Note Back to Main Text — Chapter X · HENRY II. 1154—1189.

2. Pacification of England.—Henry's first year was spent in completing the work which he had begun after the treaty of Wallingford. He sent Stephen's mercenaries over the sea and completed the destruction of the 'adulterine castles.' One great rebel after another was forced to submit and have his strong walls pulled down. There were to be no more dens of robbers in England, but all men were to obey the king and the law. What castles remained were the king's, and as long as they were his rebellions would not be likely to be successful. Henry even regained from Malcolm IV., king of the Scots, Northumberland and Cumberland, which had been surrendered by Stephen (see p. 133). In his government Henry did his best to carry out the plans of his grandfather, Henry I. It was perhaps because he was afraid that one Justiciar would be too powerful, that he appointed two, Richard de Lucy and the Earl of Leicester, to see that justice was executed and the government maintained whether the king were absent or present. The old Bishop Nigel of Ely was reappointed Treasurer, and presided over the Exchequer at Westminster. Thomas of London, known in later times by the name of Becket,[11] an active and vigorous man, fifteen years older than the king, who had been ordained a deacon, but had nothing clerical about him except the name, was made Chancellor. Thomas was the king's chosen friend, and the two together delighted in the work of restoring order. Thomas liked sumptuous living, and the magnificence of his housekeeping and of his feasts was the talk of the whole country. Yet though he laughed and jested in the midst of his grandeur, he kept himself from every kind of vice. Henry was fond of horseplay, and once on a bitter winter's day, when he was riding with Thomas, he snatched at a fine new scarlet mantle from the Chancellor's neck to throw to a beggar. Thomas struggled hard, and the two men nearly pulled one another off their horses, but in the end the beggar got the mantle.