Henry Ii New Interpretations

HENRY II NEW INTERPRETATIONS edited by Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent THE BOYDELL PRESS Henry II.indb 3 3.9.2007 15:34:49 Contents List of Illustrations vii Editors’ Preface ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction : Henry II and the Historians 1 Nicholas Vincent The Accession of Henry II 24 Edmund King Henry II and Louis VII 47 Jean Dunbabin Doing Homage to the King of France 63 John Gillingham Henry, Duke of the Normans (1149/50–1189) 85 Daniel Power Henry II and England’s Insular Neighbours 129 Seán Duffy Henry II , the English Church and the Papacy, 1154–76 154 Anne J. Duggan On the Instruction of a Prince : The Upbringing of Henry, 184 the Young King Matthew Strickland Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law 215 Paul Brand Finance and the Economy in the Reign of Henry II 242 Nick Barratt Henry II.indb 5 3.9.2007 15:34:49 vi Contents Henry II and the English Coinage 257 Martin Allen The Court of Henry II 278 Nicholas Vincent Literary Culture at the Court of Henry II 335 Ian Short Henry II and Arthurian Legend 362 Martin Aurell Index 395 Henry II.indb 6 3.9.2007 15:34:49 Anne J. Duggan Henry II, the English Church and the Papacy, 1154–76 He preponderant historical opinion of Henry II’s relations with the English Church and with the papacy is easily summarised as reasonably T amicable, apart from the Becket crisis, which represented an aberration from the broad accommodation that characterised the relationship between the regnum and the sacerdotium. Based very largely on the highly tendentious argu- ments advanced by Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, in his open letter to Becket, Multiplicem nobis of September 1166, the general historical consensus is that it was Thomas Becket who destroyed the harmony of the English kingdom by his arrogance and lack of moderation. Gilbert had painted a very rosy picture of the pre-Becket situation : The kingdom gave devoted and holy service to the priesthood ; and the priesthood very strongly supported to good effect every command of the king. The two swords were exercised in the Church, serving the Lord Jesus with devoted service. They did not oppose one another or, taking opposite positions, challenge one another. There was one people and, as it is written, ‘with one pair of lips’, zealous in pursuing sins, rejoicing in the vigorous eradication of vices. The peace of Church and kingdom consisted in this : each cherished the other with reciprocal favour and were joined in a unani- mous will. In fact we were hoping and looking for an increase of graces with your promotion, and see, from that moment, everything was turned upside down because of our sins. A man of your prudence should have ensured that the disagreements gradually arising between the kingdom and you did not grow too serious, that the tiny spark did not flare up into so great a fire, to the ruin of many. It was managed differently, and from Warren, Henry II, 400, 453, 455–6, 459, 490, 514 ; E. Türk, Nugae curialium : Le Règne d’Henri II Plantagenêt, 1145–1189, et l’éthique politique, Hautes Études médiévales et modernes, 28 (Geneva 1977), 8, 22–3, but see D. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery (London 2003), 203–04. Cf. Gen. 11 : 1, ‘erat autem terra labii unius et sermonum eorumdem’. Henry II.indb 154 3.9.2007 15:35:56 Henry II, the English Church and the Papacy, 1154–76 155 causes too numerous to list, disagreements were multiplied, indignation was inflamed, and hatred firmly entrenched. Gilbert Foliot’s depiction of the genesis of the crisis, which Beryl Smalley memo- rably called ‘a tissue of half-truths and inconsistencies’, requires substantial ad- justment. There is indeed considerable evidence of co-operation between Henry and the papacy, with judicial appeals to the Curia, appointment of judges delegate, includ- ing Archbishop Theobald himself, and the papacy co-operating with the king. Innocent II, for example, had not countenanced the attacks made on the Empress Matilda’s legitimacy at the Second Lateran Council of 1139 ; Eugenius III had, at Theobald’s request, presented by Thomas Becket, refused permission for the coronation of Stephen’s son Eustace in 1151 ; and Alexander III’s legates had au- thorised the marriage of the infant Margaret of France to Henry II’s son Henry in 1160 an arrangement that enabled the English king to take immediate control of Margaret’s dowry, the Norman Vexin. Yet there were clouds on the horizon clouds considerably larger than a man’s hand long before Thomas Becket was made archbishop of Canterbury. At the end of January 1156, Pope Adrian IV inserted a highly critical comment on Theobald’s policy into a mandate for the blessing of the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury. It read, It has come to our notice by common report that the right of appeal is so smothered