England Under The Angevin Kings - free ebook by Kate Norgate

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England Under The Angevin Kings

Kate Norgate

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ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS

ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS

The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is placed in the public domain. Please see the note at the end of the book , which is preceded by the Index to Volumes I and II , copied from Volume II. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH THE DEEPEST REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR AND HONOURED MASTER JOHN RICHARD GREEN...

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PREFACE

PREFACE

This attempt to sketch the history of England under the Angevin kings owes its existence to the master whose name I have ventured to place at its beginning. It was undertaken at his suggestion; its progress through those earliest stages which for an inexperienced writer are the hardest of all was directed by his counsels, aided by his criticisms, encouraged by his sympathy; and every step in my work during the past eleven years has but led me to feel more deeply and to prize more highly the cons

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PLANS

PLANS

“ When the green tree, cut asunder in the midst and severed by the space of three furlongs, shall be grafted in again and shall bring forth flowers and fruit,—then at last may England hope to see the end of her sorrows.” [1] So closed the prophecy in which the dying king Eadward the Confessor foretold the destiny in store for his country after his departure. His words, mocked at by one of the listeners, incomprehensible to all, found an easy interpretation a hundred years later. The green tree o

28 minute read

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CHAPTER I THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I

CHAPTER I THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I

There are, at first glance, few stranger things in history than the revival thus prefigured :— a national revival growing up, as it seems, in the most adverse circumstances, under the pressure of an alien government, of a race of kings who were strangers alike to the men of old English blood and to the descendants of those who had come over with the Conqueror: at a time when, in a merely political point of view, England seemed to be not only conquered but altogether swallowed up in the vast and

2 hour read

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CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU

CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU

City and county acquired a new importance through the political arrangements by which the Karolingian realms were divided between the three sons of the Emperor Louis the Gentle. By a treaty made at Verdun in 843, the original Frankish kingdom and its Saxon dependencies, answering roughly to what we call Germany now-a-days, fell to the second brother Louis; the Gallic conquests of the Franks, between the Moselle, the Rhone, the Pyrenees and the ocean, were the share of the youngest, Charles the B

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CHAPTER III ANJOU AND BLOIS

CHAPTER III ANJOU AND BLOIS

One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church as usual, she

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CHAPTER IV ANJOU AND NORMANDY

CHAPTER IV ANJOU AND NORMANDY

As soon as the grant was made, Gervase “took counsel with the people of the diocese and the brave men of the land,” [458] and headed a revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set in his place. The bishop’s next step was to seek a wife for his godson. Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh’s father to aid him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made a raid upon Blois and carried off Count Odo’s daughter Bertha to become the wife of Duke Alan of B

52 minute read

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CHAPTER V GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS

CHAPTER V GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS

Such stories as these, while they help us to form some picture of the manner of man that Geoffrey was, set him before us in the romantic light in which he appears to the best advantage. When one turns from them to a survey of his life as a whole, one is struck with a sense of something wanting in him. The deficiency was in truth a very serious one; it was a lack of steady principle and of genuine feeling. The imaginative and impulsive vein which ran through all the more refined characters of his

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CHAPTER VI ENGLAND AND THE BARONS

CHAPTER VI ENGLAND AND THE BARONS

The next seven years were a time such as England never saw before or since. For want of a better name, we call them the years of civil war and count them as part of the reign of Stephen; but the struggle was not worthy of the name of war, and the authority of the Crown, whether vested in Stephen or in Matilda, was a mockery and a shadow. The whole system of government established by King Henry had fallen with his ministers; the death of Bishop Roger in December 1139 [837] was typical of the exti

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CHAPTER VII THE ENGLISH CHURCH

CHAPTER VII THE ENGLISH CHURCH

Henry’s legatine commission, too, which was a chief source of his strength, was really a source of moral and spiritual weakness to the English Church; for it set him over the head of the man who ought to have been her representative and leader, and placed in the hands of a mere diocesan bishop all, and more than all, the power and authority which belonged of right to the primate of all Britain. [1008] Until very recent times the English Church had been, by an unwritten but perfectly well-establi

