A Student's History of England, v. 1: B.C. 55-A.D. 1509: From the Earliest Times to the Death of King Edward VIIGardiner, Samuel Rawson
History
A Student's History of England, v. 1: B.C. 55-A.D. 1509: From the Earliest Times to the Death of King Edward VII
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson
Great Britain -- History; Great Britain -- History -- Outlines, syllabi, etc.
2. =Pacification of England.=--Henry's first year was spent in
completing the work which he had begun after the treaty of
Wallingford. He sent Stephen's mercenaries over the sea and
completed the destruction of the 'adulterine castles.' One great rebel
after another was forced to submit and have his strong walls pulled
down. There were to be no more dens of robbers in England, but all men
were to obey the king and the law. What castles remained were the
king's, and as long as they were his rebellions would not be likely to
be successful. Henry even regained from Malcolm IV., king of the
Scots, Northumberland and Cumberland, which had been surrendered by
Stephen (see p. 133). In his government Henry did his best to carry
out the plans of his grandfather, Henry I. It was perhaps because he
was afraid that one Justiciar would be too powerful, that he appointed
two, Richard de Lucy and the Earl of Leicester, to see that justice
was executed and the government maintained whether the king were
absent or present. The old Bishop Nigel of Ely was reappointed
Treasurer, and presided over the Exchequer at Westminster. Thomas of
London, known in later times by the name of Becket,[11] an active and
vigorous man, fifteen years older than the king, who had been ordained
a deacon, but had nothing clerical about him except the name, was made
Chancellor. Thomas was the king's chosen friend, and the two together
delighted in the work of restoring order. Thomas liked sumptuous
living, and the magnificence of his housekeeping and of his feasts was
the talk of the whole country. Yet though he laughed and jested in the
midst of his grandeur, he kept himself from every kind of vice. Henry
was fond of horseplay, and once on a bitter winter's day, when he was
riding with Thomas, he snatched at a fine new scarlet mantle from the
Chancellor's neck to throw to a beggar. Thomas struggled hard, and the
two men nearly pulled one another off their horses, but in the end the
beggar got the mantle.
[Footnote 11: His father's name was Becket, but at that time
hereditary surnames had not come into use. He was once called Thomas
Becket in his lifetime by one of his murderers as an insult.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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