a survey indeed he needed a more wide-reaching vision than even that of the Black Falcon. The work had altered vastly in scale since it left the “great builder’s” hands; but it had not changed in character. Henry’s policy in Gaul was essentially the same as Fulk’s--a policy of consolidation, rather than of conquest. He clearly never dreamed, as a man of less cautious ambition might well have done in his place, of pitting the whole strength of his continental and insular dominions against that of the French Crown in a struggle for the mastery of Gaul; he seems never to have dreamed even of trying to free himself from his feudal obedience to a sovereign far inferior to him in territorial wealth and power; he never, so far as we can see, aspired to stand in any other relation to the French king than that which had been held by his forefathers. He aimed in fact simply at compacting and securing his own territories in Gaul, and maintaining the rank of the head of the Angevin house, as the most influential vassal of the Crown. If he ever saw, on a distant horizon, a vision of something greater than this, he kept his dream to himself and, like Fulk of old, left his successors to attempt its fulfilment. [Illustration: Map VI. MAP OF EUROPE cir. 1180. Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co. ] An ambition so moderate as this entailed no very complicated schemes of foreign diplomacy. As a matter of fact, Henry was at some time or other in his reign in diplomatic relations with every state and every ruler in Christendom, from Portugal to Norway, and from the count of Montferrat to the Eastern and Western Emperors. But these relations sprang for the most part from his insular rather than from his continental position; or, more exactly, they arose from his position as a king of England, but a king far mightier than any who had gone before him. It was the knowledge that Henry had at his back all the forces of the island-crown which roused in Louis VII. such a restless jealousy of his power in Gaul; and it was the jealousy of Louis which drove Henry into a labyrinth of diplomacy and of war, neither of which was a natural result of Henry’s own policy. A very brief glance at Henry’s foreign relations will suffice to shew that they concerned England far more than Anjou. A considerable part of them arose directly out of his quarrel with the English primate. Such was the case with his German and Italian alliances, designed to counterbalance the French king’s league with the Pope. The alliances formed through the marriages of his daughters were all strictly alliances made by the English Crown. The immediate occasion of Matilda’s marriage with Henry of Saxony was her father’s quarrel with S. Thomas; in another point of view, this union was only a natural continuation of a policy which may be traced through the wedding of her grandmother with Henry V. and that of Gunhild with Henry III. back to the wedding of Æthelstan’s