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CHAPTER VIII HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS

CHAPTER VIII HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS

If, then, Normandy, England and Anjou had each a part in Henry, Le Mans had two parts, as being at once the home of his father’s mother and the scene of his own birth. His earliest recollections, however, must rather have been associated with Normandy. His first journey thither was made when he was about twelve months old, when he accompanied his mother on a visit to King Henry in the spring 1134. His brother Geoffrey was born at Argentan on June 1, and the two children narrowly escaped being le

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CHAPTER IX HENRY AND ENGLAND

CHAPTER IX HENRY AND ENGLAND

The call did not indeed take him by surprise. The last year which he had spent in England must have given him some knowledge of the state of things with which as king he would have to deal; and the prospect of having so to deal with it sooner or later had been constantly before his eyes from his very infancy. His qualifications for the work must however have been chiefly innate. The first nine years of his life spent under the care of mother and father alternately in Anjou; the next four, under

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CHAPTER X HENRY AND FRANCE

CHAPTER X HENRY AND FRANCE

Henry’s chief assistant in the management of his continental affairs was his mother, the Empress Matilda. Still closer to his side, indeed, stood one who in after-years shewed herself gifted with far greater administrative sagacity, and who had already acquired considerable political experience as queen of France and duchess of Aquitaine. As yet, however, Henry was likely to derive less assistance from the somewhat dangerously quick wit of his wife than from the mature wisdom of his mother. Mati

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CHAPTER XI THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD

CHAPTER XI THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD

The English Church naturally hailed with delight the accession of a pontiff who was at once one of her own sons and a disciple of Eugene, whom the leaders of the intellectual and spiritual revival in England had come to regard almost as their patron saint. [1552] Adrian indeed shared all their highest and most cherished aspirations far more deeply and intimately than Eugene himself could have done. It was in the cloisters of Canterbury that these aspirations were gradually taking definite shape

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ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS

ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS

The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is placed in the public domain. Please see the note at the end of the book ....

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PLANS

PLANS

Somewhat more than a year after the primate’s death, Thomas the chancellor returned to England. He came, as we have seen, at the king’s bidding, ostensibly for the purpose of securing the recognition of little Henry as heir to the crown. But this was not the sole nor even the chief object of his mission. On the eve of his departure—so the story was told by his friends in later days—Thomas had gone to take leave of the king at Falaise. Henry drew him aside: “You do not yet know to what you are go

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CHAPTER I ARCHBISHOP THOMAS

CHAPTER I ARCHBISHOP THOMAS

Thomas was appalled. He could not be altogether taken by surprise; he knew what had been Theobald’s wishes and hopes; he knew that from the moment of Theobald’s death all eyes had turned instinctively upon himself with the belief that the future of the Church rested wholly in his all-powerful hands; he could not but suspect the king’s own intentions, [2] although the very suspicion would keep him silent, and all the more so because those intentions ran counter to his own desires. For twelve mont

54 minute read

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CHAPTER II HENRY AND ROME

CHAPTER II HENRY AND ROME

Cool, dispassionate thinkers like Gilbert Foliot, on the other hand, while inclining towards the cause which Thomas had at heart, recoiled from his mode of upholding it as little less than suicidal. In Gilbert’s view it was Thomas who had betrayed those “rights of his order” which he proclaimed so loudly, by forsaking the attitude of passive resistance which the bishops had adopted at Westminster and in which they were practically unassailable, and staking everything upon the king’s good faith,

56 minute read

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CHAPTER III THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND

CHAPTER III THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND

It is in the history of the settlements formed on the Irish coast by the northern pirates in the ninth century that we must seek for the origin of those relations between England and Ireland which led to an English invasion of the latter country in the reign of Henry II. The earliest intercourse between the two islands had been of a wholly peaceful character; but it had come utterly to an end when Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne sailed back to his old home at Iona after the synod of Whitby in 664.

