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Henry II of England

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500 and
before (including Roman Britain); Monarchs of Great Britain

                         Henry II
         By the Grace of God, King of the English
   and Duke of the Normans and Aquitanians
   and Count of the Angevins
              Image:Henry II of England.jpg
   Reign       25 October 1154 – 6 July 1189
   Coronation  19 December 1154
   Born        5 March 1133
               Le Mans
   Died        6 July 1189
               Chateau Chinon
   Buried      Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, France
   Predecessor Stephen
   Successor   Richard I
   Consort     Eleanor of Aquitaine ( 1124– 1204)
   Issue       Henry the Young King
               ( 1155– 1183)
               Richard I ( 1157– 1199)
               Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany
               ( 1158– 1186)
               Matilda, Duchess of Saxony
               ( 1156– 1189)
               Leonora of England ( 1161– 1214)
               Joan of England ( 1165– 1199)
               John ( 1167– 1216)
               Geoffrey, Archbishop of York
               (illeg., c. 1152– 1226)
               William de Longespee, 3rd Earl of
               Salisbury (illeg., c. 1176– 1226)
   Royal House Plantagenet
   Father      Geoffrey of Anjou ( 1113– 1151)
   Mother      Empress Matilda (c. 1102– 1167)

   Henry II of England ( 5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189) ruled as Count of
   Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and as King of England ( 1154– 1189) and, at
   various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland, eastern Ireland,
   and western France. His sobriquets include "Curt Mantle" (because of
   the practical short cloaks he wore), "Fitz Empress", and sometimes "The
   Lion of Justice", which had also applied to his grandfather Henry I. He
   ranks as the first of the Plantagenet or Angevin Kings.

   Following the disputed reign of King Stephen, Henry's reign saw
   efficient consolidation. Henry II has acquired a reputation as one of
   England's greatest medieval kings.

Biography

Territorial holdings and gains: foreign enemies, allies and correspondents

   Prior to coming to the throne he already controlled Normandy and Anjou
   on the continent; his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine on 18 May 1152
   added her holdings to his, including Touraine, Aquitaine, and Gascony.
   He thus effectively became more powerful than the king of France — with
   an empire (the Angevin Empire) that stretched from the Solway Firth
   almost to the Mediterranean and from the Somme to the Pyrenees. As
   king, he would make Ireland a part of his vast domain. He also
   maintained lively communication with the Emperor of Byzantium Manuel I
   Comnenus.

Life before accession

   He was born on 5 March 1133 at Le Mans to the Empress Matilda and her
   second husband, Geoffrey the Fair, Count of Anjou. Brought up in Anjou,
   he visited England in 1149 to help his mother in her disputed claim to
   the English throne.

   He married Eleanor of Aquitaine on 18 May 1152, but from May to August
   he was occupied in fighting Eleanor's ex-husband Louis VII of France
   and his allies. In August Henry rushed back to her, and they spent
   several months together. Around the end of November 1152 they parted:
   Henry went to spend some weeks with his mother and then sailed for
   England, arriving on 6 January 1153. Some historians believe that the
   couple's first child, William, Count of Poitiers, was born in 1153.
   Henry's succession was established by the Treaty of Wallingford in
   1153, after he had challenged Stephen's forces at Wallingford Castle.
   It was agreed that Henry would become king on Stephen's death.

Civil and legal reform: struggle with the barons

   During Stephen's reign the barons had subverted the state of affairs to
   undermine the monarch's grip on the realm; Henry II saw it as his first
   task to reverse this shift in power. For example, Henry had castles
   torn down which the barons had built without authorization during
   Stephen's reign, and by 1159, scutage, a fee paid by vassals in lieu of
   military service, had become a central feature of the king's military
   system. Record keeping improved dramatically in order to streamline
   this taxation.
            English Royalty
         House of Plantagenet
   Armorial of Plantagenet
               Henry II
       William, Count of Poitiers
       Henry, Count of Anjou
      Richard I the Lionheart
       Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
      John
       Matilda, Duchess of Saxony
       Leonora, Queen of Castile
       Joan, Queen of Sicily

   Henry II established courts in various parts of England and first
   instituted the royal practice of granting magistrates the power to
   render legal decisions on a wide range of civil matters in the name of
   the Crown. His reign saw the production of the first written legal
   textbook, providing the basis of today's " Common Law".

   By the Assize of Clarendon ( 1166), trial by jury became the norm.
   Since the Norman Conquest, jury trials had been largely replaced by
   trial by ordeal and " wager of battel" (which English law did not
   abolish until 1819). Provision of justice and landed security was
   further toughened in 1176 with the Assize of Northampton, built on the
   earlier agreements at Clarendon. This reform proved one of Henry's
   major contributions to the social history of England.

Dealings with Ireland

   Shortly after his coronation, Henry sent an embassy to the newly
   elected Pope Adrian IV. Led by Bishop Arnold of Lisieux, the group of
   clerics requested from Adrian a privilege authorising Henry to invade
   Ireland. Most historians agree that this was the papal bull
   Laudabiliter. W.L. Warren asserts that Henry acted under the influence
   of a "Canterbury plot;" Archbishop Theobald of Bec, John of Salisbury,
   and other Canterbury clergy wished to assert their hierarchical
   supremacy over the newly created Irish diocesan structure. Other
   historians have argued instead that Henry intended to secure Ireland as
   a lordship for his younger brother William.

