The Conquering Family (18 page)

From this it is clear that Henry did not try to escape his share of the guilt by laying it all on the shoulders of the men who had heeded his ill-considered words. As will be shown later, he was prepared to assume guilt himself and to seek expiation in his own way. However, his willingness to take the knights back into his service affords additional light on his motives and his reactions. He must have become reconciled to what they had done after the first reverberations had died down and the danger of sacerdotal lightnings had been averted. He felt an increasing relief that the primate, immovable in life, had been thus cleared from his path. Not then could the future be glimpsed, and Henry would have no realization of what this would do to his memory; how his greatness as a king would be obscured and forgotten and he would be remembered for the shoddier aspects of his life, seen against the dark curtain of one of the worst crimes in history.

Henry received word of the death of his uncompromising opponent at Argenteuil in Normandy. Without uttering a sound he turned and went into a seclusion which lasted for three days, seeing no one and refusing food. What his thoughts were can well be imagined. He would be under no delusions as to what this meant to him. The opinion of the world would be against him, he would be blamed and condemned, he might expect that the Pope would excommunicate him as the instigator of the murder. He would know this: in the duel he had fought with his one-time friend he had emerged the loser, even though it had been necessary for the archbishop to die in order to score a victory.

The most superficial examination of Henry’s character would leave no doubt, however, that these considerations would not occupy his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. It has already been said that he never completely lost an affection, and it must be remembered that his friendship with Becket had been a deep one. There is every reason to believe that, as he wrestled with his conscience and his unhappiness through those three long days, regrets for the death of that strange man were often uppermost in his mind. Perhaps he would think of the many times he had ridden into the hall of the chancellery and had vaulted across the board to the seat reserved for him. It had been a stimulating relationship and it would have been continued on the same basis if he had not insisted on putting his friend into the higher post where he had ranked next to
royalty. His sharp temper had often made him wish for Becket’s death, of course, but this had been no more than a phase of his sudden rages. In his sober moments he had not wanted the struggle to end in tragedy. But it had been rash and bitter words of his which had led to the murder, and he knew that nothing he could do would remove the stain.

Deeper than all would be his regrets for the dream, now shattered beyond repair. The star of empire which had always blazed above him had fallen from the sky. He could expect no acceptance of what had been in his mind now that this had happened. Sixteen words, uttered in a sudden fury, had undone all his striving and planning.

When Henry emerged from his tower room at last, he walked out on the narrow space behind the battlements of the keep. It was getting late, and he wondered why the bells of the abbey which he could see just beyond the walls of the town had not sounded compline. This set him to thinking, and he realized then that he had not heard the bells at all that day.

In a sudden panic he raced down the stairs and into the hall, where people were idling about in readiness for supper. He stopped by one of them to ask a question in an urgent whisper. Was it true, then, that the ban had been placed?

The answer was a reluctant affirmative. The Archbishop of Sens, without waiting on Rome for confirmation, had laid all Normandy under an interdict. No bells had rung, no masses had been said. All day people had been coming to the gates, white-faced, asking questions. What would happen to them? Could they no longer be married by the Church? Would there be no chance to confess their sins? Would the dying be allowed to go from the world unshriven?

Although Henry has been called irreligious, this is far from the truth. He shared the faith of all men and, in addition, he had a thorough respect for the power of the Church. The thought in his mind now would be what he might expect if he were placed under the ban himself. Would other men shun a king? Would he be hampered in carrying on the affairs of state? Would he have to sit alone as he had compelled the two bishops to do?

But a few moments of anxious reflection would suffice for Henry. With him a desperate prospect called for action. First he indulged in a large and furiously quick meal, having three days of fasting to make up for, and then he set his mind to ways of repairing this disaster, of facing the whirlwind he had unleashed. The result was that the Archbishop of Rouen, with two other high ecclesiastical officers, was sent off to Rome, where the Pope had now established himself, with explanations of the mistake which had produced the tragedy and a statement of the amends Henry was prepared to make. This done, he realized that the archbishop was an old man and would travel in slow and solemn state. Accordingly
he made up another party of younger men, abbots and archdeacons, with instructions to reach Rome as fast as they could and hold matters in abeyance there until the properly authorized trio of older men put in an appearance.

