Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/591

Rh NORMANDY 545 now the childless widow of the emperor Henry V., who had been a firm ally of his father-in-law. The next year Henry married his daughter to Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Falk, count of Anjou and Maine. Anjou, whose counts had been such dangerous neighbours to Normandy, was thus to be united to the duchy and to the kingdom. These schemes in the end took effect. On Henry s death in 1135 the claims of Matilda were cast aside; the rule of a woman was too great a novelty for either kingdom or duchy. England chose Henry s nephew Stephen, the younger brother of Theobald of Chartres. Normandy inclined to Theobald himself, but accepted the choice of England. The legitimate male line of the Conqueror was now extinct, and the stronger feeling with regard to legiti mate birth which had grown up within the last hundred years hindered any such succession as that of the Conqueror himself. In earlier times Robert of Caen, Henry s natural son, renowned in England as earl of Gloucester, would have been a more obvious choice than either Matilda or Stephen. Now he could only assert the rights of his sister, and so plunge England into anarchy. The strife, which in England took a shape for which civil war is far too good a name, took in Normandy the less frightful shape of foreign invasion and conquest. Stephen s claim was from the first disputed in arms by Matilda s husband Geoffrey. Stephen showed himself in Normandy only for a moment in 1137, when his son Eustace did homage to King Lewis. Geoffrey Under gradually possessed himself of Normandy, partly by French the and Flemish help (1139-1145). Five years afterwards he Angevin res ig ne( j t ne duchy to his son Henry, who the next year succeeded his father in Anjou and Maine. The next year (1 152) he married Eleanor, the divorced wife of Lewis VII. (1137-1180), in her own right countess of Poitou and duchess of Aquitaine. By the union of all these territories a dominion was formed unlike anything which had been seen before in Gaul, but which, as has been remarked already, has had its parallel in later times. Duke Henry, in right of his father, his mother, and his wife, gathered together a crowd of dominions which made him far more powerful than his lord, the king of the French. But there was no connexion between the several duchies and counties that he held beyond the fact that he held them. And when presently the duke became a king the lack of unity became greater still. By the agreement which settled the strife of Stephen and Matilda, the crown of England passed at the death of Stephen to the son of Matilda. In 1154 began the memorable thirty-five years reign of Henry II. of England. But the king of England was also himself duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, and in his wife s name count of Poitou and duke of Aqui taine. During his reign and that of his eldest son the connexion between England and the Continent was at once closer and wider than it ever was before or after. With the formation of the great Angevin dominion, the being of Normandy as a separate power comes to an end. The mere union with England had not that effect in any thing like the same degree. While the same man was king of the English and duke of the Normans, but had no dominions beyond his kingdom and duchy, there was nothing in the relation to wound Norman national pride. The common sovereign took his highest title from England ; but his policy was apt to be directed at least as much by Norman as by English interests, and the men of Normandy could not forget that England was the conquest of their fathers. And, if English feeling could from one side look on Normandy as a conquered land and on Tinchebrai as the reversal of Senlac, it was equally easy to look on Tinche brai as a strife between Norman and Norman, in which it was a mere accident that the chosen chief of one and the stronger Norman party, himself the son of the greatest of Norman princes, happened also to be king of the island kingdom. After all, a conquest of England by Normandy or of Normandy by England was a less grievance than a conquest of Normandy by Anjou. Normans and Angevins hated one another with the hatred of neighbours ; nothing could be so utterly offensive to all Norman national feeling as the triumphant entry of Geoffrey into Rouen. Each accession which the Angevin prince made to his dominions made matters worse. Normandy became more and more a simple unit in the long roll-call of the possessions of its sovereign, and a unit marked out in a special way. It was not, like England, the possession which gave its ruler his rank among princes. It was not, like Anjou, the home of his direct forefathers. It was not, like Maine, the land of his own birth. What marked it out from his other possessions was that, while he had received all the rest by some form or other of peaceful succession, Normandy alone was a conquered land. It is not likely that the rule of its Angevin dukes ever called forth much loyalty in the Norman duchy. There was no sign of open discontent, and Henry and Richard were not princes to be lightly thrown aside. The real greatness of the father, the shadowy glory of the son, went for something, even with subjects Avho had no special love for them or their house. On the death of Richard in 1199 the succession of John was admitted in Normandy, as in England, without dispute. To bring this about it was perhaps reason enough that Anjou took the side of Arthur. But John s victory at Mirabeau put an end to any hope of a division of the dominions of the Angevin house. And when Arthur, in the expressive phrase of Roger of Wen- dover, &quot;vanished,&quot; when the French king took on himself the part of his avenger and declared John to have forfeited Forfeited all fiefs that he held of the French crown, there was no to France, zeal in Normandy to withstand French invasion. The king-duke, to be sure, himself showed as little zeal as any man ; but the Normans of an earlier day, with or without the help of their prince, would assuredly have made a stouter resistance than the subjects of John made to Philip Augustus. With wonderful speed (1203-1204) Continental Normandy passed away from an Angevin duke to a French king. One was as much and as little a stranger as the other ; and a union with the dominions of the Continental overlord might seem less ignominious than the position of one among many Continental provinces of the island king. The whole duchy, however, was not lost. The mainland passed to the king of the French ; the islands still clave to their duke. Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and their smaller fellows have ever since remained possessions of the kings of England, but forming no part of their kingdom. They still keep their own language, constitution, and laws, and they have never been incorporated with the United King dom. It is somewhat singular that the kings of England, still holding as they did part of the Norman duchy, should have so soon given up their Norman title. This was done when the treaty of Xaintes (Saintes) between Henry III. and Saint Lewis was finally carried out in 1259. Normandy now ceases for a while to have a distinct Hands history. But its earlier history largely influences th 6 ,*^ history which was to come. England, as England, h^theQMr- no real quarrel with France ; but the abiding quarrel be- re i with tween France and Normandy had drawn England within France, its range. The kings and the people of England, used to fight with France in a Norman quarrel, kept on the feeling of rivalry towards France, even after Normandy itself had gone over to the other side. The fact that the English kings kept Aquitaine after the loss of Nor mandy for the inheritance of Eleanor was not forfeited by the crime of her son was the immediate occasion of many of the later disputes between England and France. XVII. 69