   Shortly thereafter, Henry's continental affairs distracted him. William
   died, and the English ignored Ireland. It was not until 1166 that it
   came to the surface again. In that year, Dermot MacMurrough, having
   been driven from his kingdom in Leinster, followed Henry to Aquitaine.
   He asked the English king to help him reassert control; Henry agreed to
   allow Dermot to gather supporters from among his Norman vassals. The
   most prominent of these was a Welsh Norman, Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl
   of Pembroke, nicknamed "Strongbow." In exchange for his loyalty, Dermot
   offered Earl Richard his daughter Aoife (Eve) in marriage and made him
   heir to the kingdom.

   The Normans quickly restored Dermot to his traditional holdings, and he
   even toyed with the idea of challenging for the title of Ard Ri, or
   High King. However, in 1171, Henry arrived from France to assert his
   overlordship. All of the Normans, along with many Irish princes, took
   oaths of homage to Henry, and he left after six months. He never
   returned, but he later named his young son, the future King John of
   England, Lord of Ireland.

The struggle with the church and Thomas Becket

   As a consequence of the improvements in the legal system, the power of
   church courts waned. The church naturally opposed this and found its
   most vehement spokesman in Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
   formerly a close friend of Henry's and his Chancellor.

   The conflict with Becket effectively began with a dispute over whether
   the secular courts could try clergy who had committed a secular
   offence. Henry attempted to subdue Becket and his fellow churchmen by
   making them swear to obey the "customs of the realm", but controversy
   ensued over what constituted these customs, and the church proved
   reluctant to submit. Following a heated exchange at Henry's court,
   Becket left England in 1164 for France to solicit in person the support
   of Pope Alexander III, who was in exile in France due to dissension in
   the college of Cardinals, and of King Louis VII of France. Due to his
   own precarious position, Alexander remained neutral in the debate,
   although Becket remained in exile loosely under the protection of Louis
   and Pope Alexander until 1170. After reconciliation between Henry and
   Thomas in Normandy in 1170, Becket returned to England. Becket again
   confronted Henry, this time over the coronation of Prince Henry (see
   below). The much-quoted, although probably apocryphal, words of Henry
   II echo down the centuries: "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome
   priest?" Although Henry's violent rants against Becket over the years
   were well documented, this time four of his knights took their king
   literally (as he may have intended for them to do, although he later
   denied it) and travelled immediately to England, where they
   assassinated Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170.

   For this act Henry was excommunicated but obtained his rehabilitation
   thanks to the efforts of Robert de Torigny, abbot of Mont St Michel. As
   part of his penance for the death of Becket, Henry made a pilgrimage in
   sackcloth to his tomb (see also St. Dunstan's, Canterbury), and agreed
   to send money to the Crusader states in Palestine, which the Knights
   Hospitaller and the Knights Templar would guard until Henry arrived to
   make use of it on pilgrimage or crusade. Afterwards, on the 21 May
   1172, he was flogged in public, naked, before the door of the cathedral
   at Avranches, which was his capital city in Normandy. Henry delayed his
   crusade for many years and in the end never went at all, despite a
   visit to him by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem in 1184 and being
   offered the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1188 he levied the
   Saladin tithe to pay for a new crusade; the cleric and courtier Gerald
   of Wales suggested his death was a divine punishment for the tithe,
   imposed to raise money for an abortive crusade to recapture Jerusalem,
   which had fallen to Saladin in 1187.

Issue

Legitimate

   Henry's first son, William, Count of Poitiers, had died in infancy. In
   1170, Henry and Eleanor's fifteen-year-old son, Henry, was crowned king
   (another reason for rupture with Thomas Becket, whose other bishops
   acquiesced to this during Becket's exile), but he never actually ruled
   and does not figure in the list of the monarchs of England; he became
   known as Henry the Young King to distinguish him from his nephew Henry
   III of England.
   Henry II depicted in Cassell's History of England (1902)
   Enlarge
   Henry II depicted in Cassell's History of England (1902)

   Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had five sons and three
   daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor,
   and Joan. Henry's attempts to wrest control of her lands from Eleanor
   (and from her heir Richard) led to confrontations between Henry on the
   one side and his wife and legitimate sons on the other.

Illegitimate

   Henry's notorious liaison with Rosamund Clifford, the "fair Rosamund"
   of legend, probably began in 1165 during one of his Welsh campaigns and
   continued until her death in 1176. However, it was not until 1174, at
   around the time of his break with Eleanor, that Henry acknowledged
   Rosamund as his mistress. Almost simultaneously he began negotiating
   the annulment of his marriage in order to marry Alys, daughter of King
   Louis VII of France and already betrothed to Henry's son Richard.
   Henry's affair with Alys continued for some years, and, unlike Rosamund
   Clifford, Alys allegedly gave birth to one of Henry's illegitimate
   children.

