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IV.

CHAP. princes so powerful and so really independent as the Williams and the Henrys could have stooped so long to recognise themselves inferior to, and dependent upon, suzerains with so little real weight, right, or power as the Capetians. So, however, it was. And Henry the Second especially, holding immense and widely-separated portions of France, full of a feudal noblesse possessing the means and anxious for pretexts to rebel, could not afford to give this noblesse the excuse of his failing in a feudal duty to his traditional superior. It would have been better, however, to have braved all these inconveniences and boldly asserted independence; for by degrees the kings of France formed and raised their Court of Peers for the judgment of all feudally subject to them. And although this was but a mockery of justice, peers seldom attending, and the king being judge as well as a party in his court, nevertheless, the name and the form imposed upon the public. And the Plantagenets, suffering themselves to be assimilated to the barons of France, gave to future French sovereigns a show of right in confiscating, grasping, and despoiling the provinces, not of a subject lord, but of a brother sovereign.

A sense of the dignity of the kings of France seemed, however, to paralyse the Plantagenets. When Henry first established himself after his marriage, Louis, leaguing with the Princes of Anjou and of Champagne (for the younger Plantagenet was jealous of the elder), made an attempt on Normandy. Henry easily repelled it; but instead of vigorously pursuing and punishing his foe, he merely sought and of course obtained a truce. Louis, on his side, was equally afraid to strike. It had been arranged that Geoffrey, Henry's brother, should succeed to Anjou when Henry inherited England. Henry would not consent to this arrangement. Geoffrey broke into open war, and Louis promised to support him, but, instead of doing so, he suffered Geoffrey to be crushed.

The Duchy of Nantes, forming a large portion of Brittany, gave itself soon after to Geoffrey. The young prince dying, Henry claimed it as his heir, and, strange to say, proposed to exercise his authority and pronounce judgment in the case as Hereditary Seneschal of France -a title which the Duke of Anjou had borne. Louis, instead of resenting, acquiesced; and not only allowed Henry to appropriate the Duchy of Nantes, but gave, at the same time, in marriage to the English king's son, Henry, yet a child, his daughter Margaret, and promised the Norman Vexin as a dowry.

One acquisition seemed to give Henry but fresh appetite for another. He laid claim to Toulouse, as part of the Duchy of Aquitaine. The Toulousans recurred to Louis, whose sister Constance had married their duke; and when Henry appeared with his army before the walls of Toulouse, he found that Louis had taken a sudden resolve and thrown himself into the town to defend it. Henry desisted, in consequence, from the attack. But in revenge, on his return to Normandy he caused his son Henry, betrothed to Margaret of France, to be married to her, and thus obtained of the Templars the surrender of Gisors, the chief fortress of the Vexin. The King of France responded by fortifying Chaumont, another fortress, and was supported by the Count of Flanders. Henry, however, besieged and took Chaumont, and fifty-four knights in it. Both kings then assembled their forces; but "at the moment," says Matthew Paris, "that a battle in the open field seemed imminent between them, they of a sudden concluded a peace at Trencavel." The kings, in fact, were equally unable to maintain peace or to prosecute a war.

One cause of Henry's forbearance might have been the circumstance of the King of France having no son, whilst the heir of the English throne had married one of his daughters. The second queen of Louis having died about this time in giving birth to a daughter, the

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CHAP. king married a third wife, selecting Adele, youngest daughter of the Count of Blois. Henry displayed anger in learning this marriage, but it swelled into disappointment, when, in 1165, the new queen gave birth to a son, the future Philip Augustus.

