When four or five years of his second marriage had passed without producing any issue, Henry determined upon the bold enterprise of endeavouring to secure the succession to his dominions for his daugh ter, the Empress Matilda, who had become a widow by the death of her husband in 1125. On Christmas-day 1126 also was uuanimously declared his heir, in a great council of the lords spiritual and.temporal assembled at Windsor Castle. The following year, in the octaves of Whitsuntide, she was married to Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, tho son of Fulk, earl of Anjou, to whom, although only a boy of sixteen, his father had renounced that earldom on his departure for the Holy Lend, where he was a few years afterwards elected King of Jerusalem. Soon after this settlement of his daughter, Henry was relieved of a source of perpetual annoyance and apprehension by the death of his nephew William Fitz-Robert, which took place on the 27th of July 1128, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. This priaco had not been abandoned by King Louis of France, who, after giviug him in marriage Joan of Morienee, the sister of his queen, had first put him in possession of tho countries of Pontoise, Chaumont, and the Vexiu, and then, on the murder of Charles the Good, had invested him with the earldom of Flanders. The intrigues and the money of Henry how ever speedily stirred up against him a revolt of a party of his Flemish subjects, who putting Thiedric or Thierry, landgrave of Alsace, at their head, endeavoured to drive him from the country ; and it was in a battle with Thierry, under the walls of Alost, that in tho moment of victory ho received the wound of which he soon after died in the monastery of St. Omer. It was not however till March 1133 that Henry's longings for a grandchild were gratified by tho birth of Matilda's first child, Henry, etylod Fitz Empress, afterwards Henry II. Two other sons, Geoffrey and William, were born iu the course of the next two years. These events had been preceded by such dissensions between the ox-empress and her husband as at oue time occasioned their separation ; and now that they were again living together, Henry and his son-in-law quarrelled about the Norman duchy, of which the latter wished to be put in immediate possession, according to a promise which be said had been given on his marriage. From these family broils Henry was only delivered by his death, which took place at Rouen on Sunday the let of December 1135, being the seventh day of an illness brought on by eating to excess of lampreys, after a day spent in hunting. Ho had completed the sixty seventh year of his age and the thirty-fifth of his reign.
Besides the son and daughter boru in wedlock that have already been mentioned, the genealogists assign to Henry I. the following
natural children Robert, earl of Glouceeter, who died, after a distiuguiffied career, in 1146, by Nesta, daughter of itta.T-ap-Tuder, — — prince of South Wales ; 2, Richard, drowned in 1120 with Prince William, by the widow of Anokil, a nobleman of Berkshire ; 3, Regi nald, earl of Cornwall, who died in 1176, by Sibylla, daughter of Sir Robert Corbet, and wife of Henry Fits-Ilerbert ; 4, Robert, by Editha, daughter of SLewolf, a Saxon nobleman ; 5, Gilbert ; 6, William, surnamed Do Tracy ; 7, Henry }Its-Herbert, who was killed in battle in 1197, also, according to one account by Nests; 8, Mario (otherwise called Maud, or Adela), countess of Perche, another of those who perished in the shipwreck of 1120; 9, Maud, married to Conan the Cross, earl of Brittany ; 10, Juliana, married to Eustaco of 13reteuil, earl of facia in Normandy ; 11, Constance, married to Roscelin, Viscount Beaumont in France ; 12, another daughter, married to William Goet, a Norman ; 13, another, married to Matthew Montmo rency, the fonnder of the illustrious French family of that surname; and 14, Sibyl]. (otherwise called Elizabeth), who was married in 1107 to Alexander I. of Scotland, and died in 1122, by Elizabeth, wife of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Pembroke, and father by her of the famous Strongbow.
The character of Henry is sufficiently indicated by the facts that have been detailed. In a moral point of view it was detestable, but in tho line of policy and craft it evinced superlative ability. In the midst of all his profligacy and unscrupulous ambition however he cherished a love of letters, and in his hours of leisure was fond of the society of learned men. It most be admitted also that his govern ment, though arbitrary and tyrannical in a high degree, appears to have been on the whole a considerable improvement on that of his father and his elder brother. He may be said to have led the way in the reformation of the law and the constitution by his re-establishment, partial as it was, of the Saxon laws, and by his charter, the example of that series of subsequent royal concessions, the same in form though much more extended in amount, which lie at the foundation of the national liberties. There can be no doubt that the country made con siderable social progress in his reign, undisturbed as it was by any internal commotion, and enjoying, notwithstanding much oppression on the part of the crown, probably a more regular dispensation of justice between man and man, and more security from disorder and violence, than it had known eiuce the coming over of the Normans. Henry I. was succeeded on tho throne of England by Stephen.