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CHAPTER IV HENRY AND THE BARONS

CHAPTER IV HENRY AND THE BARONS

As yet, however, there was no token of the strife to come. In February 1166, two years after the publication of the Constitutions of Clarendon, Henry assembled another council at the same place and thence issued an ordinance [584] for carrying out a reform in the method of bringing to justice criminals in general, similar to that which he had in the Constitutions sought to apply to criminals of one particular class. By the Assize of Clarendon it was enacted that the king’s justices and the sheri

48 minute read

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CHAPTER V THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE

CHAPTER V THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE

In England itself the succeeding period was one of unbroken tranquillity and steady prosperous growth, social, intellectual, political, constitutional. Henry used his opportunity to make a longer stay in the island than he had ever made there before, save at the very beginning of his reign. He was there from May 1175 to August 1177; in the following July he returned, and stayed till April 1180; he came back again in July 1181, and remained till March 1182. Each of these visits was marked by some

46 minute read

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CHAPTER VI THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II

CHAPTER VI THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II

The political tide, however, turned as soon as he was gone. The Aquitanian league suddenly found itself without a head; for Geoffrey of Britanny, although the wiliest and most plausible of all the king’s sons, was also the most generally distrusted and disliked. [1093] The league broke up at once; on Midsummer-day Ademar of Limoges surrendered his citadel and made his peace; [1094] and most of the other rebels soon followed his example. By the end of the month Henry, having razed the walls of Li

41 minute read

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CHAPTER VII RICHARD AND ENGLAND

CHAPTER VII RICHARD AND ENGLAND

This last match was evidently intended to secure the attachment of the important little border-county of Perche in case of a rupture with France, which seemed by no means unlikely. The alliance of Philip and Richard had expired with King Henry; now that Richard stood in his father’s place, Philip saw in him nothing but his father’s successor—the head of the Angevin house, whose policy was to be thwarted and his power undermined on every possible occasion and by every possible means. This was mad

41 minute read

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CHAPTER VIII THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD

CHAPTER VIII THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD

Hubert entered upon his vice-royalty—for it was nothing less—under more favourable conditions than William of Longchamp. He came to it not as an upstart stranger, but as an Englishman already of high personal and official standing, thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in sympathy with the people whom he had to govern, intimately acquainted with the principles and the details of the system which he was called upon to administer; his qualifications were well known, and they were universally acknowle

46 minute read

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CHAPTER IX THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS

CHAPTER IX THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS

Neither in personal influence nor in political skill, however, was Constance a match for her mother-in-law. Eleanor was, as has been seen, at Fontevraud when Richard died. Feeling and policy alike inclined her to favour the cause of his chosen successor, her own only surviving son, rather than that of a grandson whom most likely she had never even seen. She therefore effected a junction with Mercadier and his Brabantines as soon as they had had time to march up from Châlus, and the whole band of

53 minute read

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CHAPTER X THE NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER X THE NEW ENGLAND

The final settlement of the controversy was in some sense a defeat of both parties; but the one which seemed to have gained the victory really suffered the heaviest loss. The king was indeed compelled to abandon his scheme for reforming the morals of the priesthood by the strong hand of his royal justice; the privilege of the clergy was saved, to fall at last before another King Henry four centuries later. Yet its staunchest champions must surely have felt their cause reduced well-nigh to an abs

29 minute read

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MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.

