The History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Death of John (1066-1216)Adams, George Burton
History
The History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Death of John (1066-1216)
Adams, George Burton
Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485
It is not clear that Henry had in mind any definite plan for the
political government of the conquest which he had made. The allegiance of
those princes who were outside the territories occupied by the Norman
adventurers could have been no more than nominal, and no attempt seems to
have been made to rule them. Meath was granted as a fief to Hugh of Lacy
on the service of fifty knights. He was also made governor of Dublin and
justiciar of Ireland, but this title is the only evidence that he was to
be regarded as the representative of the king. Waterford and Wexford were
made domain towns, as well as Dublin, and the earl of Pembroke, who gave
up the royal rights which he might inherit from King Dermot, was
enfeoffed with Leinster on the service of a hundred knights. Plainly the
part of Ireland which was actually occupied was not treated in practice
as a separate kingdom, whatever may have been the theory, but as a
transplanted part of England under a very vague relationship. As a matter
of fact, it was a purely feudal colony, under but the slightest control
by a distant overlord, and doomed both from its situation in the midst of
an alien, only partly civilized, and largely unconquered race, and from
its own organization or lack of organization, to speedy troubles.
Henry returned to England at Easter time, and went on almost at once to
meet the papal legates in Normandy. By the end of May his reconciliation
with the Church was completed. First, Henry purged himself by solemn oath
in the cathedral at Avranches of any share in the guilt of Thomas's
assassination, and then the conditions of reconciliation were sworn to by
himself and by the young king. These conditions are a very fair
compromise, though Becket could never have agreed to them nor probably
would Henry have done so but for the murder. The Church insisted on the
one thing which was most essential to its real interests, the freedom of
appeals to the pope. The point most important to the State, which had led
originally to the quarrel--the question of the punishment of criminous
clerks by the lay courts--was passed over in silence, a way out of the
difficulty being found by requiring of the king a promise which he could
readily make, that he would wholly do away with any customs which had
been introduced against the churches of the land in his time. This would
not be to his mind renouncing the Constitution of Clarendon. The
temporalities of Canterbury and the exiled friends of the archbishop were
to be restored as before the quarrel, and Henry promised not to withdraw
his obedience from the catholic pope or his successors. The other
conditions were of the nature of penance. The king promised to assume the
cross at the next Christmas for a crusade of three years, and in the
meantime to provide the Templars with a sum of money which in their
judgment would be sufficient to maintain 200 knights in the Holy Land for
a year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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