| Notes |
- 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.
Prior to coming to the throne he already controlled Normandy and
Anjou on the continent; his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine on May
18, 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.
In August 1152, Henry, previously occupied in fighting Eleanor's
ex-husband Louis VII of France and his allies, 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.
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 which the barons had built without authorisation during
Stephen's reign torn down, and scutage, a fee paid by vassals in lieu
of military service, became by 1159 a central feature of the king's
military system. Record keeping improved dramatically in order to
streamline this taxation.
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, a build on
the earlier agreements at Clarendon. This reform proved one of Henry's
major contributions to the social history of England. As a consequence
of the improvements in the legal system, the power of church courts
waned. The church, not unnaturally, 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. Henry had
appointed Becket to the archbishopric precisely because he wanted to
avoid conflict.
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
dissention 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 a
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: "Who
will rid me of this turbulent 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
December 29, 1170.
As part of his penance for the death of Becket, Henry 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. 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 chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis 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.)
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, 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)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.
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 to divorce Eleanor and 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.
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. A horse trampled to death another son, Geoffrey, Duke of
Brittany (11581186). Henry's third son, Richard the Lionheart
(11571199), 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.
Richard the Lionheart then became king of England. He was followed
by King John, the youngest son of Henry II, laying aside the claims of
Geoffrey's children Arthur of Brittany and Eleanor.
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
gray hair has altered that color 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."
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1132 - 1189 (57 years)