THE CHIEF PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. Six Lectures read in the University of Oxford in Trinity Term, 1885, with an Essay on GREEK CITIES under ROMAN RULE. Contents :— Europe before the Roman Power—Rome the Head of Europe—Rome and the New Nations—The Divided Empire—Survivals of Empire—The World Romeless. Greek Cities under Roman Rule. Demy 8vo. 10 s. 6 d. THE METHODS OF HISTORICAL STUDY. Eight Lectures read in the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1884, with the Inaugural Lecture on the O

18 minute read

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PREFACE

PREFACE

This attempt to sketch the history of England under the Angevin kings owes its existence to the master whose name I have ventured to place at its beginning. It was undertaken at his suggestion; its progress through those earliest stages which for an inexperienced writer are the hardest of all was directed by his counsels, aided by his criticisms, encouraged by his sympathy; and every step in my work during the past eleven years has but led me to feel more deeply and to prize more highly the cons

2 minute read

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PLANS

PLANS

“ When the green tree, cut asunder in the midst and severed by the space of three furlongs, shall be grafted in again and shall bring forth flowers and fruit,—then at last may England hope to see the end of her sorrows.” [1] So closed the prophecy in which the dying king Eadward the Confessor foretold the destiny in store for his country after his departure. His words, mocked at by one of the listeners, incomprehensible to all, found an easy interpretation a hundred years later. The green tree o

28 minute read

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CHAPTER I THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I

CHAPTER I THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I

There are, at first glance, few stranger things in history than the revival thus prefigured :— a national revival growing up, as it seems, in the most adverse circumstances, under the pressure of an alien government, of a race of kings who were strangers alike to the men of old English blood and to the descendants of those who had come over with the Conqueror: at a time when, in a merely political point of view, England seemed to be not only conquered but altogether swallowed up in the vast and

2 hour read

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CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU

CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU

City and county acquired a new importance through the political arrangements by which the Karolingian realms were divided between the three sons of the Emperor Louis the Gentle. By a treaty made at Verdun in 843, the original Frankish kingdom and its Saxon dependencies, answering roughly to what we call Germany now-a-days, fell to the second brother Louis; the Gallic conquests of the Franks, between the Moselle, the Rhone, the Pyrenees and the ocean, were the share of the youngest, Charles the B

59 minute read

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CHAPTER III ANJOU AND BLOIS

CHAPTER III ANJOU AND BLOIS

One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church as usual, she

53 minute read

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CHAPTER IV ANJOU AND NORMANDY

CHAPTER IV ANJOU AND NORMANDY

As soon as the grant was made, Gervase “took counsel with the people of the diocese and the brave men of the land,” [458] and headed a revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set in his place. The bishop’s next step was to seek a wife for his godson. Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh’s father to aid him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made a raid upon Blois and carried off Count Odo’s daughter Bertha to become the wife of Duke Alan of B

52 minute read

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CHAPTER V GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS

CHAPTER V GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS

Such stories as these, while they help us to form some picture of the manner of man that Geoffrey was, set him before us in the romantic light in which he appears to the best advantage. When one turns from them to a survey of his life as a whole, one is struck with a sense of something wanting in him. The deficiency was in truth a very serious one; it was a lack of steady principle and of genuine feeling. The imaginative and impulsive vein which ran through all the more refined characters of his

52 minute read

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CHAPTER VI ENGLAND AND THE BARONS

CHAPTER VI ENGLAND AND THE BARONS

The next seven years were a time such as England never saw before or since. For want of a better name, we call them the years of civil war and count them as part of the reign of Stephen; but the struggle was not worthy of the name of war, and the authority of the Crown, whether vested in Stephen or in Matilda, was a mockery and a shadow. The whole system of government established by King Henry had fallen with his ministers; the death of Bishop Roger in December 1139 [837] was typical of the exti

49 minute read

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CHAPTER VII THE ENGLISH CHURCH

CHAPTER VII THE ENGLISH CHURCH

Henry’s legatine commission, too, which was a chief source of his strength, was really a source of moral and spiritual weakness to the English Church; for it set him over the head of the man who ought to have been her representative and leader, and placed in the hands of a mere diocesan bishop all, and more than all, the power and authority which belonged of right to the primate of all Britain. [1008] Until very recent times the English Church had been, by an unwritten but perfectly well-establi

