Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/15

Henry II submitted to do homage to Henry for his county. In France itself the factions that raged around the deathbed of Louis VII and the ill-secured throne of his young successor, Philip Augustus, were driven to accept, nay to solicit, the mediation of the English king (1180–2); and the crowning-point of his glory seemed to be reached in 1185, when, as head of the Angevin house, he was implored by the patriarch of Jerusalem in person to undertake the deliverance of the Holy Land, where the Angevin dynasty and the Christian realm which they had been defending for half a century against the Moslems were both alike at their last gasp. The ‘faithful men’ of the land, however, assembled in council at Clerkenwell, refused to sanction such an undertaking (, ii. 33, 34); and Henry had ample reasons for yielding to their decision.

The peace-maker of Europe could not keep peace among his own sons. He had freely forgiven their rebellion, and fully reinstated all three in the positions which they had respectively occupied before it: Richard as duke of Aquitaine, Geoffrey as duke of Brittany, Henry as acknowledged heir to the overlordship of both, and to direct sovereignty over England, Normandy, and Anjou. But the brothers were jealous one of another, and their jealousy broke out at last in open war. In 1183 young Henry and Geoffrey joined the nobles of Aquitaine in a rising against their father and Richard, and twice, while besieging the rebels in their headquarters at Limoges, Henry himself narrowly escaped with his life. The young king's death (11 June) ended the strife for a while, but it opened the way to other quarrels. Henry proposed to transfer Aquitaine from Richard, now heir to the crown, to John, whose betrothal with Alice of Maurienne had come to nothing, but for whom he had in 1176 secured the rich heritage of Earl William of Gloucester, and whom in 1177 he had nominated king of Ireland. It was to Ireland, not to Aquitaine, that John was at last despatched by his father (1185); but his misconduct there forced Henry to recall him within a few months. Geoffrey meanwhile was plotting treason with Philip of France; in August 1186 he died, and Philip claimed the guardianship of his infant heir Arthur (1187–1203) [q. v.] The relations of Philip and Henry were already strained almost to breaking point; there was a standing dispute between them about the dower-lands of the young king's widow; there were other disputes about the overlordship of Auvergne, about the ownership of Berry, about the French king's right of intervention in a quarrel between Richard and the Count of Toulouse, and about Philip's sister Adela, who, as Richard's plighted bride, had been for fourteen years, or more, in the custody of Henry, and whom he would give up neither to her brother nor to her betrothed. The motives and the aim of Henry's policy at this juncture are as obscure to us now as they were to Richard then; but its outward aspect gave some colour of reason to the suspicion, adopted by Richard at Philip's instigation, that he was planning to oust Richard from his position as heir, and perhaps to rob him of his intended wife, in favour of John. Conference after conference failed to restore the good understanding of father and son, to satisfy Philip, or to force from Henry a definite avowal of his intentions. For a moment all differences were hushed by tidings of the capture of Jerusalem; the two kings took the cross together (October 1187), and Henry went to England to arrange for the collection of the ‘Saladin tithe,’ a tax of one-tenth of all the movable goods of clergy and laity, which was to defray the expenses of his crusade. In his absence an attack made by Richard on Toulouse gave Philip a pretext for invading Berry; Henry hastened to its defence; Philip fought and negotiated by turns with the father and the son; at last all three met in conference at Bonmoulins (18 Nov. 1188); Richard demanded an explicit recognition as heir to all his father's dominions, and on the refusal of his demand openly transferred his homage to the French king.

Henry was left alone, without troops, without money, without resources of any kind. His enemies saw their advantage and used it ruthlessly. They turned a deaf ear to his overtures of reconciliation, and to the remonstrances of the legates whom the pope, in terror for the peace of Europe and the success of the crusade, at once despatched to his support; they would be satisfied with nothing short of unconditional submission to their demands. Rather than stoop to this, Henry with a handful of followers shut himself up to await the end in his native city, Le Mans. The end came with startling rapidity. In a week Philip and Richard were masters of Maine; on 12 June 1189 they prepared to assault Le Mans; its defenders fired the suburbs; the city itself caught fire, and Henry with his little band fled for their lives towards Normandy. The wild words of blasphemy which Gerald de Barri (De Instr. Princ. dist. iii. c. 24) puts into the mouth of the fugitive king, if uttered at all, can only have been uttered in the irresponsible frenzy of despair; and as he lay that night at La