It was well that he took this double precaution. The young men, reaching the Eternal City long before His Grace of Rouen, found themselves in an atmosphere of the most bitter hostility. Alexander had been so outraged that he had gone into seclusion himself for five days, in vain regrets, no doubt, for the vacillating part he had played while Thomas à Becket was alive. Now he was ready to loose the lightning of his wrath, to excommunicate Henry and lay England under an interdict. By a desperate canvass of the whole papal court, the first envoys accomplished what they had been sent to do, however; they persuaded Alexander to suspend judgment until the bishops arrived and had been heard.

When the Pontiff realized that Henry was ready to submit to penalties and also to abate some of the more objectionable clauses of the Constitutions of Clarendon, his hand was stayed. The excommunication of a monarch as powerful as Henry would have been a serious matter, and without a doubt Alexander was relieved that he need not, after all, proceed to this dangerous extreme.

It was agreed that the English King would not hold the Church in England responsible to him in points of law but would again allow appeals to Rome. Infringement of church rights previously established would cease. Henry was to take the cross and fight in Palestine or, if this should prove impossible, he would pay the cost of maintaining two hundred of the Knights Templars in the field for a period of three years. Less important stipulations were made. His son Henry would be crowned a second time in full accord with church practice, the adherents of Becket would be pardoned and left in the posts they occupied, ample compensation would be made for the years of looting at Canterbury, and funds would be provided for the sisters of the murdered man, Mary and Agnes Becket.

It will be seen from this that Henry did not throw himself entirely on the mercy of the Pope. He made concessions, but they were not sweeping enough to have satisfied Thomas à Becket had the primate been alive to pass on them. The King was too tough of fiber for unconditional surrender. He had been guilty of a series of mistakes and of a great sin, but he did not whine for pardon as his son John was to do at a later period. Henry never forgot his responsibilities as King of England.

The penance he took on himself to pay was no convenient gesture, no halfhearted effort. After his journey to Ireland, which will be dealt with in the next chapter, he came back to England for the purpose. It was at the most critical stage of his whole reign. His sons had united in a family mutiny and had allied themselves with the perpetual enemy, Louis of France, in an attack on Normandy. Eleanor was at the side of her beloved
Richard, who could do no wrong. The King of Scotland, William the Lion, was invading Northumberland. The Earl of Leicester, espousing the cause of the rebellious sons, had landed with an army of mercenaries in Norfolk. It seemed quite possible that Henry would go down against such a powerful combination.

He landed at Southampton and rode from there to Canterbury without a stop, except to change horses and for hurried meals. He dismounted at the chapel of St. Nicholas outside the city and walked to St. Dunstan’s Oratory, where he put on a hair shirt and over that the gown of a pilgrim. With bare feet, with staff in one hand and the essential penny in the other, he walked through the streets of Canterbury to the cathedral. News of his coming had preceded him and the streets were filled with people, awed into silence by the spectacle of the much-feared King walking on bare feet, which had already begun to bleed, to plead like any common penitent.

Henry played the role fully and humbly. He prostrated himself and kissed the stones where Thomas à Becket had fallen. Then he went to the crypt and lay before the tomb. Here he made confession that, although he had not willed the death of the Martyr, he was responsible for it because of the words he had spoken. He begged forgiveness for his wickedness and pride.

Baring his back, he asked that the waxed cord of flagellation be used, that each high officer of Canterbury strike him five times and each of the monks three. The hundreds of strokes he thus demanded bruised and lacerated him so badly that the last ones to wield the cord had to be driven to it by royal insistence. Following this extreme measure, the King sat in silence before the tomb for the balance of the day and all of the night which followed. As the doors of the cathedral had been thrown open at his express command, the townspeople ventured in and stood at a distance while their ruler kept his long vigil. This was indeed something to see, the mighty monarch, master of so large a part of the known world, sitting in sackcloth, doing humble penance for his sins.