51 minute read

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CHAPTER VIII HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS

CHAPTER VIII HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS

If, then, Normandy, England and Anjou had each a part in Henry, Le Mans had two parts, as being at once the home of his father’s mother and the scene of his own birth. His earliest recollections, however, must rather have been associated with Normandy. His first journey thither was made when he was about twelve months old, when he accompanied his mother on a visit to King Henry in the spring 1134. His brother Geoffrey was born at Argentan on June 1, and the two children narrowly escaped being le

50 minute read

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CHAPTER IX HENRY AND ENGLAND

CHAPTER IX HENRY AND ENGLAND

The call did not indeed take him by surprise. The last year which he had spent in England must have given him some knowledge of the state of things with which as king he would have to deal; and the prospect of having so to deal with it sooner or later had been constantly before his eyes from his very infancy. His qualifications for the work must however have been chiefly innate. The first nine years of his life spent under the care of mother and father alternately in Anjou; the next four, under

51 minute read

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CHAPTER X HENRY AND FRANCE

CHAPTER X HENRY AND FRANCE

Henry’s chief assistant in the management of his continental affairs was his mother, the Empress Matilda. Still closer to his side, indeed, stood one who in after-years shewed herself gifted with far greater administrative sagacity, and who had already acquired considerable political experience as queen of France and duchess of Aquitaine. As yet, however, Henry was likely to derive less assistance from the somewhat dangerously quick wit of his wife than from the mature wisdom of his mother. Mati

53 minute read

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CHAPTER XI THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD

CHAPTER XI THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD

The English Church naturally hailed with delight the accession of a pontiff who was at once one of her own sons and a disciple of Eugene, whom the leaders of the intellectual and spiritual revival in England had come to regard almost as their patron saint. [1552] Adrian indeed shared all their highest and most cherished aspirations far more deeply and intimately than Eugene himself could have done. It was in the cloisters of Canterbury that these aspirations were gradually taking definite shape

25 minute read

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PLANS

PLANS

Somewhat more than a year after the primate’s death, Thomas the chancellor returned to England. He came, as we have seen, at the king’s bidding, ostensibly for the purpose of securing the recognition of little Henry as heir to the crown. But this was not the sole nor even the chief object of his mission. On the eve of his departure—so the story was told by his friends in later days—Thomas had gone to take leave of the king at Falaise. Henry drew him aside: “You do not yet know to what you are go

25 minute read

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CHAPTER I ARCHBISHOP THOMAS

CHAPTER I ARCHBISHOP THOMAS

Thomas was appalled. He could not be altogether taken by surprise; he knew what had been Theobald’s wishes and hopes; he knew that from the moment of Theobald’s death all eyes had turned instinctively upon himself with the belief that the future of the Church rested wholly in his all-powerful hands; he could not but suspect the king’s own intentions, [2] although the very suspicion would keep him silent, and all the more so because those intentions ran counter to his own desires. For twelve mont

54 minute read

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CHAPTER II HENRY AND ROME

CHAPTER II HENRY AND ROME

Cool, dispassionate thinkers like Gilbert Foliot, on the other hand, while inclining towards the cause which Thomas had at heart, recoiled from his mode of upholding it as little less than suicidal. In Gilbert’s view it was Thomas who had betrayed those “rights of his order” which he proclaimed so loudly, by forsaking the attitude of passive resistance which the bishops had adopted at Westminster and in which they were practically unassailable, and staking everything upon the king’s good faith,

53 minute read

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CHAPTER III THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND

CHAPTER III THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND

It is in the history of the settlements formed on the Irish coast by the northern pirates in the ninth century that we must seek for the origin of those relations between England and Ireland which led to an English invasion of the latter country in the reign of Henry II. The earliest intercourse between the two islands had been of a wholly peaceful character; but it had come utterly to an end when Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne sailed back to his old home at Iona after the synod of Whitby in 664.

