to a town, all the township fled before them, and thought that they were robbers. The bishops and clergy were ever cursing them, but this to them was nothing, for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and reprobate. The earth bare no corn, you might as well have tilled the sea, for the land was all ruined by such deeds, and men said openly that Christ slept and his saints. These things, and more than we can say, did we suffer nineteen years for our sins.' 1

The only part of England where there was peace was in the three northern counties, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, of which David, king of Scots, had taken possession. The king of Scots supported the party of Matilda (who was his niece by her mother), and his Scottish garrison at Carlisle made cruel raids into England.

But let us pass over this hideous reign, a time in which our England was as though she were not, her laws all sunk, her people a prey to robbers. It would be a waste of time to

follow all the turnings of the warfare between Stephen and Matilda; how first one side triumphed and then the other. When the young earl Henry, Matilda's son, was grown to be a man, he married a wealthy heiress, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who made him lord of half the south of France. He had inherited Anjou and Maine from his father, as well as Normandy, which his father had won from Stephen, so that his dominions stretched from the English Channel to the Pyrenees. He now came to England with a large force, and the war threatened to take a new lease of life. But Stephen Wallingford. was tired of fighting; his son was dead, and he was willing to recognise Henry as his heir. This peace (of Wallingford, 1153) was sealed by the death of Stephen in 1154.

Peace of

1153.

The reign of Henry II. is one of the most important in the history of England. The crisis was this; England had Reign of already passed through the great change from clanHenry II. hood to feudalism more successfully than any other country, because she had almost always had kings who were able to govern. But feudalism was only valuable as a transition to a better form of government, and the danger for England was, lest this transition should not be quickly made. For while the authority of the central government Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Peterborough continuation, 1137.

1

rested on no secure basis, it could be overthrown under any weak king like Stephen, and then the country became a prey to all the evils of feudalism without any hope of deliverance except in a despotism. But what was needed was not a despotism like that of the Conqueror and his sons, but a government which should draw out all the best elements of the national strength, and use them as a balance and guarantee against the encroachments of the nobles. Henry was the man fitted both by circumstances and nature to curb the power of feudalism, and to make sure for the future the framework of government.

The great wealth and power which his marriage with Eleanor had brought him, his sovereignty over all the Western half of France, gave him a position such as no English king had had before him. And in his strangely mingled nature he had the gifts necessary for his situation; he had a brain capable of conceiving great plans, and an energetic will which would not flinch in carrying them out. Besides, he had the mind of a lawyer, a great fondness for business, and an inborn love of method and order.

His first work was to straighten the confusion created during Stephen's reign, and to carry out the peace of Wallingford.

The hated mercenary troops from Flanders His first reand elsewhere were driven out of the country, and forms. disappeared like a dream. Henry ordered all the castles which had been built in Stephen's reign to be destroyed, except a few which he kept in his own or in trusted hands. The few barons who tried to resist this measure were brought to submission by arms. The people rejoiced greatly to see these strongholds of tyranny demolished. Those estates of the crown which Stephen had heedlessly given away to his supporters Henry took back because the wealth of the crown was diminished by the loss of them. The Scots and Welsh had to do homage. Malcolm IV., king of Scots, consented to exchange the three northern counties for the earldom of Huntingdon, and thus the northern boundaries of England were fixed at last. Against the Welsh Henry led an expedition in person, and brought them to submission. And he put an end to a cause of confusion which had existed ever since ancient Anglo-Saxon times by striking a uniform coinage for the whole kingdom.

1157.

All this was a good beginning, and the English people began to have great hopes of their new king, when they saw his prudence and his zeal for justice. But in Henry's brain there was already planned a wider task than this: to place the government of England on such a sure foundation that no future commotions should shake it down; to organise that government itself; and to make it supreme both in Church and State.

power.

Now in those days, when representative government and free parliaments were yet unborn, secular government was a The Royal thing which could be thought of only under one form, the power of the king. The teaching of the Church to some extent favoured this power. To some extent, I say; for though the Church looked upon kings as divinely ordained for the maintenance of order, she always insisted on the duties of kings to their subjects; and besides, there were certain levelling doctrines belonging to the Church, which, though kept rather in the background just then, Idid make themselves heard from time to time. An influence far more powerful in promoting ideas of kingly authority was the study of Roman law, which had been revived in Europe during the twelfth century, and had come to Oxford University in the reign of Stephen.

