Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/148

 LEARNING AND LITERATURE AT THE COURT OF HENRY II.

(June 13, 1878.)

N following out the inquiry which I began in the last Lecture, in order to complete the outline of our subject and take into account all the influences that conduced to a full literary intercourse between England and the Continent during the period of Henry II, the next point that I should take would be the enumeration of those foreign scholars and literary ecclesiastics who were favoured or promoted in England. This point, however, need not detain us long, for there were very few. England itself had no love for foreigners; whether as captains of mercenaries, or as papal nominees to ecclesiastical preferment, they impartially detested them; and the detestation was very frequently justified by the view which the foreigners took of England and the English; a country out of which as much revenue as could be wrung should be wrung, and a people at whom, when they had plundered them, it was their delight to laugh. Nor were the Angevin kings much inclined to a policy which they knew to be most odious to their subjects; Henry II avoided either ruling or controlling England by foreign ministers, and did very little to encourage an influx of foreign ecclesiastics. Excepting such persons as, like Hugh de Puiset, Bishop of Durham, and two or three others, were closely connected by blood with the royal house, few foreigners were made bishops, and when Becket, according to his biographer, wished to restore learning at the court, he urged the king to recall home the English scholars who were studying abroad. Of the few, who would be all that could be named, the most prominent are Peter of Blois and Master Vacarius.

Peter of Blois seems to have made his home in England,