History On Henry II King Of England example essay topic

To demonstrate my capabilities of exploring history on Henry II King of England and present a descriptive essay on these events for an improvement on my grade score average. IV. Henry II King of England King Henry II was born on March 5th, 1133 at Le Mans to Empress Matilda and her second husband Geoffry of Anjou. He ruled from 1155 to 1189. Henry the II already ruled Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine when he succeeded in 1154 to the throne as heir to King Stephen. He was married in 1151 to Eleanor of Aquintaine, divorced wife of Louis VII of France, from whom he took the title of Duke of Aquitaine.

Their children included William, Matilda, Eleanor, Henry, Richard, Geoffry, John, and Joan. Henry II died at Chinon in 1189 and was buried in the Abbey of Fontrevault. Henry the II was the first of the Plantagenet line of kings. He was the grandson of Henry the I and his father Geoffry of Anjou was also known as Geoffry Plantagenet from the sprig of broom (planta genista) he used as a badge. King Henry the II and his immediate successors are known as the Angevin Kings, but the House came to be known by the family name of Plantagenet.

The Angevins were notorious for their energy, their turbulane, and their terrible rages. They were said to be descended from the witch Me lusine, and Saint Bernard of Clairvaulx said of them "From the Devil they came and to the devil they will return". (1) Henry II had all that temper: when a particular enemy of his was praised in his presence he fell into such a rage that he threw himself screaming out of bed and tore his mattress into pieces with his teeth. And he had all that energy, and " fits of black bile" which were unwise to provoke. Henry was a fine-looking man, not tall but of strong muscular built with, like all the Angevins, sandy hair and rather prominent gray eyes which grew bloodshot when his temper was up.

Tough a hardened athlete, he was also a man of great culture. This was another family trait. Henry II was orderly in business, careless in appearance, sparing in diet, never resting or giving his servants rest, chatty, inquisitive, endowed with a singular charm of address and strength of memory, obstinate in love or hatred, a fair scholar, a great hunter, his general air that of a rough, passionate, and busy man. Henry's personal character told directly on the character of his reign. It was said that the King never sat down except at table, and that when he had to be still as in church he would scribble or scratch or whittle.

And yet this man had a passion for the smallest acts of justice, and would stay for hours in the courts listening patiently to every man. Walter Map wrote, "Whoever has a good case is anxious to have it tried before a King but whoever had a bad one will not come to him unless he is dragged". (2) Wherever he went crowds would press around him, begging him to hear their grievances, jostling to touch him or simply to look at him. he could afford to be easy, for his dignity was in himself, not in his position. The monks of Winchester once begged him to protect them from their tyrannical bishop, who had deprived them of three courses at dinner. hearing that this atrocious act still left the holy men ten courses, Henry replied robustly, "In my court three courses is enough. Perish your Bishop if he doesn't cut you down to the same".

And, riding one day with his magnificent Chancellor Beckett, Henry saw a half-naked beggar, and asked if it would not be Christian charity to cover the man's shoulders with a cloak. When Beckett piously agreed, Henry snatched Beckett's own furs from his shoulders and tossed them to the beggar. At the bottom of Henry's character there was always a stubborn human decency, as if he were not a remarkable man, but an ordinarily decent, generous, fair-minded man raised to a higher power. As a private citizen he would have been intolerable; as the King of a disorganized and demoralized country he was in his element. In 1151 at the age of nineteen Henry had married Eleanor of Aquintaine, ten years his senior, a great heiress in her own right and one of the most beautiful and impossible women in Europe. She had first been to Louis VII of France, a monkish disposition for whom she was altogether too much.

She bore him one daughter, but there were many tales of infidelity, and she became inseparable companion of her uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Desperate, Louis tried to divorce her on the usual grounds that they were too closely related, although his advisers pointed out that her possessions in France were as great as his own. Louis appealed to the Pope, whose response it was to personally confirm their marriage. The result of this was a second daughter, but soon afterward Eleanor, too, was in favor of a divorce; it seems that she had now met Henry. In 1151 she got her divorce, and eight weeks later married Henry at Pointers.