Roman law.

We must pause a moment to consider what is meant by the revival of the study of Roman law. The Romans, great as they had been as conquerors, had shown themselves even greater as governors, and their law was the greatest and most lasting monument of their strength. That law is still studied by those who wish to master the principles on which law ought to be composed, and the Corpus Juris, or body of law drawn up into a code under the Emperor Justinian in 529, has been the model not only of the laws of many European nations, but even of some of the newest States of America. And even where, as in England, its decrees have not been copied, their influence has been enormous. We may say, speaking roughly, that in the twelfth century people began to think; that is to say, thought or what is called theory began to exercise a marked influence on the course of affairs. A hunger of the mind had been awakened, and for this hunger there was no food so grateful as the study of Roman law. For this law was a very different

thing to the rude codes of the Teutons; it was the work of some of the greatest minds of the past; it was written in a spirit of clear, wide common sense, and was expressed with force and elegance. For these qualities alone it was fascinating to the awakening minds of the twelfth century, and it became the object of ardent study. Moreover, as the shadow of the Roman Empire had not yet passed away from Europe, the written laws of that empire were not looked upon as dead laws; those who studied them venerated them as something still binding. And though the law of England is much freer from this Roman influence than the law of any other European state, it is nevertheless true that the writings of English lawyers have been strongly influenced by the study of the Corpus Juris.

What has now to be pointed out is the favour which the study of Roman law gave to the doctrine of the sovereign right of kings. The Roman code was compiled at a time when the authority of the Emperor was at its height, and the checks which feudal customs put on the power of kings were unknown; consequently, this law was favourable to despotism, and to the spread of the notion that a king was a sort of little god upon earth, whose will no one had any right to gainsay. Thus there was at hand an influence, a prevailing opinion, to back Henry up in asserting his royal authority, and in trying to establish a system of settled justice and legal order.

What is the chief business of government? A little thought will show that it falls mainly under two heads; keeping order and paying the expenses of order. We should The ends of say now-a-days, that government exists for the governsake of public order and benefit, and that taxa- ment. tion is needful only in order to pay the costs of order. This, of course, was not exactly the view of a king of the twelfth century. To him the chief business of government did not appear to be in the keeping of public order, but in the working of that business in a manner profitable to himself. This was his chief concern, to get as much money as he could. If he bestowed any thought on the keeping of order, as a business worthy of care in itself, he must have been a very good king for the twelfth century. And therefore we may say that Henry II. was on the whole a very good king,

Nevertheless we

though he was anything but a good man. must bear in mind that in his time order existed for the sake of revenue, and not revenue for the sake of order. But both these branches of government were reformed and organised by Henry, and placed on such a sound footing that by the end of his reign a settled system of finance and a uniform system of justice existed already; in fact, the outline of an orderly modern State was complete. A government by the king and his ministers was established, and guaranteed, as we shall afterwards see, by the development of popular institutions and a national army.

Henry's collision with

All seemed to go well with Henry; the mercenaries were cleared out, the castles destroyed, he was the most prosperous sovereign in Europe, and no one seemed in a better position for carrying out reforms in the law the Church. and administration of his country. But unfortunately, while he was trying to fix the framework of public justice on a better foundation than before, he came into collision with the Church.

Monasti

I have already tried to sketch the position of the Church in the middle ages, and have related the contest between William Rufus and Anselm, which gave to the world a picture of saintly heroism struggling with brutal violence. Every such picture added to the Church's gallery was an additional strength to her, endearing her more and more to the hearts Growth of of mankind. In the days of Anselm, a revival of cism. The religious feeling had taken place, which had shown Cistercians. itself most markedly in the Crusades and in the founding of the Cistercian order of monks, events which led to a great increase of the power of the Popes and the influence of the Church. Of the Crusades I shall speak afterwards. The Cistercian order was founded by pious men who desired to revive the strictness of monastic rule, and find a higher saintliness through a more rigid asceticism. The order spread rapidly, and during the troubled reign of Stephen, when monasteries were the only havens for peace-loving people, between thirty and forty Cistercian abbeys were built in different parts of England, among them such noble foundations as Fountains, Tintern, and Furness. We are told that more monasteries were built in Stephen's reign than during the last hundred years.. 'As the barons built castles,' says