Henry II "Curtmantle" of England (5 March 1133-6 July 1189) was the King of England from 19 December 1154 to 6 July 1189, succeeding Stephen of Blois and preceding Richard the Lionheart. Henry II's inheritance of England and vast areas of France made him one of the most powerful rulers in Europe. He expanded his possessions further in Ireland and made important reforms to the English legal system. However, his reign was marred by a troubled relationship with the Church and the revolts of his sons.
Biography[]
Henry and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Henry II was the son of Matilda, daughter of Henry I, and Geoffrey Plantagenet, heir to the Count of Anjou. Matilda's failure to secure the English throne after the death of Henry I in 1135, and her defeat by King Stephen in the civil war of the 1130s and 1140s left Henry to fall back on his French inheritance. First, he became Duke of Normandy, conquered by his father in 1144, and then, on Geoffrey's death in 1152, Henry succeeded him as Count of Anjou.
Henry's marriage at the age of 19 to Eleanor, heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine (and the former wife of Louis VII of France) in 1152, made him the most powerful man in France, lord of a domain that historians came to call the Angevin Empire. Yet there was still no certainty he would inherit the English Crown. It was only the sudden death of Stephen's son Eustace in August 1153 that opened the way to him.
By the Treaty of Winchester, Stephen recognized Henry as his successor, on condition that he was left in peace on the throne of England. However, Stephen did not enjoy this respite long, for he died in October 1154, and within six weeks Henry II had been crowned at Westminster Abbey.
Lasting power[]
Henry II in 1153
Although he spent only one-third of his 35-year reign in England, Henry's impact there was profound and long-lasting. The wars under Stephen had left England prey to the ambitious of the warring barons and also caused it considerable loss of territory. In 1157, Henry forced Malcolm IV of Scotland to hand back Cumberland, Westmorland, and Northumbria, which the Scots had acquired amid the chaos of the civil war. In 1174 Scotland was reduced to a fief of the English Crown in exchange for Henry's release of its king, William the Lion, from captivity. Attempts to improve the English position in Wales failed in the face of dogged resistance from Owain of Gwynedd and Rhys of Deheubarth from 1157 to 1165.
At home, Henry removed key supporters of Stephen, demolished castles that had been built illegally during the civil war, and garrisoned others with royal troops. By 1155, some 52 castles (one-fifth of the total) were controlled by the Crown. To further strengthen his position, Henry replaced two-thirds of the county sheriffs with men loyal to him and restored the application of the "forest laws", which provided a lucrative source of revenue by levying fines on those who cleared forest land. He also restored the currency with the issue of a new coinage in 1158.
The justice system[]
A key component in the programme to restore royal authority was the strengthening of the system of justice. Previously, competing jurisdictions had made the administering of justice a haphazard affair. By the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, Henry replaced a system whereby sheriffs might hear cases in the absence of royal justices with one in which "justices in eyre" visited each locality on a regular basis. They tried serious crimes and established assizes, court sessions under which pleas to the Crown concerning serious cases would be answered with a royal writ ordering the local sheriff to assemble a jury to hear the case at the next judicial session. Justice became faster, more effective, and the power of the barons was diluted, as their tenants discovered that an appeal to the Crown might offer rapid relief with a lessened danger of baronial retribution.
Trouble with the Archbishop[]
Henry's key ally in implementing these reforms was his chancellor, Thomas Becket, and when Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1162, it seemed an obvious move to appoint Becket as his successor. It was a terrible mistake, for Becket was both inexperienced in Church matters and inflexible. Far from supporting him, Becket opposed Henry at almost every turn, particularly over the sisue of criminous clerks whom Henry wanted tried in the civil rather than ecclesiastical courts. Becket refused and fled England in 1164. The dispute between the two men seemed to have been resolved and Becket returned in 1170. However, the ill-feeling caused by the King's coronation of his son earlier that year without the customary presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and by Becket's procurement of the excommunication of many of those bishops who had attended, caused it to explode again. The end result was the murder of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170. Henry made a public apology in return for absolution and in 1176 revoked the Constitutions of Clarendon, which had decreed criminous clerks must be tried in secular courts.
Ambitious conquests[]
Henry in 1174
The King's territorial ambitions had not been satisfied by his Angevin and English inheritance, and as early as 1155 he seems to have planned to conquer Ireland, having sevured a papal bull Laudabiliter from Pope Adrian IV permitting him to seize it. In 1171, the activities there of a group of Anglo-Norman knights from the Welsh Marches, led by Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, attracted his attention and he led a royal force to escure the lands they had occupied, claiming the island for the English crown.
A family at war[]
Henry's death
Henry's later years were marred by worsening relations with his sons. By the 1170s, he had planned to partition his realms between the three eldest, with Henry receiivng Anjou, Normandy, and England, Richard inheriting Aquitaine, and Brittany (which Henry II had acquired in 1166) going to Geoffrey. His sons were impatient for their inheritances and Prince Henry rebelled in 1173 (with the support of many English barons disgruntled at the King's financial exactions). It was a particularly dangerous moment. Henry made common cause with Louis VII of France, who persuaded his English ally to grant a variety of French nobles large tracts of land if France, and with William the Lion in Scotland. Yet the revolt petered out: Henry II won a major victory by capturing the castle of Dol in Brittany in August 1173. In England, another of the young Henry's principal supporters, the Earl of Leicester, was decisively defeated at Fornham on 17 October, while the Scots fared even worse: William the Lion was captured outside Alnwick in July 1174. The young king made terms with his father in September, and was granted two castles in Normandy. Undeterred, he rebelled again in 1182. Prince Henry died in 1183 and Geoffrey in 1186. This should have ended the family dispute, but Henry II had developed a preference for John, and Richard suspected he was being pushed aside. He rose up in open revolt against his father. Sick and defeated, Henry died at Chinon castle on 6 July 1189.