The best proof that King Henry's orderly if autocratic régime was
appreciated at its true value by his English subjects, is that when the
second series of rebellions raised by his undutiful sons began in 1182,
there was no stir whatever in England, though in Normandy, Brittany and
Aquitaine the barons rose in full force to support the young princes,
whose success would mean the triumph of particularism and the
destruction of the Angevin empire. Among the many troubles which broke
down King Henry's strong will and great bodily vigour in those unhappy
years, rebellion in England was not one. For this reason he was almost
constantly abroad, leaving the administration of the one loyal section
of his realm to his great justiciar. Hence the story of the unnatural
war between father and sons has no part in English history. It is but
necessary to note that the younger Henry died in 1183, that Geoffrey
perished by accident at a tournament in 1186, and that in 1189, when the
old king's strength finally gave out, it was Richard who was leading the
rebellion, to which John, the youngest and least worthy of the four
undutiful sons, was giving secret countenance. It was the discovery of
the treachery of this one child whom he had deemed faithful, and loved
over well, that broke Henry's heart. "Let things go as they will; I have
nothing to care for in the world now," he murmured on his death-bed, and
turned his face to the wall to breathe his last.
Richard I.
The death of the younger Henry had made Richard heir to all his father's
lands from the Tweed to the Bidassoa save Brittany, which had fallen to
Arthur, the infant son of the unlucky Geoffrey. John, the new king's
only surviving brother, had been declared "Lord of Ireland" by his
father in 1185, but Henry had been forced to remove him for persistent
misconduct, and had left him nothing more than a titular sovereignty in
the newly conquered island. In this Richard confirmed him at his
accession, and gave him a more tangible endowment by allowing him to
marry Isabella, the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester, and by
bestowing on him the honour of Lancaster and the shires of Derby, Devon,
Cornwall and Somerset. The gift was over-liberal and the recipient was
thankless; but John was distinctly treated as a vassal, not granted the
position of an independent sovereign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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