3) Henry l (1100-35)

Pre-reading task: What is Henry I famous for?

At the time of William Rufus's sudden death, his younger brother Henry was 32 years old. Nicknamed ‘Beaucler’, or 'fine scholar', by later genera­tions, Henry enjoyed a reputation for learn­ing which was flatteringly exaggerated during his lifetime. However, he could certainly read and write and speak some English, unlike his father and brothers, and his interest in Saxon law and judicial reforms earned him the name of 'the Lion of Justice' from contemporary writers.

The means by which Henry became King of England in the summer of 1100 revealed his devious intelligence. Under an agreement between the Conqueror's two elder sons, Robert of Normandy and William Rufus of England, each was the other's heir. When Rufus set out on his last, fatal hunting-party Duke Robert was known to be on his way home from the Crusades, having acquired not only a reputation for chivalry but a fair young wife, who might be expected to bear him sons. With Rufus lying dead and Robert still some distance from Normandy and England, Henry acted swiftly. He took possession of the Treasury at Winchester and then galloped to London to have himself proclaimed King of England instead of Robert.

The basis of Henry's claim was that he had been 'born in the purple': his birth had taken place in England, after the Conquest, when his father was the reigning king, instead of merely Duke of Normandy. According to the custom of some parts of feudal Europe, this would give Henry the right to inherit the throne, rather than his elder brothers. It was thus as the Conqueror's heir, and not William Rufus's, that he was crowned King Henry in Westminster Abbey on 5 August IIOO.

To support his uncertain claim, Henry took care to present himself at the beginning of his reign as a good and just king. He issued a charter of liberties, to be read in every shire of the realm, in which he promised to restore the laws of William I and Edward the Confessor, and right the wrongs done by his brother. As proof of his good faith, he imprisoned the unpopular Ranulf Flambard and began to restore the power of the Church, inviting Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to return from exile, and appointing new abbots and bishops to the offices which had been left vacant by Rufus. In November 1100 he took a major political and dynastic step: he married Edith, the sister of King Edgar of Scotland, and a descendant of Alfred the Great. Many of the Norman barons sneered at their king for allying himself with a princess of Saxon descent, but Henry understood the value of diplomatic marriages. By his own, he brought together the royal and ducal blood of England, Scotland and Normandy in his descendants, secured a period of peace with Scotland, and gratified his English subjects.

Within a year of Henry's coronation, as expected, Duke Robert of Normandy invaded England in an attempt to claim the throne. He had considerable support among King Henry’s Norman subjects, and he brought with him a powerful fighting force; but the younger brother had the advantage of the sharper wits. In a confrontation on the road to London, with their armies drawn up in readiness to fight, King Henry offered Duke Robert terms which included an amnesty for his followers in England, a yearly payment of 3,000 marks for himself and help with his territorial ambitions on the Continent. Swayed by these promises, Robert foolishly chose to concede, and returned in peace to his duchy. Henry proceeded to punish the pardoned barons by falsely accusing them of other crimes, and subjecting them to ruinous fines. The greatest of them, Robert of Belleme, Earl of Shrewsbury, was eventually banished from the kingdom, but he continued to work against Henry from the shelter of his estates in Normandy. The conflict between the two brothers continued to simmer, fuelled by the activities of interested parties, such as Robert of Belleme, until it was finally resolved in 1106, in battle near Tinchebrai. This decisive confrontation on Norman soil, between the sons of William the Conqueror, took place just 40 years after Hastings, at Tinchebrai, however, the Duke of Normandy was beaten and taken prisoner by the King of England. The duchy and the kingdom were united under one ruler again, and for the rest of his life Robert was Henry's captive in England.

For all his literacy and intelligence, Henry I was in some ways the least admirable of the Conqueror's sons. Robert was weak and ineffectual, Rufus had been gross, but Henry was capable of deliberate cruelty. In 1090, a prisoner who had betrayed an oath of allegiance was pushed off the ramparts at Rouen, not merely on Henry's orders, but but by his own hand. Later in the reign, as a reprisal for the blinding of a young hostage by one of his sons-in-law, Henry gave permission for his own little grandaughters to be hideously mutilated by the dead youth's vengeful father. Even by the standards of a brutal age, Henry I was a king to be feared.

Once his position on the throne was secure, he departed from some of the promises which he had made at the time of his coronation. Rather than restoring old laws he revised the legal system of the realm to extend his power, curb the growing might of the unruly barons, and make the administration of justice and taxation more efficient. He chose his servants well, finding careful, trustworthy men such as Bishop Roger of Salisbury, who rose from humible beginnings to become Chancellor, Treasurer and the King's right-hand man. It was Bishop Roger who built up the new court at Winchester for the collection of royal revenues; calculations were made there by means of counters on a large chequered cloth, and so the term 'Court of the Exchequer' came into being. To the king's council, or Curia Regis, Henry gave new srength and centralised authority. From this governing body, made up of leading dignitaries, such as barons, tenants-in-chief and bishops, the institutions of Parliament, the King’s Bench and the Privy Council were lately to develop. The laws enforced by the Curia Regis often carried dire penalties, from heavy fines to hanging; but if the administration of justice was harsh under King Henry I, it was at least meted out even-handedly to Norman and Saxon alike, and gave some protection to the humblest of his subjects.

