Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/318

Rh 302 ENGLAND [HISTORY. Wars with France. Intended succes sion of Matilda. Election of Stephen. The anarchy. Succes sion of Henry 1 1. England, of which there had been only a glimpse in the days of Rufus, now began in earnest. It is true that the wars of Henry were waged wholly for Norman and not at all for English interests, and Englishmen at home bitterly complained of the taxes which were wrung from them for wars beyond sea. But it is none the less true that, in their European aspect, they were English wars, and that they tended to give the England of Henry a wholly different position from the England of the days before the Conquest. The later years of Henry were chiefly occupied in schemes of dynastic policy on the continent. His only legitimate son, the ^Etheling William, to whom homage as his successor had been done both in Normandy and in England, was drowned in 1120. The king s daughter Matilda had been married to the emperor Henry V. Strict alliance with Germany formed part of Henry s policy, as it had formed part of the policy of Godwine and Harold ; and the two Henries, emperor and king, joined in warfare against Lewis of France. On the death of the emperor, Matilda returned to England, and, by an act without precedent either in his kingdom or in his duchy, Henry procured that homage should be done to his daughter as his successor. No more striking comment can be needed as to the growth of the new ideas of kingship. The crown was beginning to be so thoroughly looked on as a possession that it was deemed that it might pass to a woman. On the other hand, no settlement could be more opposed to modern notions of hereditary right. When homage was first done to Matilda, Robert s son William, who, according to modern notions, was the direct heir of the Conqueror, was still living. In Normandy indeed he was his uncle s enemy, and in England his claims seem never to have been heard of. But, in the lack of legitimate male heirs, the choice either of the king s natural son Robert or of his sister s son Stephen would have been much less opposed to earlier ideas, both English and Norman, than the succession of Matilda. The imperial widow was presently married to Geoffrey of Anjou, a marriage clearly designed with a view to the enlargement of the continental dominions of her father s house. King Henry died in 1135, leaving, as ho deemed, the succession to his daughter and her young son Henry. As usual, an arrangement made before the vacancy was set aside, and the choice of England fell on Stephen. The case of the new king s election was not unlike the older and more famous case of the election of Harold. In itself it was perfectly goo! Against it stood the fact that Stephen had, with the rest of the chief men, sworn to the succession of Matilda. Stephen then was a perjurer as regarded his own soul; he was no usurper as regarded the nation. He was accepted without opposition, and King Henry s son Robert did homage to him with the rest. But Stephen, a man of many winning personal qualities, was utterly unable to reign in those times. Rebellions broke out; Earl Robert asserted the rights of his sister in England, and Normandy was conquered by her husband Geoffrey. The empress landed in England (1139) ; she was chosen Lady (1141) the name Queen was not used ; but she was never crowned. A civil war, a time of utter anarchy and havoc raged, till (1153) another agreement of the usual kind was made between Stephen and Matilda s son Henry, now duke of the Normans. Ho had been brought over to England as a child ; he had taken his share in the wars ; and it was now agreed that Stephen should keep the crown for life, and that Henry should succeed him. This time the agree ment took effect. When Stephen died in the next year, Henry succeeded without opposition. Again a duke of the Normans succeeded to the crown of England ; but Henry of Anjou, by birth-place Henry of Le Mans, was far more than duke of the Normans and king of the English. To the lands of his mother s father he added the lands of his father, Plate Anjou, Maine, and Touraine ; and a politic marriage gave him a greater dominion still. The designs of William Rufus upon the duchy of Aquitaine came to paes in another way. The great dominion of Southern Gaul, Poitou, Aquitaine, and Gascony, had passed to Eleanor the daughter of their last duke. She married Lewis, the heir of the crown of France, who almost immediately succeeded to the kingdom (1137). For a moment France and Aquitaine, Northern and Southern Gaul, the land of oil and the land of oc, were joined together. It might seem that a kingdom of France, in the modern sense, was about to begin. But the northern king and the southern duchess did not agree. A canonical objection to the marriage was conveniently found, and it was accordingly annulled. The divorced queen at once married the young duke of the Normans (1152). Her dominions came with her, and the prince who now succeeded to the crown of England already held the greatest power in Gaul, a power far greater than that of his nominal lord at Paris. With that dominion he won the undying hatred of the lord whose wife with her splendid heritage had passed to him. The king of Paris was not yet to be master of Southern Gaul. Ue was to be again shut up in his inland dominion, while his mighty vassal held the mouths of .the great rivers and the fairest cities of the land. As England under Cnut might seem to have become part of a Scandinavian empire, so under Henry she might seem to have become part of a Gaulish empire. The strictly Norman period of the English history comes to a.i end. Normandy and England have alike become parts of Europ the dominions of a king who by female descent might be called either Norman or English, but who, both by birth and by general character, was neither Norman nor English. In ruling over a vast number of distinct states, widely differing in blood, language, and everything else, ruling over all without exclusively belonging to any, Henry II., king, duke, and count of all the lands from the Pyrenees to the Scottish border, was the forerunner of the emperor Charles V. olliei It was during the reigns of the two sous and the grand- son of the Conqueror that the chief steps were taken towards the fusion of English and Normans into one people, or rather towards the change of Normans into Englishmen. At the accession of Rufus the distinction was in full force ; at the accession of Henry I. it is clearly visible. In the course of Henry s reign it so far died out that, though it was doubtless not forgotten, it was no longer marked by outward distinction. The name of Englishman now takes in all natives of England, of whatever descent. A talc of a general conspiracy to kill all the Normans soon after the accession of Stephen proves, when it is examined, to mean, just as in the case of the massacre of St Brice, not a design to slay every man of Norman descent in England, but merely a design to slay a particular body of Norman mercenary soldiers. 1 Everything during these reigns tended to draw the two races more nearly together; nothing tended to keep them apart. The brutal tyranny of Rufus wronged both races alike ; yet men of native English descent could rise even under him. 2 The cold despotism of Henry at once benefited and offended both races alike. At one time of his reign we meet with a complaint that he would admit no Englishman to high office. When the complaint is tested, 1 See History of the Norman Conquest, vol. v. p. 281. 2 The career of the crusader Robert the son of Godwine, whose history will be found in William of Malmesbury and in the Scottish writer John Fordun, who represents Turgot, is a case in point. So at the accession of Henry I. there were several Englishmen holding abbeys, one of whom, Godric of Peterborough, had been chosen by the monks, who paid William Rufus a large sum for leave to elect freely. and Engli