Thus was England taken up, as we may say, into the continental system and became a part of it. She became an actor in the struggles which such a situation as this was evidently sure to cause between the King of England, with all these French possessions, and the King of France. It was a contest between the Capets, the Capetian Kings of France, and the Angevins, the kings of England who had that name from the important lordship of Anjou, which belonged to them; and the contest continued from the middle of the twelfth century almost to the middle of the thirteenth--say from 1150 to 1240. In the course of that struggle a very remarkable, and a very remarkably different, change took place in France and in England in the power of the kings of the two countries over their barons. In France the king gradually gained in power until, in the long reign of Philip Augustus, which stretched over the last twenty years of the twelfth century and the first twenty-three of the thirteenth, the king became all-powerful. In England, on the contrary, where the king had been not nearly so much in the hands of the barons as the early Capetian kings of France had been, the barons gained more and more power until, in 1215, we find King John compelled by his barons to allow his seal to be affixed to Magna Carta. This charter gave Englishmen the beginnings of their liberty at the very time when the King of France was effectually establishing the autocratic power of the Crown over all French subjects. Henry II., although his kingdom was so extensive in England and on the Continent, expanded it yet more widely by a complete and effective conquest of Ireland, and also by receiving homage from the King of Scotland, whom his armies had defeated at Alnwick and made prisoner. {151} We have seen very little of Scotland in the course of the great story, and little of Ireland since we saw the priests of the Irish Church coming westward and converting the heathen to Christianity. Scotland had for centuries, from the time of the Romans in Britain and probably long before that, been a troublesome neighbour to England on the north boundary. We have seen that boundary shifted once or twice as the forces on one side or on the other prevailed. But Scotland, in her attacks upon England, never succeeded in penetrating very far south, and therefore did not take any very important part, at that time, in the making of the story. And now Henry had the Scottish king prisoner and doing homage to him. That homage gave the King of England the position of feudal lord over the King of Scotland. But feudal vassals, as we have seen, were not always quite subservient to their lords. The Scottish kings were no exception, and they acted very much as if they were no less independent than before. [Sidenote: Ireland]