52 minute read

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CHAPTER IV HENRY AND THE BARONS

CHAPTER IV HENRY AND THE BARONS

As yet, however, there was no token of the strife to come. In February 1166, two years after the publication of the Constitutions of Clarendon, Henry assembled another council at the same place and thence issued an ordinance [584] for carrying out a reform in the method of bringing to justice criminals in general, similar to that which he had in the Constitutions sought to apply to criminals of one particular class. By the Assize of Clarendon it was enacted that the king’s justices and the sheri

48 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER V THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE

CHAPTER V THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE

In England itself the succeeding period was one of unbroken tranquillity and steady prosperous growth, social, intellectual, political, constitutional. Henry used his opportunity to make a longer stay in the island than he had ever made there before, save at the very beginning of his reign. He was there from May 1175 to August 1177; in the following July he returned, and stayed till April 1180; he came back again in July 1181, and remained till March 1182. Each of these visits was marked by some

46 minute read

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CHAPTER VI THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II

CHAPTER VI THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY II

The political tide, however, turned as soon as he was gone. The Aquitanian league suddenly found itself without a head; for Geoffrey of Britanny, although the wiliest and most plausible of all the king’s sons, was also the most generally distrusted and disliked. [1093] The league broke up at once; on Midsummer-day Ademar of Limoges surrendered his citadel and made his peace; [1094] and most of the other rebels soon followed his example. By the end of the month Henry, having razed the walls of Li

41 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VII RICHARD AND ENGLAND

CHAPTER VII RICHARD AND ENGLAND

This last match was evidently intended to secure the attachment of the important little border-county of Perche in case of a rupture with France, which seemed by no means unlikely. The alliance of Philip and Richard had expired with King Henry; now that Richard stood in his father’s place, Philip saw in him nothing but his father’s successor—the head of the Angevin house, whose policy was to be thwarted and his power undermined on every possible occasion and by every possible means. This was mad

41 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VIII THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD

CHAPTER VIII THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD

Hubert entered upon his vice-royalty—for it was nothing less—under more favourable conditions than William of Longchamp. He came to it not as an upstart stranger, but as an Englishman already of high personal and official standing, thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in sympathy with the people whom he had to govern, intimately acquainted with the principles and the details of the system which he was called upon to administer; his qualifications were well known, and they were universally acknowle

46 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IX THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS

CHAPTER IX THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS

Neither in personal influence nor in political skill, however, was Constance a match for her mother-in-law. Eleanor was, as has been seen, at Fontevraud when Richard died. Feeling and policy alike inclined her to favour the cause of his chosen successor, her own only surviving son, rather than that of a grandson whom most likely she had never even seen. She therefore effected a junction with Mercadier and his Brabantines as soon as they had had time to march up from Châlus, and the whole band of

53 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER X THE NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER X THE NEW ENGLAND

The final settlement of the controversy was in some sense a defeat of both parties; but the one which seemed to have gained the victory really suffered the heaviest loss. The king was indeed compelled to abandon his scheme for reforming the morals of the priesthood by the strong hand of his royal justice; the privilege of the clergy was saved, to fall at last before another King Henry four centuries later. Yet its staunchest champions must surely have felt their cause reduced well-nigh to an abs

29 minute read

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MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.

THE CHIEF PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. Six Lectures read in the University of Oxford in Trinity Term, 1885, with an Essay on GREEK CITIES under ROMAN RULE. Contents :— Europe before the Roman Power—Rome the Head of Europe—Rome and the New Nations—The Divided Empire—Survivals of Empire—The World Romeless. Greek Cities under Roman Rule. Demy 8vo. 10 s. 6 d. THE METHODS OF HISTORICAL STUDY. Eight Lectures read in the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1884, with the Inaugural Lecture on the O

24 minute read

Read Chapter