Louis lost half his kingdom by the divorce, but said of Eleanor, "The poorest gentleman of my kingdom would not desire her for a wife". (3) Henry was made of stronger stuff than Louis. Eleanor dowry helped him become the most powerful European ruler since Charlemagne, and she was to bear him eight children; but still he was to remember Louis's words on occasion. His reign began peacefully enough. He had ruled as heir-apparent for the last months of the unhappy Stephen's life, and there was no one to dispute his succession. He was crowned at Westminster at Christmas, 1155, when he was twenty-one years old.

Henry of Huntington tells us that the coronation was marked by universal rejoicing, and that was to prove prophetic. Henry was to bring to a stricken and exhausted country peace, security, law, and prosperity. He had to restore law and order, subjugate his unruly barons, resolve the quarrel with the Church, and maintain his other enormous domains, and he set about it all with only one aim "Above everything in the world that is desirable", wrote Peter of Blois, "he labors for peace. All that he thinks, all that he says, all that he does, is directed to this one end: that his people may have peace". (4) Henry's misfortune is that he has been remembered by posterity chiefly for the murder of Beckett. Thomas Beckett was typical of the "new men" Henry had introduced into his government, a Londoner of prosperous middle-class family, church-educated, who by the age of thirty-six had risen to be Archdeacon of Canterbury and an experienced lawyer and negotiator.

His abilities were so plain that on Henry's accession the Archbishop of Canterbury recommended him as Chancellor. Of all men in the kingdom, the Chancellor was the closest to the King; he was his confidential secretary and keeper of his Great Seal, and without his knowledge no matter of consequence could be transacted. Beckett gave Henry his total loyalty. He raised his taxes, fought in his wars, negotiated the marriage of his eldest son to the daughter of the King of France, and was the effective instrument of all his policies.

He was also his closest friend, sharing his unresting life, his passionate energy, and his boyish humor. Fritz Stephen writes", I do not think that two men have ever been more one mind or closer in friendship than these two". (5) The one thing they did not share was Beckett's extravagance. Beckett lived in magnificent style, and loved to give sumptuous banquets; when he went to France on the marriage negotiations, he had an escort of 200 knights and squires, eight wagons of ermine, silks, furs, carpets, and rich tapestries, two wagons of ales, 250 footmen and innumerable pack horses. Henry seems to have regarded this worldliness with an amused tolerance. Having himself no inner insecurities, he did not need outward magnificence, and he himself lived without display; but Beckett was a nobody who had risen to a dangerous height, and was soon to rise from dangerous height to a fatal one.

Henry was set on resolving the old conflict between church and crown by making himself master of the church in England, and Beckett had agreed that the policy was sound. In 1161 Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury died, and Henry nominated Beckett. Surprisingly, Beckett demurred; the archbishop, he warned the King, might be a very different man from the chancellor. Henry persisted, and Beckett accepted. he said later to the Prior of Leicester that now he was bound either to quarrel the King or neglect the service of God. To quarrel the King was to do without his personal support, and from the hour of his appointment to Canterbury Beckett lived a life of extraordinary, sometimes grotesque, theatricality to mask his inner insecurity. He renounced his magnificent style, drank only water, wore a hair shirt infested with lice, and mortified the flesh by having his monks whip him.

Gilbert Folio t said that the King had made an archbishop out of a man of the world; in fact, Henry had imposed on Beckett a role he was too weak to refuse and too weak to play out. Beckett saw it his duty as Canterbury to oppose the King on every important matter: on finance, on the appointment of the clergy, and above all on the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The church claimed the right to try all clerics on all charges, civil or not; and as the taking of minor orders involved no vows or duties incompatible with lay life any man with a smattering of literacy could escape trial by pleading "benefit of clergy". A cleric's duty to his church might properly sometimes supersede his duty to the state, but Beckett pushed matters so far that he protected acknowledged murderers if they claimed benefit, a course of action that he must have known was not only totally unacceptable to the King but totally incompatible with the rules of the law.

