The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain Read Online Free PDF Page A

rebellion he welcomed Robert de Beaumont’s invasion. But Beaumont’s troops had to make landfall well to the south at Walton, near Felixstowe, where Bigod had a castle, and he gave Orford a wide berth as he travelled to Framlingham to link up with his ally. The impregnability of Henry’s new stronghold denied the rebels complete control of East Anglia. After the war Henry did not repeat the mistake of allowing Bigod to keep his castles. They were all surrendered to the king, and Framlingham was razed to the ground. But it was not just the rebels who lost the symbols of their territorial power. According to the chronicler Roger of Howden, the king took every castle in England into his hand and, removing the castellans of the earls and barons, put in his own custodians. Several castles were destroyed and, for decades after the war heaps of rubble demonstrated the powerlessness of the barons against a strong king.
    1174–82
    Henry loathed civil war. He remembered only too well the devastation it had caused in Stephen’s reign. War was expensive, it took a large toll in human lives and it made good government impossible. For these reasons and also because he wanted to be reconciled to his sons, he behaved leniently towards the rebels. He laboured hard and long to bring about a cessation of hostilities.
    On 8 September Louis and young Henry agreed terms with the king, but Richard continued his resistance. Only when Henry appeared with an army before the gates ofPoitiers, Richard’s headquarters, did the recalcitrant son submit to the inevitable. By the terms of the settlement, sealed at Falaise in October, prisoners were released, properties restored and few punishments exacted. Hugh Bigod and Robert de Beaumont were deprived of their castles and not immediately restored in blood. William the Lion had to pay handsomely for his liberty. In December, by the Treaty of Falaise, he was obliged to do homage publicly to Henry at York and to surrender five of his Scottish castles. Only Eleanor did not share in Henry’s well-calculated forgiveness. He kept her at his beck and call, ordering her to appear with him for ceremonial occasions. Her restrictions were somewhat eased after 1184, when Henry and his sons were partially reconciled, but she did not regain her independence until Henry’s death in 1189.
    He now dealt energetically with the inevitable lawlessness that had broken out during the war. In January 1176 he issued the Assize of Northampton, which was basically a reaffirmation of the Assize of Clarendon. ‘This assize,’ it was declared, ‘shall hold good for all the time since the assize was made at Clarendon down to the present and henceforth during the lord king’s pleasure, with regard to murder, treason and arson and with regard to all offences … except minor thefts and robberies which were committed in time of war, as of horses, oxen and lesser things.’ Henry believed that strengthening royal justice, limiting the freedom of the barons and providing for the greater wellbeing of all his subjects were all bound up together. More powers were granted to the king’s circuit judges (justices in eyre – that is,travelling judges). In ecclesiastical matters Henry clawed back some of the rights he had forfeited in the wake of the Becket affair.
    Henry had yet to forge a comprehensive and lasting peace treaty with Louis VII. The French king was in no hurry to accept the dominant position that Henry had achieved in Europe by war and diplomacy, and in the summer of 1177 Henry decided to force the issue. He summoned all his barons to meet him with their military levies and to be ready to sail for Normandy. At the same time he proposed a meeting with Louis to settle all outstanding issues between them. The message could not have been clearer. The result was a conference at Ivry on the border of Normandy in September 1177. It was chaired by a papal legate under instructions from Pope Alexander III to enlist the support