by you and the king of England that no one dares to appeal to the Apostolic See in your presence or his . And he went on to say, Duggan, Becket Correspondence, i, 498–537 (no. 109), at 506–7 : ‘Regnum sacerdotio devotum sancte prestabat obsequium, et sacerdotio firmissime fulciebatur ad bonum omne regis imperium. Exercebantur in ecclesia gladii duo, devoto Domino Iesu famulantes obsequio. Nec sibi stabant ex adverso, nec tendentes in contraria, repugnabant alterutro. Unus erat populus, et ut scriptum est “unius labii”, studens peccata persequi, gaudens vitia fortiter eradicari. Hec regni fuit et ecclesie pax : alterna sic gratia fovebantur, et unanimi voluntate iungebantur. In vestra vero promotione gratiarum sperabamus et expectabamus augmenta, et ecce peccatis exigentibus ilico turbata sunt universa . Oportebat itaque vestram providisse prudentiam, ne dissensiones inter regnum et vos paululum in inmensum excrescerent, ne de scintilla tenui in multorum perniciem tantus ignis exsurgeret. Actum secus est, et ob causas quas enumerare longum est, dissensiones adaucte sunt, inflammata est ira, et odium fortiter obfirmatum.’ B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools (Oxford 1973), 182. For her critical assessment of Foliot, who ‘threw the mantle of piety over compromise’, see ibid., 167–86. Raised by Arnulf of Lisieux : see p. 158 n. 5 below. Gervase, i, 150, ‘Dominus siquidem papa litteris suis Cantuariensi prohibuerat archiepiscopo, ne filium regis, qui contra iusiurandum regnum usurpasse videbatur, in regem sublimaret. Hoc autem factum est subtilissima providentie et perquisitione cuiusdam Thomae clerici, natione Londoniensis ; pater eius Gilebertus, mater vero Mathildis vocabatur.’ Henry II.indb 155 3.9.2007 15:35:57 156 Anne J. Duggan In addition, you are in every way lukewarm and remiss in dispensing justice to those who suffer injustice, and you are said to seek the king’s favour so much and succumb to fear of him that, when we send letters to you on be- half of any one that he may have justice, he cannot secure his right through you, as we have heard from the complaints of many. So shocking is that rebuke that Christopher Brooke was inclined to dismiss it as another piece of St Augustine’s forgery ; but it is corroborated by a series of letters to the pope himself and to three leading cardinals, begging to be reinstated in their favour ; and, indeed, the legatine council over which Theobald presided in 1151, had, in Henry of Huntingdon’s colourful words, ‘gnashed its teeth (in- frenduit) against the new appeals’. Further, one can detect a certain sensitivity on Theobald’s part on the question of appeals in the year following that rebuke. His use of the phrases ‘as was our duty’, ‘deferring to your apostolic majesty’, ‘to which we have to defer’, and ‘deferring to your honour, as we desire and ought’, in transmitting judicial appeals to the papal audience, seems to emphasize his co-operation, but they could equally have reflected his embarrassment ; and there are also hints that he was sometimes less than enthusiastic about the process. Two letters speak respectively of the ‘subtlety of the laws and canons’ and of the ‘skill of the advocates and the subtlety of the laws’ in a manner that suggests disquiet, despite the fact that Theobald had invited the Bolognese civilian Master Vacarius to England in the early 1140s. Even more telling are the letters written to Adrian IV about the dispute between Hugh of Dover (a local baron who was later sheriff Historia Monasterii S. Augustini Cantuariensis by Thomas of Elmham, ed. C. Hardwick (RS 8, 1858), 411–12 no. 42, at 412, ‘Ad notitiam siquidem nostram, fama referente, pervenit, quam ita apud te et apud regem Angliae appellatio sit sepulta, quod aliquis non est, qui in tua vel in illius praesentia ad sedem apostolicam audeat appellare . Accedit etiam ad hoc, quod in exhibenda iustitia his, qui iniustitiam patiuntur, tepidus sis modis omnibus ac remissus, et in tantum parti regis diceris procurare favorem, eiusque timori succumbere, quos si quando litteras tibi pro aliquo, ut suam con- sequatur iustitiam, destinemus, nullatenus poterit per te, sicut iam saepius ex multorum conquestione didicimus, quod suum est obtinere.’ C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Adrian IV and John of Salisbury’, in Adrian IV, The English Pope (1154–1159) : Studies and Texts, ed. B. Bolton and A. J. Duggan (Aldershot 2003), 3–13, at 11 n. 38. Letters of John of Salisbury, i, nos. 8–11, respectively to Adrian IV, cardinals Roland and John of Sutri and Boso, the papal chamberlain. It is highly probable that the letter (no. 7) announcing his investiture of one Hugh with a prebend in London in obedience to Adrian’s mandate was written at this time, that is, mid 1156, not late 1155, with its insistence on Theobald’s ready obedience to apostolic mandates and his earlier resistance to princes.

Load more