One of the most interesting figures from English history is King Henry II, who ruled from 1154 until his death in 1189.
Henry was the first of the Plantagenet dynasty, which was to last another three hundred years. The Plantagenets are said to have gotten their name because Henry's father, Geoffrey of Anjou, was fond of the brilliant gold flowers of the broom plant (in medieval French, plante genesta). His claim to the English throne came through Geoffrey's wife (and Henry II's mother) Matilda, who was the granddaughter of William the Conqueror, and who had come damn close to ruling England in her own right during the First English Civil War.
Henry was a larger-than-life figure who spent most of his reign trying unsuccessfully to keep peace in his wide landholdings (he ruled not only England, but Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Aquitaine), reining in his redoubtable wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and later, dealing with repeated rebellions from his three eldest sons Henry and Geoffrey (both of whom predeceased their father) and Richard, who eventually succeeded to the throne as Richard I "the Lionhearted."
The single incident most often remembered about Henry's reign, though, was his clash with the indomitable Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. (His picking up of an extra syllable -- "Thomas à Becket" -- is a sixteenth-century invention.) Becket was initially a close friend and confidante of Henry's, and Henry had been instrumental in his succeeding to the Archbishopric in the first place; but once there, Thomas proved to be stubborn and unyielding, and engaged in what amounted to an eight-year-long pissing match with the king regarding the secular authority's jurisdiction over the Church. Henry, whose temper tantrums were legendary, ranted at a meeting of his counselors in 1170, "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!" (The better-known line, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" is not attested by contemporary historians, although it's certainly a pithy and memorable turn of phrase.)
Either way, four of Henry's knights decided that this was tantamount to a direct order. Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton quietly left the king's presence, and on December 29, 1170 made their way to Canterbury. At first, it seemed as if they intended to bring Becket back to apologize to the king; eyewitnesses say they left their weapons outside before they went into the cathedral to confront the archbishop. But Becket, of course, categorically refused, saying to the assassins, "I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may find liberty and peace." The four knights rushed back out, grabbed their swords, and cut Becket down on the steps leading up into the choir.
What happened afterward is why this story comes up in Skeptophilia. The four knights, understandably horrified at the repercussions of what they'd just done, took off in different directions, as fast as their horses could gallop. They reconvened in de Morville's home in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, but the following year all four were excommunicated by Pope Alexander III. Back then excommunication was a huge deal; it meant you couldn't receive the sacraments of the church, including absolution for sins, so it was considered a sure road to spending eternity in hell. The four tried to make up for it by going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land -- it's thought that none of them returned, and according to one legend they came to bad ends in short order and were buried outside the walls of Jerusalem with the epitaph, "Here lie those wretches who martyred the Blessed St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury."
Thomas was canonized in 1173, and his death turned into a good example of "Be careful what you wish for." In life, he'd antagonized a lot of people with his inflexibility and sharp temper; after he was murdered, all his failings were quickly forgotten and he became a holy martyr. (In fact, so many miracles were attributed to him that 350 years later the staunchly anti-Catholic King Henry VIII had Becket's bones unearthed, burned, and scattered to the winds so they could no longer be venerated as holy relics.) As for King Henry II, he never really recovered from his guilt, both in his own eyes and that of his people. He undertook a remarkable penance -- he knelt at the site where Becket had died, stripped to the waist, and was flogged by the monks of Canterbury -- but it was the beginning of the end of his reign. His wife Eleanor left him, his two oldest sons, Henry and Geoffrey, died in 1183 and 1186, and he developed health issues (probably stomach cancer) that ended his life at the young age of 56.
Becket's death made such an impression on the English people that it has given rise to a number of ghostly tales. First, that on the evening of December 29, on the main roads out of Canterbury, you'll hear the onrushing clatter of a horse's hooves, followed by a swirl of icy wind -- the spectral presence of one of the four assassins, fleeing for their lives after murdering the archbishop. As for Becket himself, he sometimes appears to visitors as an apparition called "Becket's Shadow" -- a vague dark figure with a "pearlescent sheen" and glowing eyes, seen near the pillar where Becket knelt while FitzUrse and the others hacked him to pieces.
It hardly bears mention that I don't give much credence to the ghost stories associated with Henry and Becket, but it does give an extra little frisson to a tale that's really rather sad. By most estimations, Henry II wasn't a bad king; certainly there were way worse (including his indolent and cruel son King John, who succeeded to the throne after Richard the Lionhearted's early death in 1199 at the age of 41, from sepsis after a wound from a crossbow bolt). But Becket wasn't an evil man, either. Hard-headed and self-righteous, sure. But the collision course the two men ended up on, and the tragedy that eventually unfolded, was as much due to circumstance as intent. Even the rebellion of Henry's sons (with the connivance of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine) was a situation where it's hard to pin blame -- it was more what happens when you get a bunch of stubborn and strong-willed people together all of whom think they know the best way to do things.
But even unintentional misrule can cast a long shadow. Richard I was a blustering bully who had no real interest in governance, and spent a huge chunk of his ten-year reign away on Crusade; John, his younger brother, was roundly hated for his ugly spitefulness, and no one mourned much when he died of dysentery in 1216 at the age of 49. John's son, Henry III, had one of the longest reigns of any English monarch -- 56 years -- but he was a pious, easily swayed, and not very intelligent man whose obsession with reconquering lost territory in France turned into an utter debacle. It wasn't until Henry III's capable son, Edward I, was crowned in 1272 -- almost exactly a hundred years after Becket's murder -- that things really began to settle.
It's worth keeping in mind -- especially considering what's happening right now in the United States -- how easy it is to tear things down, and how hard it is (and how long it can take) to rebuild a functioning government. Any arrogant, entitled prick can run around with a chainsaw; it takes little effort and no brains whatsoever. Crafting something that actually helps the citizens of the country live better lives requires skill and intelligence and hard work. Look at what happened in England at the end of the twelfth century, where all it took were hard-headed ideologues refusing to give an inch to precipitate a century's worth of chaos.
How much worse could it be when the ones engineering the destruction are doing it with intent -- vicious and amoral sociopaths who are single-mindedly focused on amassing wealth and power?
Today's elected leaders, though -- and the powerful men who are moving them around like chess pieces, confident that they will never face any consequences -- might want to keep in mind the sobering epitaph carved into King Henry II's tomb at Fontevraud Abbey:
I am Henry the King. To me
Diverse realms were subject.
I was duke and count of many provinces.
Eight feet of ground is now enough for me,
Whom many kingdoms failed to satisfy.
Who reads these lines, let him reflect
Upon the narrowness of death,
And in my case behold
The image of our mortal lot.
This scanty tomb doth now suffice
For whom the whole Earth was not enough.
Good article as always. Only point that is wrong is when you state that Henry VIII was anti catholic. Henry remained a Catholic till he died. He just removed the pipe as head of the English church. The church he established remained catholic in all its teachings and rituals, only becoming protestant under son Edward vi.
ReplyDeletePope not pipe obviously! It is known as Caesaro papism.
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