The history of the reign of Henry II. for the next eight years is principally that of his contest with the haughty and intrepid church man, who, from an obscure origin having advanced through the degrees of royal favourite, prime minister, and chancellor, to the emir, sinatical sovereignty of archbishop of Csnterhury, forthwith proceeded to assume the bearing of a rival monarch, and made his former master feel that he was only half king in the dominions he called his own. [13nener.] This struggle for supremacy between the church and the state was not even terminated by the murder of lkcket, 29th of Decem ber 1170 the blood of the martyr crying from the ground was found to be still more powerful than had been his living voice. In 1174 Henry performed an abject penance at his tomb for having been the unintentional instigator of his slaughter; and two years after, the famous constitutions of Clarendon, passed in 1164, by which the clergy had been made amenable to the civil courts, and the church in other respects subjected to the royal authority, were, after having been long practically disregarded, at last formally repealed in a great council held at Northampton.
Meanwhile two formidable insurrections of the Welsh in 1163 and 1165 had been repressed with great devastation of their country, and, in the second instance especially, with unusual cruelty. In 1166 a revolt of tho people of Brittany against their duke Conan afforded Henry, after putting it down with his customary promptitudo and vigour, a pretext for taking the government of the country out of the hands of that feeble dependent, and assuming to himself the direct administration of affairs in the name of his son Geoffrey and Conan's daughter Constantia, between whom, young as they both still were, the marriage -ceremony was now solemnised for the eake of this arrangement. On the 10th of September 1167, Henry's mother, the ex-empress Matilda, died at Rouen. Some further hostilities in which he now became involved with the French king were, before producing any important result, terminated by a new peace concluded at Mont mirail, 6th of January 1160. By this treaty it was arranged that Henry, the king of England's eldest son, should do homage to Louis for the earldoms of Anjou and Maine, and that his second son Richard should in like manner hold the duchy of Aquitaine of the French king, and espouse Adelais, or Alice, the youngest daughter of Louis. But the greatest event which divided the manifold activity of king Henry with the affairs of Becket was the conquest of Ireland, which was began in 1160 by a body of private adventurers, headed by Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, the celebrated Strougbow, and completed by Henry in person, who cros.ed over from Milord to Waterford with a powerful armament, 18th of October 1171, and after making an unresisted progress through the country, during which he received the submission of the princes of all parts of it except Ulster, and holding his court or assembling councils at Dublin, Cashel, and elsewhere, eailed back from Wexford to Portfinan in Wales, on Easter Monday, the 17th of April 1172. Tho national spirit however recovered itself after this first prostration, and a pro tracted struggle ensued between the people and their invaders ; but the acquisition of Ireland was finally sealed by a formal treaty con cluded in 1175 with Roderick O'Connor, considered the head king of the country, in which he consented to become Henry's liegeman, to an annual tribute, and, although he was still to retain his nominal royalty for his life, to hold his crown in subjection to the English king.
Much of the remaining portion of Henry's life and reign presents an involved and deplorable scene of family discord and contention ; sons against their father, wife against husband, brother against brother. illss eldest son Henry had not only been invested, as mentioned above, with the earldoms of Maine and Anjou, brit, being then sixteen years of ege, had, after the custom which prevailed in the French monarchy, been, as heir-apparent, solemnly crowned in Westminster Abbey on Sunday, 15th of June 1170. On this account that prince is in old
writings sometimes styled Henry ILL, and his common title during his life was from this date the junior or younger king; that of the senior or elder king being given to his father. In 1172 the ceremony of his coronation was repeated, his wife Margaret of France being this time crowned along with him. Soon after this, at the instigation, it is said, of his father-in-law King Louis, the prince advanced the extraor dinary pretension that ho had become entitled actually to share the royal power with his father, and he demanded that Henry should resign to him either England or Normandy. Hie refusal was speedily followed (in March 1173) by the flight first of the prince, then of his younger brothers Richard and Geoffrey, to the French court. Richard professed to consider himself entitled to Aquitaine in virtue of the homage he had performed to Louis for that duchy after the peace of Mootmirail, and Geoffrey founded on his marriage and his investiture some years before with the principality of Brittany • similar claim to the immediate possession of that territory. About the same time Queen Eleanor also left her husband to associate herself openly with the rebellion of her sons, of which she had in fact been the prime mover; for Henry's infidelities and neglect—the appropriate retri bution of the indecent precipitancy with which she had thrown herself into his arms—had long changed this woman's love into Litter hatred and thirst of revenge. She was also making her way for the French court, nothing perplexed, as it would seem, by the awkwardness of seeking the protection of her former husband, when she was caught dressed in man's clothes and brought back to Henry, during the rest of whose life she remained in confinement. Her capture however did not break up the unnatural confederacy of her sons. We can only notice the leading incidents of the confused and revolting drama that ensued. The cause of young Henry was sup ported not only by Louis, but also by William of Scotland, and by some of the moat powerful both of tho Norman and the English barons. With his characteristic energy and activity however the English king made ready to meet hls various enemies at every point. Hostilities commenced both on the continent, whither Henry pro ceeded in person, and on the Scottish borders, in the summer of this same year. Occasionally suspended, and again renewed, the war continued for about two years, during which the most important event that happened was the capture of king William of Scotland at Alnwick Castle, by the famous chief-justiciary Glanville, 12th of July 1174, which appears to have been the Saturday following the Thursday on which Henry did penance before the tomb of Becket at Canterbury. Soon after this Henry, who had throughout decidedly the best of the contest, assented to the petition of his sons for a peace; ho and King Louis restored whatever they had taken from each other, and young Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey were gratified with the possession of one or two castles each, and liberal allowances from the revenues of the provinces to which they had severally laid claim. A new quarrel broke out between Henry and his eldest son the following year, but they were reconciled before they had time to betake themselves to arms. Meanwhile in December 1174 a treaty with Scotland had been signed at the castle of Falaise, in Normandy, by which the Scots agreed to make acknowledgment of the feudal dependence of their crown on that of England, in return for the liberation of King William. The period of seven or eight years that followed was the most tranquil of Henry's reign, and that in which his greatness stood at the highest. With his ancestral dominions 'of England, Normandy, and Anjou undisturbed by any rival claimant, his matrimonial acquisitions of Aquitaine and Poitou, bound in the subjection of fear, if not of attachment, his conquest of Ireland secure, the Welsh and the Scotch reduced to submission and to the acknow ledgment of his supremacy, he was undoubtedly at this time the most powerful of the European sovereigns.