When Henry insisted that secular crimes must be tried in secular courts, Beckett replied that t Canterbury was the representative of God on earth and as such was set above all Kings, at which Henry lost his temper and called him a low-born clerk. In 1164 Henry attempted, in the Articles of Clarendon, to define the position of the Church in the feudal state. On the question of benefit of clergy, the articles stated that a cleric accused of a civil crime was to be brought first before a civil court, that any subsequent proceedings in a Church court were to be observed by an officer of the crown, and that if the cleric were found guilty he was to forfeit the protection of the Church. He summoned a council to ratify these articles, and Beckett, with blasphemous arrogance, said that the proceedings were like Christ's trial before Pilate.

He came under heavy pressure to accept articles, accepted, tried to withdraw, and, to the horror of his followers, attempted to flee the country and failed. Henry now changed tactics. It happened that one of his men already had a suit against Beckett on a charge misappropriating money, and under Henry's new legal proceedings this was transferred to the royal court, and Beckett summoned to appear. It was a poor occasion for the representative of God upon earth, and Beckett neither defied nor complied, pleading illness, that the were incorrect because a witness had testified on a hymnal not a Bible, but eventually had to agree to a fine of 300 Pounds (a sizable sum then). This was followed by a series of similar charges involving the great sum of 20,000 Pounds, and Beckett When he celebrated Mass that morning (October 13, 1164), Beckett used the Introit "Princes sate and spake against me". (6) When he came into court he carried even further his earlier comparison of himself with Christ by taking on his back his great pectoral Cross (except that Christ's Cross was not of silver).

Whether from prudence, from regret, or from disgust of histrionics, Henry refused to meet him. Whatever his emotion was, it was soon superseded by wrath, as he discovered that Beckett had already appealed his case in Rome, which was a violation of the Articles of Clarendon he had been thought to have accepted. Accused of faithlessness, Beckett first used a legal quibble, and then (the charge was still of misappropriating money) fell back on the thunders of the Church. Henry behaved with such remarkable restraint that Beckett fell into panic; he fled the country, this time successfully, hidden under a bundle of old clothes on a pack horse.

It seemed that he never forgave Henry for inflicting this shame on him. Louis of France helped him on his way to Rome, where the Pope advised him to wait in hope of a compromise. Beckett took refuge in the Abbey of Pontigny, where he began systematically excommunicating the clergy who supported the King, while Henry responded by expelling from the kingdom Beckett's numerous relations. Beckett stopped short of the ultimate sanction of excommunicating the King himself, writing to him that he would return to serve him in all matters "saving God's honor and that of the Roman Church", and at the same time threatening him with the vengeance of Almighty God. This position endured until 1170. The King's oldest son, young Henry, was now fifteen, and to ensure the succession Henry proposed to have him crowned.

In Beckett's absence the ceremony was carried out by the Archbishop of York, and for this uncanonical proceeding Beckett promptly got the Pope's permission to place all Henry's Continental possessions under the ban of the Church. A compromise was now essential, and in the presence of King Louis, Henry and Beckett met in France. Henry spoke kindly. "My lord Archbishop", he said, "let us return to our old friendship and each show the other what good he can; let us forget our hatred completely". (7) He withdrew the offending articles, and gave Beckett permission to act against the bishop who had assisted at the coronation of the Young King, as the heir was called. Henry seemed to have been sincere in his offers of friendship; but Beckett, who had spent four years in shameful impotence, was now actuated by a spirit of manic vindictiveness against the world.

On his arrival in England he excommunicated the erring bishops and questioned legality of the Young King's coronation. This amounted to treason, and was a total denial of the supposed reconciliation. When Henry heard the news he broke into an Angevin rage, shouting, "What idle and miserable and faithless men do I keep about me, who let me be mocked by a low-born clerk!" (8) Henry's rages were well known, but four ambitious knights thought it polite to take this one seriously. Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Hugh de M orville, and Richard Brito arrived in Canterbury on Tuesday, the twenty-ninth of December.