Henry's early undertaking 'to make the holy Church of God free' was not fulfilled. Having invited Anselm back from exile in 1100, he found himself in conflict with his Archbishop over the issue of lay investiture. While Henry was determined to maintain his right to appoint and invest bishops, installing them in office himself, as a necessary aspect of royal power, Anselm insisted that he must abide by recent papal rulings which denied such spiritual authority to the king. In 1107 under threat of excommunication, Henry agreed to compromise: he renounced his right of investiture, but retained his claim to bishops' homage for the lands which went with their offices. Officially, at least, something of the mystic power had gone out of monarchy. The dispute had been conducted without anger between the King and the Archbishop, and Henry always maintained an outward show of respect for the Church, but on Anselm's death in 1109 Henry reverted to one of Rufus's practices – he left the Archbishopric of Canterbury vacant for the next five years.

It was a sad irony that Henry I who fathered some 20 bastard children, should ended his life without a legitimate male heir and so left England a legacy of uncertainty over the succession. In November 1120, while crossing to England from Normandy in the White Ship, his only legitimate son William, was drowned. Henry was a widower at the time; but though he quickly remarried, his new Queen, Adelaide of Louvain, bore him no children. It was thus to his only daughter, Matilda, that Henry arranged to leave his kingdom and his duchy: and to this end he married her in 1128 to Geoffrey, the 16-year-old son of the Count of Anjou.

By securing this alliance with Normandy's traditional enemy he hoped to strengthen Matilda's hold over the troubled duchy; in the event, it weakened her position as ruler of England, where the Norman barons had no wish to become the subjects of a queen with a husband of the hated house of Anjou. By the summer of 1135, the long period of stability which Henry I had brought to England was at an end and fighting had already broken out. While out hunting in Normandy, Henry fell ill - the result, it was decided, of eating too many of the small eels called lampreys. On 1 December 1135 he died, and soon all England was in the grip of civil war.

(from “The Kings and Queens of Great Britain” by Josephine Ross, L. 1982)

Three days after the death of Rufus, Henry had himself crowned King.

C+He set the precedent of proclaiming a charter upon his accession, By this he sought to conciliate those powerful forces in Church and State which had been alienated by the rapacity and tactlessness of his predecessor. He guaranteed that the rights of the baronage and the Church should be respected. At the same time, having seen the value of Saxon loyalty in the reigns of his father and his brother, he promised the conquered race good justice and the laws of Edward the Confessor. ... much to the suspicion of the Norman barons, Henry made a marriage with Matilda, niece of [David] the last surviving Saxon claimant to the Northern English throne and descendant of the old English line of kings. The barons, mollified by the charter, accepted this decisive step.

The new queen, who became known as Good Queen Maud, was the grand­daughter of Edmund Ironside, the son of Aethelred the Unready who had been King of England before Cnut. But she wasn't English. Her father was Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots, who had been killed in England. The marriage did two things: in theory at least, it gave Henry a respectability which was convenient and it neatly tied a knot with the Scottish kings. But for the moment, Henry had a family difficulty which was less easy to sort out. His brother, Robert, wanted Henry's blood.

C+Henry was now ready to face Robert whenever he should return. In September IIOO this event occurred. Immediately the familiar incidents of feudal rebellion were renewed m England, and for the next six years the King had to fight to make good his title under his father's will… in 1105, having consolidated his position in England, Henry crossed the Channel. In September 1106, the most important battle since Hastings was fought at Tinchebrai. King Henry's victory was complete. Duke Robert was carried to his perpetual prison in England. Normandy acknowledged Henry's authority and the control of Anglo-Norman policy passed from Rouen to London. The Saxons, who had fought heartily for Henry, regarded this battle as their military revenge for Hastings. ... a certain broad measure of unity was re-established in the Island.

Henry introduced many long-lasting reforms and he took nothing, certainly not unity, for granted, especially when tragedy settled on the family.

C+ The King had a son, his heir apparent, successor indisputable. On this young man of seventeen many hopes and assurances were founded. In the winter of 1120, he was coming back from a visit to France in the royal yacht called the White Ship. Off the coast of Normandy the vessel struck a rock. The Prince had indeed been embarked in a boat. He returned to rescue his sister. In this crisis... at the ship's side so many leaped into the boat that it sank. Two men remained afloat, the ship's butcher and a knight. 'Where is the Prince?' asked the knight above the waves. 'All are drowned' replied the butcher. 'Then,' said the knight, 'all is lost for England.' None dared tell it to the King. When at last he heard the tidings, 'he never smiled again'. This was more than the agony of parental grief for an only son. The spectre of... disputed succession glared again upon England. The forces of anarchy grew, and every noble in his castle balanced his chances upon who would succeed to the Crown.

