E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Bonny Fafard, and Project Gutenberg
Distributed Proofreaders
HENRY THE SECOND
BY
MRS. J. R. GREEN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
HENRY PLANTAGENET
CHAPTER II
THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE
CHAPTER III
THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST REFORMS
CHAPTER V
THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON
CHAPTER VI
THE ASSIZE OF CLARENDON
CHAPTER VII
THE STRIFE WITH THE CHURCH
CHAPTER VIII
THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND
CHAPTER IX
REVOLT OF THE BARONAGE
CHAPTER X
THE COURT OF HENRY
CHAPTER XI
THE DEATH OF HENRY
CHAPTER I
HENRY PLANTAGENET
The history of the English people would have been a great and a noblehistory whatever king had ruled over the land seven hundred years ago.But the history as we know it, and the mode of government which hasactually grown up among us is in fact due to the genius of the great kingby whose will England was guided from 1154 to 1189. He was a foreign kingwho never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the most partin a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of Brabançons andhirelings; and who in intervals snatched from foreign wars hurried for afew months to his island-kingdom to carry out a policy which took littleheed of the great moral forces that were at work among the people. It wasunder the rule of a foreigner such as this, however, that the races ofconquerors and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they wereone. It was by his power that England, Scotland, and Ireland werebrought to some vague acknowledgment of a common suzerain lord, and thefoundations laid of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Itwas he who abolished feudalism as a system of government, and left itlittle more than a system of land-tenure. It was he who defined therelations established between Church and State, and decreed that inEngland churchman as well as baron was to be held under the Common law. Itwas he who preserved the traditions of self-government which had beenhanded down in borough and shire-moot from the earliest times of Englishhistory. His reforms established the judicial system whose main outlineshave been preserved to our own day. It was through his "Constitutions"and his "Assizes" that it came to pass that over all the world theEnglish-speaking races are governed by English and not by Roman law. Itwas by his genius for government that the servants of the royal householdbecame transformed into Ministers of State. It was he who gave England aforeign policy which decided our continental relations for seven hundredyears. The impress which the personality of Henry II. left upon his timemeets us wherever we turn. The more clearly we understand his work, themore enduring does his influence display itself even upon the politicalconflicts and political action of our own days.
F