They saw Beckett in the cathedral, and demanded that he cease to question the validity of the Young King's crowning or leave the country. He refused, and they left him for a time to consider. There was, in fact, no choice left to him. He could not accept yet another shameful flight, and he had finally put himself beyond the reach of the generosity of his old friend the King. In his last minutes his theatrical instinct served him well. He would not have the doors of the cathedral locked, nor conceal himself, and when the knights returned he went toward them to ask what they wanted.

They cut him down at once, spilling his brains on the paved floor are the spot that is still called the Martyrdom. Later on, when he was known as Saint Thomas the "holy blissful martyr" an altar was set up to him called the Altar of the Sword's Point. It was an inspired choice of name, for the one thing in his life Beckett did not try to avoid was the sword's point. And, after all, his vindictiveness caused his King less trouble than might have been expected. At the news of his death Henry wept for three days; then, with his characteristic good sense, he saw that he must make peace with the Pope, and seized the chance of presenting him with a whole country. It happened that a Norman Knight, Richard de Clare nicknamed Strongbow, had made himself Knight of Leinster.

Henry took a force to Ireland, received Strongbow's homage, and imposed on the Irish clergy the authority of Rome. In return for the Irish Church, the Pope gave him a very light penance for the murder of an archbishop; he was to revoke the Articles of Clarendon, send 200 knights to the Holy Land, go himself to fight Saracen in Spain if the Pope thought it necessary, which he never did, and submit to a penitential scourging at Beckett's shrine. The ceremonial scouring, as it happened, fell on the day when Henry's armies captured his particular enemy William the Lion of Scotland, so even that sting could not have been too severe. The fundamental disagreement with the Church, However- was the King or the Church sovereign? - was too great to be solved by the death of Beckett. It had to be left until later reigns, for virtually all the eighteen years left to Henry II were to be taken up by the rebellions of his sons. There were four of them- Henry, Richard, Geoffry, and John- and collectively they have been called Devil's Brood.

Behind them in most of their risings was their mother Eleanor, who now began to justify the opinion of her former husband. Nominally, Henry the Young King was lord of Anjou; Richard of Aquintaine, and Geoffry (later) of Brittany. The youngest son, John, was given no lands, and nicknamed Lackland for it. Was it Henry's unhappy attempt to stop his most dearly loved son showing his greed as nakedly as the rest? The problem of ambitious sons defeated Henry II as completely as it defeated the majority of his predecessors and successors; but, shameful as the sons were, the father was not wise. He consistently refused to allow them any real power just as he consistently ignored the thwarted energies of his wife Eleanor.

The trouble began with John, who was on the point of betrothal and needed a proper establishment. Henry asked the Young King to give up some of his fiefs. The Young King refused, and then, encouraged by Eleanor and by Louis the VII of France, who was always ready to embarrass his great rival of England, rebelled and demanded either England or the French domains for himself. Richard and Geoffry promptly joined him and Louis in an attack on Normandy, while William the Lion of Scotland, as well as some English barons, created trouble in England.

Henry rode on this trouble without any great exertion and characteristically forgave his sons (not for the only time). His general amnesty excepted only his wife Eleanor, who was held in prison. The princes were given extra lands to console them, and some minor revolts there kept them occupied for the next five years. henry had peace enough even to think of organizing a Crusade. It did not last; for in 1180 Louis VII of France died, and was succeeded by Phillip Augustus, his son by his second wife. Philip Augustus reigned over only half of France, because his father had given away the other half rather than tolerate Eleanor of Aquitaine as his first wife, and it was reasonable that he should be determined to break the power of Eleanor's husband, Henry. But it was a struggle even more personal than that, because his weapon was dissension within Henry's family.

It was cold intelligence that ruined the Devil's Brood; and yet he must have had charm, too, for much of his power over Henry lay in his personal attraction of the Young King and his brothers. Perhaps Henry was too much used to grateful subjects to deal wisely with ungrateful sons. He tried to keep the Young King's loyalty by commanding Richard and Geoffry to do him homage, which was in fact correct by feudal standards. Richard refused, the Young King attacked him, and while Henry was trying to quell the consequent war he was summoned to the Young King, who was said to be ill.