Henry did not rise until dawn. He again crossed Canterbury on bare feet. At the oratory he dressed and took to horse. On reaching London he went to the Tower, and on his first night he slept soundly in the belief that he had at last purged himself of his fault.

He was awakened before dawn by a loud rapping at his chamber door. A servant entered with word that a messenger had arrived from the north and was waiting outside. Crawling from his bed with the greatest difficulty, for his back was now stiff and painful, the King hobbled to the door. The messenger, he saw, was covered with dust from many hours in the saddle.

“My lord, I am servant to Ranulf de Glanville,” said the man, “and I come with good tidings.”

The King waited. He was badly in need of good tidings. The thought undoubtedly was in his mind, Can this be a sign that I am forgiven?

“Behold, my lord, he holds your enemy, the King of Scots, in chains at Richmond!”

Henry’s mind took fire at this news. William the Lion defeated and captured! A victory indeed! He would confound all his enemies with such a start as this. Painfully he walked to a window, a narrow slit in the thick masonry. All the bells in London were starting to ring for the victory. People were pouring into the streets, shouting to each other jubilantly. The sun was just rising over the river.

In the mood of humility which gripped him still, the King was certain that this was his reward, the proof that he had been forgiven. It must have seemed to him as he watched the rays of the sun gild the waters of the estuary that this would be the finest day he had ever known.

I
T
has been customary in writing of the efforts made to conquer Ireland during the reign of Henry II to speak of the country as uncivilized and barbarous. The evidence does not bear this out: conditions there do not seem much different, at least, from what they had been in England a relatively short time before. The Danish invasions had never penetrated far beyond the eastern coast, and the population was divided into two sections: the inhabitants of the cities along the Irish Sea, the Ostmen, as they were called, where living was on much the same scale as in England at the time of the Conquest, and the real Irish who had to themselves the beautiful country of the interior and the west, the Ireland of mountain and lake, of red deer and wild boar, the Ireland of green fields and soft winds. The real Irish people were wild and untamable, but they do not deserve to be described as savage kerns existing in bogs and little better than the beasts they hunted. The historian of the invasion, Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of the people in the most uncomplimentary way and yet allows himself to lapse into references which leave the opposite impression. Nature, he says, “leads each to man’s estate, conspicuous for a tall and handsome form, regular features, and a fresh complexion.” The priests, he found, were scrupulously regular in the performance of their duties and never allowed themselves more than one meal a day (but were less abstemious in the matter of drink); all the people were musical and played on two instruments, the lute and the timbrel. The Irish were a race of minstrels, as the huge mass of their earliest literature attests, the Ulster cycle of romances and the Ossianic songs which continue of interest to the present day. Irish enamels had already set the mold for all Byzantine and European work.

It must be said that the Irish people were so prone to quarrel among themselves that they were broken up into many small kingdoms, as the English had been before the time of Egbert, but they had developed the beginnings of a democracy of their own. The choice of a king was always, in theory at least, in the hands of the people. Certainly they
had never allowed themselves to be held in the iron slavery of feudalism as had the people of Normandy, from whom the criticisms come. The Brehon Code contained some enlightened conceptions of law.

Two excuses for the invasion are generally given. There was the slave trade between the two countries which had existed for centuries. It seems to have been one-sided. The Ostmen bought Anglo-Saxons as fast as they could be shipped across the narrow sea, and the victims of the traffic constituted the servant class along the eastern coast of Ireland. Clearly, however, the odium must attach to the sellers, who were prepared to bargain away their natural children and their dependents, in even greater degree than to the buyers. The second excuse was the independent status of the Church in Ireland. Although the people showed then the same devotion they have continued to display throughout the centuries, no effort had been made to organize the Church along the lines followed elsewhere. They had archbishops but no central authority, and they did not pay Peter’s pence to Rome. The bull of Adrian IV, if it had actually been promulgated, was the first tangible evidence of the desire which all pontiffs had shared to see the Irish Church brought into uniformity with the rest of Christianity.