In the 112Os, the time of the White Ship disaster as it came to be called the Scots claimed territory as far south as Lancashire. The King at the time was David. Under him Scotland reached the zenith of its powers. In 1124 David succeeded his brother, Alexander, as King of all Scotland. He became an important figure in the holding together of diese islands from the north to the south. Until Alexander's death the two brothers had ruled jointly; Alexander ruled north of the Firth or Forth, David from the Lowlands south to Cumbria. As The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:

* On 23 April, King Alexander of Scotland passed away, and David, his brother, who was Earl of Northamptonshire, succeeded to the kingdom, and held them both together, the kingdom of Scotland and the earldom in England ... In 1126, King Henry held his court at Christmas in Windsor. David, the King of the Scots, was present, and there he [Henry] obtained an oath from archbishops,bishops,abbots,earls and all those thanes present, that England and Normandy should pass after his death into the possession of his daughter. Her name was Matilda, although the English later called her Maud. Her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, was dead and now her father, Henry, the great English reformer, wanted her to be queen and, it seems, married. And after that Christmas at Windsor Matilda was remarried, as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports:

*King Henry then sent her to Normandy, and with her went her brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and married her to Geoffrey Martel, he who was the son of the Count of Anjou. This marriage displeased all the French and all the English.

Geoffrey Martel was only fourteen and Matilda was twenty-five and, once again, two apparently lesser figures in history contributed significantly. Geoffrey and Matilda had three children. One of them, born on 5 March 1133 was baptized Henry. This child became Henry II, known in English history as Henry Plantagenet. But before his accession much happened, including the Laws of King Henry I. By later standards, diese laws were hardly laws at all. Jurisprudence was not contained in an Act of Parliament, there was no such thing. Diese Laws of Henry I were simply passed to his judges by hand, or even by word of mouth. In them there was a clear statement that Edward the Confessor's memory would be honoured.

Henry didn't want to give any impression of breaking with the past, particularly with the ways and the image left by Edward the Confessor. The Confessor was so blessed in English memory, that it was in this, the twelfth century, that he was canonized. St Edward became the patron saint of the English peoples and remained so until St George, during the Hundred Years’ War.

C+There survived in mediaeval Europe a tradition of kingship more exalted than that of feudal overlord. The king was not merely the apex of the feudal pyramid, but the anointed Viceregent of God upon earth. Henry [I] now set himself to inject this idea of kingship into the Anglo-Norman state; and in so doing he could not help reviving, whether consciously or not, the English conception of the King as the keeper of the peace and guardian of the people. Henry realized that royal servants who were members of the minor baronage, if formed into a permanent nucleus, would act as a brake upon the turbulence of the greater feudatories. Here were the first beginnings, tentative, modest, but insinuating, of a civil administrative machinery, which, within its limits, was more efficient and persistent than anything yet known. Diese officials soon developed a vested interest of their own ... and created what was in fact an official class. There was no distinction in feudal society between the private and public resources of the Crown. The King in feudal theory was only the greatest of the landowners of State. The sheriffs of counties collected not only the taxes and fines accruing to the Crown, but also the income from the royal estates, and they were responsible, when they appeared yearly at the royal treasury, for the exact payment of what was due from each of their counties. Henry's officials created a special organ to deal with the sheriffs, and the business the sheriffs transacted. This was the Exchequer. It took its name from the chequered boards used for greater ease of calculation in Roman numerals, and its methods included the keeping of written records, among them the important documents called the Pipe Rolls because they were kept rolled up in the shape of a pipe. Thus the King gained a surer grip over the finances of the realm and the earliest specialized department of royal administration was born.

Henry[I] took care that the sheriffs of the counties were brought under an increasingly strict control, and several commissions were appointed during the reign to revise their personnel. In troublous times the office of sheriff tended to fall into the hands of powerful barons and to become hereditary. The King saw to it that whenever possible his own men held diese key positions.

So for more than thirty years, under Henry I, England lived in relative peace and the Saxon population was largely reconciled to Norman rule, Towards the end of his life, Henry concerned himself with the succession. By now he was in his sixties, an old man for the times, and a happy grandfather. But in Normandy, his daughter and son-in-law, Matilda and Geoffrey, were at the centre of a rebellion against him.

C+The English mood has never in later ages barred queens, and perhaps queens have served them best. But here at this time was a deep division, and a quarrel in which all parties and all interests could take sides. The gathered political arrays awaited the death of the King. The whole interest of the baronage, supported at this juncture by the balancing weight of the Church, was to limit the power of the Crown and regain their control of their own districts. Henry I expired on 1 December 1135, in the confident hope that his daughter Maud [Matilda] would carry on his work.

Henry's corpse was embalmed and carried to Reading where it was buried in the monastery church. For almost thirty-six years Henry had ruled England, and for twenty-nine of them, Normandy. But although he had managed to hold back his enemies, he had never satisfied them. Never brought them on his side. The barons had suffered because of what they saw as his dictatorial style. Yet it says something for his reign that he survived for so long, especially as the baronage was, on many occasions, at breaking point. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that 'He was a good man, and was held in great awe. In his days no man dared to wrong another. He made peace for man and beast.' But after Henry's death there was to be little peace. Henry was barely embalmed, when Stephen, his nephew set out to claim the throne of England.

(from “This Sceptred Isle” by Christopher Lee, L. 1990)