Excommunication

Excommunication was the most serious punishment

the medieval church could inflict on

someone. It was a total ban from church. This

ban doesn’t sound too bad to modern ears, but

it had huge implications for a devout medieval

Christian. It meant that you could not go to

Mass, and you were banned from confession,

which meant that you would die ‘unshriven’ and

without the last rites. As a result, you’d probably

go to hell. Excommunication was about as serious

as things could get.

It was all too much for Henry. On Christmas Day 1170, the king was trying

to enjoy a seasonal feast in Normandy. Then someone announced that the

Pope had come out on Thomas’s side as well. In one of his famous temper

tantrums, Henry let fly at the barons around him. He is supposed to have

shouted, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’

His actual words may have been a bit more long winded, but a group of

barons took the king at his word. Before the goose was cleared away from

the table, four barons set off on a journey to England with one thing on their

minds: punishing the man who they saw as a traitor. On 29 December 1170,

the fateful four followed Thomas into his cathedral, accused him of treachery,

and stabbed him to death in front of the high altar as he was about to

hear Mass.

When Henry heard the news, he was overcome with grief. He hadn’t meant

his words literally. And he certainly hadn’t wanted the murder of a defenceless

churchman, in cold blood, at the high altar of a church. The king reacted

immediately by putting on sackcloth and ashes and fasting for three days.

Henry wanted to show that he was repentant.

A legal mind

Henry’s education gave him the edge over other rulers when it came to

understanding the law. Although he wasn’t a lawyer himself, Henry understood

how the law worked, and, just as importantly, had clear ideas about

how it ought to work. Henry’s new ideas about the law were really influential.

Some historians see him as the father of English law.

Most importantly, it was established in Henry’s reign that there was one

common law, which was effective throughout England and which was more

important than all the minor local laws that had developed in different parts

of the country. Henry made a number of other, more detailed reforms:

_ The system of travelling justices was improved, with six defined circuits

on which they travelled.

_ He required regular court sittings in every county.

_ The Court of Common Pleas dealt with civil matters nationwide.

_ The Court of the King’s Bench heard criminal cases.

_ The principle of trial by jury was reasserted.

_ Reliance on old-fashioned forms of justice, such as trial by battle, where

opponents fought it out to determine who was in the right, was reduced.

_ The role of the coroner, or investigator of suspicious deaths, was

established.

Fortunately for historians, details of Henry’s legal reforms were written down

in a book called De legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae – in other words,

On the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England. Not exactly a snappy

title, so the book is usually known, after its author, as Glanvill. It shows that

under Henry England had a fairer and better organised legal system than at

any time since the Norman conquest.

Family fortunes

Henry was a hugely powerful and important king, who achieved a lot for his

country during his 35-year reign. But it wasn’t all plain sailing. By the early

1170s, Henry and Eleanor were estranged. These two strong characters had

gone their separate ways, with Eleanor left in Aquitaine, more or less ruling it

in her own right, while Henry ran the rest of his empire and took solace with

his mistress, a woman from the Welsh borders called Rosamund Clifford, who

has gone down in history as Fair Rosamund.

However, in 1173, a dispute broke out between Henry and his sons about who

should inherit which parts of Henry’s empire. Before Henry knew it, war broke

out, and he found himself fighting his sons and his wife for control of his empire.

By the end of 1174, Henry had won. He had captured Eleanor and threw her

in prison, while he agreed to peace terms with his sons. To be on the safe

side, Henry kept Eleanor locked up, and the proud Aquitainian queen spent

15 years in confinement. But if the most powerful threat was out of the way,

Henry’s trouble didn’t end. In 1183, his eldest son, Henry, known as the Young

King because he had already been crowned in anticipation of inheriting the

English throne, died. Then just three years later, the king’s son Geoffrey also

died, trampled to death in a tournament.

Henry II was left with two sons, Richard, who had spent much of his life with

his mother in Aquitaine, and John, a younger son who had not originally

expected to inherit a major title but was now second to Richard in line to the

throne. Having fewer sons meant more trouble for Henry because he now had

to replan the succession. Richard expected to inherit Aquitaine, a land that

he loved, and refused to give up, so Henry hoped to hand England and his

other French lands to John. The king refused to name Richard as heir to the

English crown, which alienated Richard, who joined with the French king

Philip Augustus and started a war against his father.

By now, Henry was sick of a fever, and Richard and Philip pushed him into signing

a treaty that made Richard his heir and forced John into second place. A

few days later, Henry died, a sad and disappointed man. He felt defeated, and

his last words were said to have been, ‘Shame, shame on a conquered king’.

Henry’s reign had a sorry end, but he had achieved a great deal. He passed

on to his son an empire that was the biggest in Europe. His legal reforms

meant that society was fairer than when he became king. He had protected

his interests in Britain with shrewd diplomacy. England was in better shape

than during the war-torn reign of Stephen. But would it last?

Missing Monarch: Richard I

When Richard came to the English throne in 1189, he had spent much of his

life in his mother’s homeland of Aquitaine, in far southwestern France. His

mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was a fiercely independent woman who had

brought her son up to be independent, too. And he had to be. After Eleanor

was involved in a rebellion against her husband, Henry II, she was imprisoned.

Richard was left to run Aquitaine on his own from 1174 until Henry’s

death in 1189.

Richard was tall – at about 6 foot 4 inches, he towered above the people

around him. He cut a fine figure on the battlefield and was brave too, earning

his nickname Lionheart. Richard also had a more cultivated side. Because his

real home was Aquitaine, he loved the culture of southern Europe, especially

the songs of the troubadours, and he even wrote some song lyrics himself.

The absentee king

Richard had longed to take over his father’s kingdom, but at his coronation in