He suspected treachery and refused to go, and his son died. Henry fell in agonies of remorse. He paid his dead son's considerable debts, saying, "He has cost me enough, but I wish he had lived to cost me more". Yet he had learned nothing.

Richard was now his heir, and he proposed a new division of his domains, which was fair enough except that it required Richard to give Aquitaine to John, and Richard had ruled and defended Aquitaine foe years, and passionately loved it. Possibly Henry had no idea of his love; Aquintaine was the land of Richard's mother, and Richard was always a mother's boy. Richard refused to give up his lands; he also quarreled bitterly with his father about his delayed marriage with Alice, half-sister of Phillip Augustus. It was possible that Henry was keeping Richard, as his heir, free for a better match, but it was also rumored that Alice was Henry's mistress.

Since Richard was a notorious homosexual, it was plain that his real purpose was a quarrel with his father. John, meanwhile, still lacked land, and in 1185 the Christians of the Holy Land were looking for an heir to their King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. who was a leper. John begged on his knees for his heritage, but Henry wisely refused his permission. In compensation he made John Lord of Ireland; but in the hands of his sons even Henry's wisest dispositions went wrong. John sulked at what he had lost in the Holy Land and squandered what might have been a valuable opportunity in Ireland. Mostly he jeered at the wild Irish ways of his more powerful subjects.

Finally Henry had to release Eleanor, after eleven years of captivity, and beg her to influence the intractable Richard. If he again refused to give Richard power in his kingdom, at least by now he had evidence to spare of his disloyalty. Philip Augustus had been intriguing which Geoffrey, which was frustrated by Geoffrey's death in 1186, but he now came into real conflict with Henry over a border dispute. Henry called Richard and John to join him, and truce was arranged.

The truce was more fatal to Henry than any battle could have been, for it brought Richard within reach of Philip's seductions. Soon they were "eating from the same dish and sleeping in the same bed". This situation was only resolved by disastrous news from the East. In 1187 the Christian princes of the Holy land had been catastrophically defeated at the Horns of Hattie by the brilliant infidel soldier Saladin; the True Cross, the most holy relic of Christendom, had been taken, and the Holy City itself was threatened.

It was the ethos of those days that to all true Christians the fate of the Holy City was more important than life. Henry, Philip Augustus, and Richard agreed to a truce that would allow them to go to the defense of the Holy land. The truce lasted for less than six months. It was Phillip Augustus who broke it, and with it Henry's spirit. Henry was an old man now, over fifty, worn out by his failure with the sons whom he still treated with a father's loyalty, and Philip's duplicity was beyond his powers to combat. Philip egged Richard into truce-breaking, complained of it to Henry, and when Henry refused the bait himself started the war again.

Henry, naturally, fought capably; it was Richard who forced him to a disadvantageous peace, and then refused to accept it. The poor little Princess Alice was involved in his demands again, and Henry refused to hand her over as Richard's wife. It is possible that she was Henry's mistress; but it is also possible that his generous spirit simply revolted at handing her over to his sodomite son, who slept in her half-brother's bed. By now Henry's fatherly feelings had reached their end. It is likely that he came finally to hate his heir when Richard committed tie ultimate treachery of doing homage to Philip for his father's land in France.

Henry's only counter was to have Papal Legate threaten Philip with an interdict for his failure to go on Crusade. Undisturbed, Philip invaded Maine and beseiged Henry's birthplace LeMans, and neither henry nor his commander, William the Marshal, could save it. Henry watched his city burning, and cried out against the God who had deserted him. He met Richard and Philip at Colombieres, so ill that he could hardly stay in the saddle.

Even cold Philip took pity on him, and offered a cloak for him to sit on. henry refused; even when his mount reared in a sudden flash of lightning he kept his saddle. It was his only triumph. He had to agree to give Richard Alice and the homage of his barons, he had to do homage to Philip himself for his lands in France and agree to join him on Crusade. When he gave Richard the customary kiss of peace at the conclusion of the treaty, he whispered, "Let God only spare my life to be revenged on you!" (9) He went, dying, back to Chinon, and there read over the list of those whose fealty he was to relinquish to Richard. Among them was the name of his best loved - son John. He turned his face to the wall, saying "Then let all times go as they must, for I care no longer for myself or my world".