Henry's quarrel with the Clergy and the Church was that which more than counterbalanced all his superiority to the King of France, and rendered the English monarchs henceforth the weaker in the struggle. France was in a remarkable degree priest-ridden. Chivalry, which had menaced to develope itself in a spirit independent of the clergy, had by no means persevered in that direction. Failure in the Holy Land had humbled the pride of the adventurous knights, and in the wars which took place throughout the countries of Europe, fighting had been rather a mockery than a reality. When armies met, they generally separated without a blow, or with blows that slew but one or two. Feudal antagonists were too closely connected and too similarly interested to deal each other mortal hurt. And except at a siege serious fighting seemed abandoned. This was one of the circumstances that paralysed Henry's power and made him distrust feudal armies, to employ mercenary soldiers in preference. Yet to keep a sufficient force of these on the field was an effort too great for his resources. The monks seemed to have completely eclipsed or absorbed the warriors; the two professions mingled, and the Templars became the true heroes of the day and the representatives of the age.

It was at the same time that Henry came to an unlucky quarrel with the Archbishop A'Becket. The king defended but what were afterwards universally allowed to be the rights of royalty and of lay authority. But Becket, in opposing and withstanding this, assumed almost in life the prestige of a martyr. The late defeat and ruin of Frederic Barbarossa, attributed to his hos tility towards the Pope, had made impression upon

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France, and was considered to corroborate the belief, CHAP. that it was impious to offer any opposition to the Church. The King of France was a monk and churchman in his belief, his pretensions, and his policy; and the aristocracy of France seemed to have sunk to the same level. When Henry therefore not only quarrelled with the archbishop and exiled him, but afterwards caused his murder, he was looked upon as a monster, who was soon to be visited with Divine wrath, and consequently with destruction and defeat. The Aquitains were the first to take advantage of this odium incurred by Henry to rebel. And that monarch, so wise in his legislation at home, and so conciliating to the English classes and English interests, must certainly have shown some lack of wisdom in the administration of his foreign dominions. English habits of taxation were no doubt more onerous: England's judicial functionaries rude: the English mode of raising scutage in money from the noblesse in lieu of military service, and this expended on mercenary troops accustomed to rapine and indiscipline, must have been another cause. But certain at least is the fact, that his continental and especially his southern dominions, were ill-affected to the British monarch.

Louis, however, by no means took at first that advantage of Henry's embarrassment that an astute and selfish prince would have done. He embraced Becket's cause as that of Heaven. The French monarch, and the Pope, then in France, were but one upon the question. But when Henry came forward with reasonable submission, and offered those equitable terms which Becket could not fairly refuse, but would not frankly accept, Louis and the Pope both turned against him. The quarrel was, like that of Hildebrand and the German emperor, interminable; the pretensions of king and church irreconcilable. It ended therefore, as it alone

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could do, by the death of the prelate and a consequent abandonment of extreme pretensions on either side.

The mild and conciliating character of Louis the Seventh during Henry's quarrel with Becket drew the monarchs and their families together, and, on one occasion, at Montmirail, Henry and his sons did direct homage to the King of France - Henry, the eldest, for Normandy, Anjou, and Maine; Richard, the second son, for Aquitaine; and Geoffrey, the third, for Brittany. The dignity of Seneschal of France, attached to the county of Anjou, was at the same time conferred on Henry. Such ceremonies implied, on the part of the English king, a consent to delegate the government of at least the greater portion of his continental dominions to his sons, two of them betrothed to French princesses, which would have obviated for the future the mutual fear and rivalry of the two crowns. But Henry was too fond of power to abide by such a decision. He caused his eldest son to be subsequently crowned King of England without his queen, Margaret of France, participating in the ceremony. This annoyed Louis, and led to some of those feudal attempts at war usual to that monarch. Henry showed no signs of giving up to any of his sons independent power in their duchies. He negotiated a marriage for his youngest son, John, with a princess of Savoy, and stipulated giving him, as part of his apanage, three castles and domains situated in Anjou, part of his eldest brother's portion. Louis encouraged the discontent of the English princes, and there ensued a general conspiracy for the spoliation of Henry, in which his sons led the way, supported by Louis, and aided by the Counts of Flanders, of Blois, and of Boulogne. Henry durst not trust his feudatories to repel the enemy; they were most of them in the interest of the princes. He collected 20,000 mercenaries, and marched against Louis. The French king had just got possession of Verneuil by treachery more than by

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