Youth and education of Henry. ] Henry II. was born in 1133; and if we may believe the testimony of Roger Hoveden, who was one of his chaplains, and a very conscientious compiler of histories, he was recognized by Henry I. as his successor directly after his birth. When his grandfather died he was two years old. His father and mother made, as we have seen, a very ill-concerted effort to secure the succession, and it was not until the boy was eight years old that the struggle for the crown really began. In 1141 he was brought to England; then no doubt he learned a dutiful hatred of Stephen, and was trained in the use of arms; but whether he received his training under his father in France or under his uncle, Robert of Gloucester, in England, or under his great uncle, David of Scotland, we are not told. Only we know that, when he was sixteen, he was knighted at Carlisle by King David; that, like a wise boy, he determined to secure his French dominions before he attempted the recovery of England; that he succeeded to Normandy and Anjou in 1151, when he was eighteen; married his wife, the Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine who had been divorced from Lewis VII., and secured her inheritance, when he was nineteen; that he came again to England and forced Stephen to submit to terms when he was twenty; and that at the age of twenty-one he succeeded him on the throne in pursuance of those terms. These dates are sufficient to prove that, although Henry might have got considerable experience in arms as a boy and young man, he could scarcely have had yet the education of a lawgiver. Somewhat of politics he might have learnt, but he had not had time or opportunity to learn a regular theory of policy, or to create a method of government which, when the time for action came, he might put into execution. The extraordinary power which he showed when the time for action really arrived was in part a gift of genius; partly too it arose from his wisdom in choosing experienced advisers, and partly it was an effect of his following the broad lines of his grandfather’s administrative reforms. [Sidenote: Character of Henry II. ] [Sidenote: His family policy. ] [Sidenote: His great position in Christendom. ]