Read Online Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens by Malcolm Day - Free Book Online
Authors: Malcolm Day
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tortures were committed to obtain treasures. Bodies were ‘broken on stones’ and the worst perpetrators ‘knotted cords round their heads and twisted them till they entered the brain’.
We do not know how much licence was written into these accounts, perhaps none. Such lawless horror prevailed for 15 years under Stephen’s reign. It took the strength and organisation skills of his successor, Henry II, to put an end to the chaos.
Penitent Ruler of Europe’s Largest Empire
Henry II and his ‘turbulent priest’
W inston Churchill’s eponymous ancestor acclaimed the first Plantagenet ruler, Henry II, as the ‘very greatest King that England ever knew, but withal the most unfortunate’.
By his birth to Matilda and her second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry inherited the English crown. Through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, he acquired half of France, and bit by bit during his reign Henry added virtually the rest of the country. He conquered Ireland too. So by 1180 this formidable warrior king had extended the frontiers of what could rightly be termed the Angevin Empire to include an immense area stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees.
In his efforts to quell the turmoil inherited on succeeding Stephen, Henry earned widespread support from his nobles. One measure was to introduce a system of common law that standardized legal practice right across the country. Thus far, the history books present Henry II in a good light. But the second part of Churchill’s statement refers to his less successful dealings with the Church. Henry did not like sharing power with another institution, especially one that regarded itself as having supreme authority.
Yet his reign started well on this front. When Henry was introduced to the brilliant young Thomas Becket, a protégé of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, they immediately saw eye to eye and Henry made him royal chancellor. As soon as the Canterbury post fell vacant, the king fast-tracked his learned friend through the ordination process, from priest to bishop to archbishop, in a matter of days. Unfortunately, from there on their paths diverged.
Parting of ways
As Becket himself declared on taking up his new position, he changed from ‘a patron of play-actors and a follower of hounds, to being a shepherd of souls.’ The two friends disagreed on several points of ecclesiastical administration as Henry endeavoured to assert the secular law over church law. Becket constantly refused to oblige.
Uppermost was the issue of jurisdiction over clergymen convicted of crimes. Henry wanted control of their sentencing and reprieve. Becket insisted it was a matter for the Church. Although this may not in itself seem to be a matter of life and death, the verdict would symbolize where the power lay.
In effect the two men were drawing up their battle lines – to give ground here would only lead to conceding more territory later. Like Thomas More centuries later in his resistance to Henry VIII, Becket could not act against his conscience, or all would be lost.
At one point Becket felt so intimidated he fled to France where he stayed for six years until Henry allowed him back after the Pope had threatened to excommunicate the whole of Britain. Here, indeed, were the early rumblings of the split that eventually ripped the English Church from Rome in the 16th century.
Final solution
When Becket preached with characteristic fire on Christmas Day, excommunicating bishops who had taken part in the coronation of Henry’s son as future king, the report of it tipped Henry into the terrible rage that would haunt him for the rest of his life. His actual words – ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!’ – have been turned into the more theatrically terse: ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Did the king know that four of his trusty,
We do not know how much licence was written into these accounts, perhaps none. Such lawless horror prevailed for 15 years under Stephen’s reign. It took the strength and organisation skills of his successor, Henry II, to put an end to the chaos.
Penitent Ruler of Europe’s Largest Empire
Henry II and his ‘turbulent priest’
W inston Churchill’s eponymous ancestor acclaimed the first Plantagenet ruler, Henry II, as the ‘very greatest King that England ever knew, but withal the most unfortunate’.
By his birth to Matilda and her second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry inherited the English crown. Through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, he acquired half of France, and bit by bit during his reign Henry added virtually the rest of the country. He conquered Ireland too. So by 1180 this formidable warrior king had extended the frontiers of what could rightly be termed the Angevin Empire to include an immense area stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees.
In his efforts to quell the turmoil inherited on succeeding Stephen, Henry earned widespread support from his nobles. One measure was to introduce a system of common law that standardized legal practice right across the country. Thus far, the history books present Henry II in a good light. But the second part of Churchill’s statement refers to his less successful dealings with the Church. Henry did not like sharing power with another institution, especially one that regarded itself as having supreme authority.
Yet his reign started well on this front. When Henry was introduced to the brilliant young Thomas Becket, a protégé of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, they immediately saw eye to eye and Henry made him royal chancellor. As soon as the Canterbury post fell vacant, the king fast-tracked his learned friend through the ordination process, from priest to bishop to archbishop, in a matter of days. Unfortunately, from there on their paths diverged.
Parting of ways
As Becket himself declared on taking up his new position, he changed from ‘a patron of play-actors and a follower of hounds, to being a shepherd of souls.’ The two friends disagreed on several points of ecclesiastical administration as Henry endeavoured to assert the secular law over church law. Becket constantly refused to oblige.
Uppermost was the issue of jurisdiction over clergymen convicted of crimes. Henry wanted control of their sentencing and reprieve. Becket insisted it was a matter for the Church. Although this may not in itself seem to be a matter of life and death, the verdict would symbolize where the power lay.
In effect the two men were drawing up their battle lines – to give ground here would only lead to conceding more territory later. Like Thomas More centuries later in his resistance to Henry VIII, Becket could not act against his conscience, or all would be lost.
At one point Becket felt so intimidated he fled to France where he stayed for six years until Henry allowed him back after the Pope had threatened to excommunicate the whole of Britain. Here, indeed, were the early rumblings of the split that eventually ripped the English Church from Rome in the 16th century.
Final solution
When Becket preached with characteristic fire on Christmas Day, excommunicating bishops who had taken part in the coronation of Henry’s son as future king, the report of it tipped Henry into the terrible rage that would haunt him for the rest of his life. His actual words – ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!’ – have been turned into the more theatrically terse: ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Did the king know that four of his trusty,
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