   Henry also had a number of illegitimate children by various women, and
   Eleanor had several of those children reared in the royal nursery with
   her own children; some remained members of the household in adulthood.
   Among them were William de Longespee, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, whose
   mother was Ida, Countess of Norfolk; Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, son
   of a woman named Ykenai; Morgan, Bishop of Durham; and Matilda, Abbess
   of Barking.

Succession crisis

   Henry II's attempt to divide his titles amongst his sons but keep the
   power associated with them provoked them into trying to take control of
   the lands assigned to them (see Revolt of 1173-1174), which amounted to
   treason, at least in Henry's eyes. Gerald of Wales reports that when
   King Henry gave the kiss of peace to his son Richard, he said softly,
   "May the Lord never permit me to die until I have taken due vengeance
   upon you."

   When Henry's legitimate sons rebelled against him, they often had the
   help of King Louis VII of France. Henry the Young King died in 1183.
   After Henry the Young King died, there was a power struggle between the
   three sons that were left. Henry had wanted John to be the next king,
   but Eleanor favoured Richard. Henry had always loved John more than any
   of the other sons. Geoffrey tried to overcome both John and Richard,
   but he was unsuccessful. A horse trampled to death another son,
   Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany (1158–1186). Henry's third son, Richard
   the Lionheart (1157–1199), with the assistance of Philip II Augustus of
   France, attacked and defeated Henry on July 4, 1189; Henry died at the
   Chateau Chinon on July 6, 1189, and lies entombed in Fontevraud Abbey,
   near Chinon and Saumur in the Anjou Region of present-day France.
   Henry's illegitimate son Geoffrey, Archbishop of York also stood by him
   the whole time and alone among his sons attended on Henry's deathbed.
   His last words, according to Gerald of Wales, were “Shame, shame on a
   conquered king”. Another version of the King's last words alludes to
   the fact that the only son to attend his deathbed was his illegitimate
   son: "My other sons are the real bastards".Richard the Lionheart then
   became King of England. This was unfortunate to Henry because he had
   always wanted John, his youngest son, to succeed him. John succeeded to
   the throne upon Richard's death in 1199, laying aside the claims of
   Geoffrey's children Arthur of Brittany and Eleanor.

Appearance

   Peter of Blois left a description of Henry II in 1177: "...the lord
   king has been red-haired so far, except that the coming of old age and
   grey hair has altered that colour somewhat. His height is medium, so
   that neither does he appear great among the small, nor yet does he seem
   small among the great... curved legs, a horseman's shins, broad chest,
   and a boxer's arms all announce him as a man strong, agile and bold...
   he never sits, unless riding a horse or eating... In a single day, if
   necessary, he can run through four or five day-marches and, thus
   foiling the plots of his enemies, frequently mocks their plots with
   surprise sudden arrivals...Always are in his hands bow, sword, spear
   and arrow, unless he be in council or in books."

   Another contemporary, Gerald of Wales, described him thus: "A man of
   reddish, freckled complexion, with a large, round head, grey eyes that
   glowed fiercely and grew bloodshot in anger, a fiery countenance and a
   harsh, cracked voice. His neck was poked forward slightly from his
   shoulders, his chest was broad and square, his arms strong and
   powerful. His body was stocky, with a pronounced tendency toward
   fatness, due to nature rather than self-indulgence -- which he tempered
   with exercise."

In the arts

     * 13th C: " Book of the Civilized Man" is a poem believed to have
       been written in Henry's court and is the first "book of manners" or
       "courtesy book" in English history, representing the start of a new
       awakening to etiquette and decorum in English culture.
     * 1935: The assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket is the subject
       of the celebrated 1935 play Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot.
     * 1964: A fuller account of the struggle between Henry II and Becket
       is portrayed in the film Becket (1964) made from the Jean Anouilh
       play and starring Peter O'Toole as Henry and Richard Burton as
       Becket.
     * 1966: The treasons associated with the royal and ducal successions
       formed the main theme of the play The Lion in Winter (1966), which
       also served as the basis of a 1968 film with O'Toole reprising the
       role of Henry and Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine. In
       2003, the film was remade as a mini-series with Patrick Stewart and
       Glenn Close in the leading roles.
     * 1978: Henry II and his sons King Richard and King John also
       provided the subjects of the BBC2 television series The Devil's
       Crown. The 1978 book of the same title was written by Richard
       Barber and published as a guide to the broadcast series, which
       starred Brian Cox as Henry and Jane Lapotaire as Eleanor.
     * 1989: The final chapters of Ken Follett's novel The Pillars of the
       Earth concern the assassination of Thomas Becket and end with
       Henry's penance.
     * 1994: The first decade of Henry's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine
       is portrayed in the novel Beloved Enemy: The Passions of Eleanor of
       Aquitaine, a Novel (1994) by Ellen Jones.

Coat of arms

   Henry II's coat of arms were gules, a lion rampant Or (red background,
   with a golden lion on hind legs facing to the side).
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