England at the beginning of this period was distressed with the war between King Stephen and Matilda. Churches were converted into fortifications, and castles into prisons. For nineteen years the country was so ravaged by the contending parties that, in the language of the contemporary chronicler, “to till the ground was to plough the sea,” and brave men, “sickened with the unnatural war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler battle-field in the East.” With the son of Matilda, Henry II., the dynasty of the Angevins, or Plantagenets, was established. Inheriting Normandy from his mother, and acquiring by his marriage with Eleanor her estates, at the age of twenty-one Henry II. ruled from the Arctic Ocean to the Pyrenees. “Though a foreigner, never speaking the English tongue, he seems to have possessed something of the spirit which produced the subsequent Anglican civilization. He abolished feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the relations established between church and state, and declared that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held under the common law” (Norgate). Though his quarrel with and murder of Thomas à Becket left in suspension the Constitutions of Clarendon, which gave the kingship preëminence over the hierarchy, the principles of that document were soon revived. Henry II. admitted no papal legate into England without an oath not to interfere with any royal prerogative. Though he repented the death of Becket, he forced the monks of Canterbury to elect a successor of his own nomination. Perhaps the most important progress of Henry II.’s reign was marked by the Assizes of Clarendon (1166), which gave to England the beginning of trial by jury. A grand jury of twelve men was to hear all accusations, and only on sufficient evidence allow further procedure, although the final trial of a case was, until 1216, allowed to proceed according to the laws of Ordeal and Combat. Circuit judges were also appointed, subject only to the king and his council as a court of appeal. In 1155 Ireland was given over to the conquest of Henry by Pope Hadrian for one penny a house, to be paid into the papal treasury; for, said the Holy Father, “all the islands on which Christ, the Sun of justice, has shone belong to the see of St. Peter.” Henry’s victory over William of Scotland also gave him the ascendency in that kingdom. Thus was woven the substance of the band which now holds together Great Britain. The reign of Henry II. was brought to a close in personal disaster. At Le Mans in France he was beaten in battle by his son Richard, who, in conjunction with King Philip Augustus, had raised an unfilial hand against his father. Henry died, cursing God and muttering, “Shame! shame on a conquered king!”