(10) He lingered for a few days longer, like a true Angevin raging to the last: " Cursed be the day I born and cursed of God the sons I leave behind me". (11) He was buried in the abbey of Fontrevault, and it is said that his body lay there in state Richard came and stood for a time in silence. Yet England blessed the day of Henry II was born. He found her wrecked by the worst and most sterile excesses of the feudal system, and he left her peaceful, prosperous, and law-abiding.

It is not Beckett who has the last word on him, nor his capricious wife or treacherous sons, but Peter of Blois, the chronicler who speaks for the common people of his time". I loved him (wrote Peter), I loved him, I shall always love him. Everybody loved him, because he exacted swift justice and made peace". (12) Something of the spirit of Arthur had come back with Henry II. Henry II was born in Le Mans, France, in March 1133. The grandson of Henry I was the first Plantagenet king of England.

His mother was Matilda, daughter of Henry I. His father was Geoffrey of Anjou, whom Matilda married after the death of her first husband, Emperor Henry V. Geoffrey was called Plantagenet for his habit of wearing in his cap a sprig of the broom plant, which in Latin is called planta genista. During his mother's conflict with Stephen for the English throne he was brought to England. Stephen eventually recognized his claim, and Henry became king of England in 1154 after Stephen's death. Henry II held England and Normandy by his mother's right.

From his father he inherited, as French fiefs, the important counties of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. By his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage with the French king Louis VII had been annulled, he acquired Poitou, Guyenne, and Gascony, so that he held most of the British Isles and about half of France. Henry II reestablished law and order after the anarchy of Stephen's reign. He improved the military service by permitting the barons to pay shield money, or scutage, in place of serving in the army. With this he hired soldiers who would fight whenever and wherever he wished an important means of maintaining control over the powerful nobles of the land. His greatest work was the reform of the law courts.

He brought the Curia Regis (King's Court) into every part of England by sending learned judges on circuit through the land to administer the "king's justice". Thus gradually one system of law took the place of the many local customs that had been in use. He also established the grand jury. Now accusations could be brought by a body of representatives of the community against evildoers who were so powerful that no single individual dared accuse them. The petit jury, also called petty or trial jury, substituted the weighing of evidence and testimony by sworn men for the old superstitious trial by combat or by ordeal.

Henry even attempted to bring churchmen who committed crimes under the jurisdiction of the king's courts, but the scandal caused by the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett in the course of this quarrel forced him to give up this reform. Henry's last years were embittered by the rebellion of his sons, aided by Philip Augustus of France and by their mother, the unscrupulous Eleanor. The king old, sick, and discouraged had to consent to the terms demanded of him. When he saw the name of John, his favorite son, among those of his enemies, he exclaimed, "Now let all things go as they will; I care no more for myself, nor for the world". (13) Two days later he died, muttering, "Shame, shame on a conquered king". (14) He was succeeded by his son Richard.

VII. Quotations (1) Saint Bernard of Clair vaux (2) Walter Map (3) King Louis the VII of France (4) Peter of Blois (5) Fritz Stephen (6) Thomas Beckett (7) Henry II King of England (8) Henry II King of England (9) Henry II King of England (10) Henry II King of England (11) Henry II King of England (12) Peter Blois (13) Henry II King of England (14) Henry II King of England V.

Bibliography

I. Jean Morris, The Monarchs of England, Charterhouse, New York, 1975 Pages 47-58 II.
John Richard Green, A short history of the english people, American Book Co., New York, 1916 Pages 105-116 .
Norman C. Cantor, Medieval Lives, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1994 pages 110-122 IV.
Regine Pernod, Eleanor of Aquintaine, Coward-McCann, Inc., New York 1968 pages 87-188 V.
Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, Windows Version 4.00, Compton's Learning Company, 1996 Edition.