe out the stain of his See also:German captivity and of an enforced homage which the emperor had extorted from him . Then he raised a heavy tax from his already impoverished subjects, sold a number of official posts and departed to France—never to return, though he had still five years to live . He left behind Archbishop See also:Hubert Walter as justiciar, a faithful if a somewhat high-handed minister . Richard's one ruling See also:passion was now to punish Philip of France for his unfriendly conduct during his absence . He plunged into a war with this clever and shifty prince, which lasted—with certain short breaks of truces and See also:treaties—till his death . He wasted his considerable military talents in a series of skirmishes and sieges which had no great results, and after spending countless treasures and harrying many regions, perished obscurely by a See also:wound from a cross-See also:bow-See also:bolt, received while beleaguering Challis, a castle of a rebellious lord of Aquitaine, the See also:viscount of See also:Limoges (April 6, 1199) . During these years of petty strife England was only reminded at intervals of her king's existence by his intermittent demands English for money, which his ministers did their best to satisfy. coast Ito- The machine of government continued to work without uonalde- his supervision . It has been observed that, from one veiopment. point of view, England's worst kings have been her best; that is to say, a sovereign like Richard, who persistently neglected his duties, was unconsciously the See also:foster father of constitutional liberty . For his ministers, bureaucrats of an orderly See also:frame of mind, devised for their own convenience rules and customs which became permanent, and could be cited against those later kings who interfered more actively .in the details of domestic governance .

We may trace back some small beginnings of a constitution to the time of Henry II.—himself an absentee though not on the scale of his son . But the ten years of Richard's reign were much more fruitful in the growth of institutions which were destined to curb the power of the crown . His justiciars, and especially Hubert Walter, were responsible for several innovations which were to have far-spreading results . The most important was an extension of the use of juries into the See also:

province of taxation . When the government employs committees chosen by the taxpayers to estimate and assess the details of taxation, it will find it hard to go back to arbitrary exactions . Such a practice had been first seen when Henry II., in his last year, allowed the celebrated " Saladin Tithe " for the service of the crusade to be assessed by local jurors . In Richard's reign the practice became regular . In especial when England was measured out anew for the great carucage of 1197 —a tax on every ploughland which replaced the rough calculation of Domesday Book—knights elected by the shires shared in all the calculations then made for the new See also:impost . Another constitutional advance was that which substituted "coroners," knights chosen by the county court, for the king's old factotum the sheriff in the See also:duty of holding the " pleas of the crown," i.e. in making the preliminary investigations into such offences as riot, murder or injury to the king's rights or property . The sheriff's natural impulse was to indict every man from whom money could be got; the new coroners were influenced by other motives than financial rapacity, and so were much more likelyto deal equitably with accusations . The towns also profited in no small degree from Richard's absence and impecuniosity . One of the most important charters to London, that which granted the city the right of constituting itself a " See also:commune " and choosing itself a See also:mayor, goes back to October 1191, the troubled month of Longchamp's expulsion from England .

It was given by Prince John and the ministers, who were then supporting him against the arrogant chancellor, to secure the adherence of London . Richard on his return seems to have allowed it to stand . Lincoln was also given the right of electing its own magistrates in 1194, and many smaller places owe grants of more or less of municipal privilege to Hubert Walter acting in the name of the absent king . The English nation began to have some conception of a regime of fixed custom, in which its rights depended on some other source than the sovereign's personal caprice . The times, it may be remembered, were not unprosperous . There had been no serious civil war since the baronial rising of 1173 . Prince John's turbulence had only affected the neighbourhood of a few royal castles . Despite of the frequent and heavy demands for money for the king's service, wealth seems to have been increasing, and prosperity to have been widespread . Strong and regular governance had on the whole prevailed ever since Henry II. triumphed over baronial anarchy . Richard's queen, Berengaria of See also:

Navarre, had borne him no children . At the moment of his premature death his nearest kinsmen were his worthless brother John, and the boy Arthur of Brittany, the heir of Geoffrey, the third son Accession of Henry II . On his death-bed the king had designated of John .

John as his successor, holding apparently that a See also:

bad ruler who was at least a grown man was preferable to a child . John's claim prevailed both in Normandy and in England, though in each, as we are told, there were those who considered it a doubtful point whether an elder brother's son had not a better right than a younger brother . But the ministers recognized John, and the baronage and nation acquiesced, though with little enthusiasm . In the lands farther south, however, matters went otherwise . The dowager duchess Constance of Brittany raised her son's claim, and sent an army into Anjou, and all down the Loire many of the nobles adhered to his cause . The king of France announced that he should support them, and allowed Arthur to do him homage for Anjou, Maine and Touraine . There would have been trouble in Aquitaine also, if the aged Queen Eleanor had not asserted her own primary and indefeasible right to her ancestral duchy, and then declared that she transferred it to her best loved son John . Most of her subjects accepted her decision, and Arthur's faction made no head in this quarter . It seemed for a space as if the new king would succeed in retaining the whole of his brother's inheritance, for King Philip very meanly allowed himself to be bought off by the cession of the county of See also:Evreux, and, when his troops were withdrawn, the Angevin rebels were beaten down, and the duchess of Brittany had to ask for peace for her son . But it had not long been granted, when John proceeded to throw away his advantage by acts of reckless impolicy . Though cunning, he was destitute alike of foresight and of self-control; he could never discern the way in which his conduct would be judged by other men, because he lacked even the rudiments of a conscience . Ere he had been many months on the throne he divorced his wife, Isabella of Gloucester, alleging that their marriage had been illegal because they were within the prohibited degrees .

This act offended the English barons, but in choosing a new queen John gave much greater offence abroad; he carried off Isabella of See also:

Angouleme from her affianced husband, Hugh of See also:Lusignan, the son of the count of la See also:Marche, his greatest vassal in northern Aquitaine, and married her despite the precontract . This seems to have been an amorous freak, not the result of any deep-laid policy . Roused by the insult the Lusignans took arms, and a great part of the barons of Poitou joined them . They appealed for aid to Philip of France, who judged it opportune to intervene once See also: