Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/14

Henry II invasion stirred up a rising in the north; scarcely were the northern rebels defeated by the king's illegitimate son Geoffrey, bishop-elect of Lincoln, when East Anglia was overrun by a host of Flemings brought in by the traitor Earl of Norfolk, Hugh Bigod; the London citizens broke into anarchy; the young king threatened invasion from Flanders; and the justiciars in despair called Henry to the rescue. He crossed the sea in a terrific storm on 7 July, and made straight for Canterbury. Fasting, barefoot, in pilgrim's weeds, he entered the cathedral church, and there publicly did penance for the martyr's death, submitting to be scourged by all the seventy monks of the chapter, spending the night in vigil before the shrine, and loading it with costly gifts ere he set out next morning for London. Four days later a courier burst at midnight into the king's bedchamber, and woke him with tidings that on the very day, almost at the very hour, of his departure from Canterbury the Scottish king had been made prisoner at Alnwick (13 July 1174). Henry marched at once upon the English rebels, and in three weeks they were all at his feet. Then he recrossed the sea, forced Louis to raise the siege of Rouen, and by Michaelmas was in a position to dictate terms all round. The terms which he imposed on his sons, on the French king, and on the rebel barons amounted to little more than a return to the status quo ante bellum, with a pledge of general amnesty and reconciliation. The king of Scots, however, regained his freedom only by doing liege homage to the English king for his crown and all his lands, and giving up five of his strongest fortresses in pledge for his fidelity; and there was one captive whom Henry would not release at all. At the opening of the rebellion he had caught his wife, disguised in man's attire, attempting to follow her sons to the French court; he had put her in prison at once, and there, with one brief interval, he kept her for the rest of his own life.

In England his triumph was complete and final. He took up again at once his work of administrative reform, and carried it on thenceforth without check and without break. In January 1176 he issued the assize of Northampton; this was in effect a re-enactment of the assize of Clarendon, with important modifications and amendments of detail, and with the addition of several entirely new clauses, one of which originated the proceeding known as the ‘assize of mort d'ancester,’ while others defined the pleas, criminal and civil, which were to be reserved for the hearing of the royal justices, and another directed that every man in the realm, from earl to ‘rustic,’ should take an oath of fealty to the king. In the same year he wrung from a papal legate a partial assent to the constitutions of Clarendon, which enabled him to bring clergy as well as laity within the scope of a great visitation of the forests, held in punishment for the damage done in the rebellion. Next year he ordered a return of all tenements held in chief of the crown, with the names of the existing tenants and the services due from each. An inquiry into the several liabilities of the king's tenants-in-chivalry had been instituted ten years before, apparently for the assessment of the aide pour fille marier, and on that occasion the returns had been made by each baron for himself; the inquest of 1177, however, was seemingly designed to be of wider scope and more searching character, and was entrusted to the sheriffs and bailiffs of the different counties. In 1178 Henry reorganised the curia regis by restricting its highest functions to a small inner tribunal of selected counsellors, which afterwards grew into the court of king's bench. From 1176 to 1180 he was busy with a series of experiments which ended in the virtual establishment of the system of judges' circuits familiar to us now. By his assize of arms, 1181, he imposed on every free man the duty of bearing arms for the defence of the country; and by enacting that each man's liability should be determined by the amount, not of his land, but of his annual revenue and movable goods, he introduced into English finance the principle of direct taxation on personal property.

The English king's supremacy over the neighbour states and his importance in Europe at large grew with the growth of his power at home. Three Welsh campaigns (1157, 1163, 1165), and a series of negotiations conducted by Henry in person on his way to and from Ireland, had broken the independence of the Welsh princes; in the revolt of 1173, Rhys of South Wales appeared as the king's ally, and at its close David of North Wales was bound to him by a marriage with his sister. The loyalty of the Scottish king was secured in 1175, and in the same year the homage of the king of Connaught completed Henry's overlordship of Ireland. Next year his youngest daughter Joanna (1165–1199) [q. v.] was married to the king of Sicily, and welcomed in her new country with honours which showed how great was the reverence felt by its Norman rulers for the distant sovereign whom they were proud to acknowledge as the head of their race. The kings of Castile and Navarre chose him as arbiter in a family quarrel between themselves in 1177; the king of Arragon and the Count of Toulouse had done the like as early as 1173, when the latter had