himself a vassal of both the kings. [Sidenote: Importance of this struggle. ] So completely was the authority of Henry II., re-established by the peace of 1174, that we are almost tempted to underrate the importance of the elements that had been arrayed against him. It was not, however, in the want of strength and spirit that the confederation against him failed; the kings of France and Scotland, the counts of Champagne, Boulogne, and Flanders, the earls of Chester, Leicester, Norfolk, and Derby, his own sons and his own wife, were united in their hostility. The religious feeling of the nation, which since the death of Becket had to a remarkable degree realized or rather exaggerated his merits as a statesman and a churchman, was used as a weapon against him. Every interest that he had injured, or that had suffered in the process of his reforms, was made to take its part. Yet all failed. They failed partly, no doubt, because they had really no common cry, no common cause. They had many grievances and a good opportunity; but all their several aims were selfish; their plan, so far as they had one, destructive not constructive; their leaders unwilling to sacrifice or risk anything of their own, greedy to grasp what belonged of right to the king, the nation, or even to their own fellows. They fought one by one against a prompt, clear-headed, accomplished warrior, and they were beaten one by one; not, however, without a very considerable intermingling of what is ordinarily called good fortune on the king’s side. Thus Henry in the twentieth year of his reign was more powerful by far than when, at the beginning of it, the desire and darling of the whole people, he brought back peace and light and liberty after the evil days. [Sidenote: Henry resumes his schemes. ] [Sidenote: Provisions made for John. ] [Sidenote: Marriages of the king’s daughters. ]