One other unanticipated result issued from the new legal procedures. One of the functions of the judges was to rule on disputes over property. Had anyone been violently dispossessed of his or her land? This was a common problem of the twelfth century where lords, great or small, were always trying to increase their dominion. The judges were inclined to call together twelve local men who would be able to tender advice on the matter. The origin of the English jury is still in dispute, with some authorities placing it within the Anglo-Saxon period, but in the twelfth century we witness at least its systematic use. Within fifty years juries were also employed in criminal cases. Trial by jury replaced trial by battle and the ordeal. The parties involved in these disputes were summoned to the court by writs, which from this period took on a standard form. Writs cost sixpence. The legal system of the country was being created by haphazard and unpredictable means.
Yet all things move together. The creation of royal law, otherwise known as national law, called for a group of skilled adherents to interpret and amend the principles of legislation. There had been no professional lawyers in the eleventh century, and the judges were simply the servants of the king. In the reign of Henry II that happy vacancy ended forever. By the end of the twelfth century the ‘learned laws’ were being taught at Oxford. Around the law courts of Westminster there clustered ad hoc ‘schools’ of law. A group known as ‘men of law’ soon emerged. They organized themselves into a profession of various roles and grades. They ate and drank together, in the various hostels or inns that were at a later date transformed into Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, and the others.
One of the paradoxes of medieval society lies in the presence of extreme violence and disorder alongside an appetite for great formality and hierarchy; England was in many respects a lawless society, but it was also a litigious one. The people loved law, just as they disregarded it; they could not get enough of it. It was consoling. It represented authority and tradition, even as they were being flouted. It was like listening to the king’s voice even though, if you had come to Westminster Hall on a law day, you would have found yourself amid a babble of voices.
‘Furthermore I marvel that you have not come to the point.’
‘The point, sir, is like a quintain. Hard to hit.’
‘Do not argue with me about the statute. I was the one who made it.’
‘It is lex talionis! Like for like!’
‘A great friend is Aristotle. But a greater friend is truth.’
The floor of the hall was covered with rushes containing sweet herbs, to curb the odours of the people and of the prisoners. The judges carried with them a ball of linen soaked in aniseed and camomile.
The King’s Bench, the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of the Exchequer had their own panels of judges; the special pleaders were known as sergeants and can be seen as the ancestors of the barrister. It is only to be expected that, in time, the sergeants would be promoted to judges. The professionalization of the law thereby became complete. Pleadings became more technical, and tended to rely upon precedent. We may talk of legalism rather than law. The judges wore scarlet robes and caps of gold silk. The sergeants wore gowns with vertical stripes of mulberry and blue, together with round caps of white silk.
The clarification and standardization of the law meant also that society itself took on a more defined shape. One of the new procedures was known as mort d’ancestor, allowing freemen to claim by right their inheritance. Free tenants, in particular, could not be ejected from their land by their lord. But some men were not allowed to plead in the royal courts. The men who were not free, the villeins who held land in exchange for labour services to their lord, were excluded. They had to rely on the smaller local courts for their rights. They were, in other words, still at the mercy of their masters.
It was stated that ‘earls, barons and free tenants may lawfully … sell their serfs [rusticos] like oxen or cows’. Unfree men were defined as those who ‘do not know in the evening what service they will do in the morning. The lords may put them in fetters and in the stocks, may imprison, beat, and chastise them at will, saving their life and limbs.’ This is a presentation of the extreme case and, in practice, traditional custom would have preserved many of the rights of these rusticos. The lord also had to prove that his man was unfree; as a legal writer said at the time, ‘you must catch the deer before you can skin it’.
The contrast between the free man and the villein had become the single most important social division in the country, underlying the elaborate and intricate hierarchy of roles and functions that already existed. It became the theme of the chivalric romances, with the distinction between vilain and courtois. The status of the knight was also changed, with the emphasis now on ownership of property rather than military skill or availability for service. In the process the knights adopted a different role. They took up a position in local rather than national society. They became in time the ‘gentry’, a word first used by the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales. ‘Gentlewoman’ had appeared by 1230. ‘Gentleman’ emerged forty-five years later. So we have John Ball’s rhyme:
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman?
By slow degrees the class system of England, based on property, was being erected.
Those who lived in towns were by definition free, and so the difference between free town life and unfree country life became ever more marked. The myth of the uncultivated rustic as opposed to the urbane townsman, so much a feature of Elizabethan pamphleteers and Restoration dramatists, can fairly be said to have begun at this time.
Thomas Becket and Henry II were in conflict for six years, with the pope and various other interested parties acting as intermediaries. The antagonists met in France on two occasions, but their meetings became futile confrontations. The dignity and honour of both men seemed to be too great, too sensitive, for any compromise. But in the late spring of 1170 Henry watched the coronation of his son, Henry the Younger, at the hands of the archbishop of York in Westminster Abbey. He was crowned as ‘joint king’ in his father’s lifetime as a token of dynastic security.
This was a serious blow against Becket. The two sees of England, York and Canterbury, had always been at odds over their respective powers and dominions. It was the established right of Canterbury to crown monarchs and princes, but that privilege had been snatched from Becket by the king. In this age the importance of status, and of precedent, cannot be overrated; they were the pattern of the world. Henry insinuated that the prince might be recrowned by Canterbury, if and when the archbishop returned to England. Becket was so concerned to defend the pre-eminence of his see that the offer was persuasive. A third meeting took place on French soil between Henry and Becket where the terms of a settlement were agreed. On 1 December 1170 the archbishop returned to England.
It was said that he received a hostile reception when he landed at Sandwich. It was also reported that he was soon riding across England at the head of a body of knights. Neither story can be substantiated. One event, however, is certain. On the eve of crossing the Channel he excommunicated the archbishop of York and other bishops who had been present at the coronation in Westminster Abbey eight months before.
There was a Latin proverb, ‘ira principis mors est’, to the effect that the anger of the king means death. Becket was to prove the truth of this. When the news of the excommunications reached Henry, he was told that there would be neither peace nor quiet in England while the archbishop lived. The dramatic and vindictive way in which he had dealt with the archbishop of York seemed to be proof of that. Becket was a man who bristled with pride and self-righteousness.
The king may never have used the words attributed to him: ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ The phrase, however, is sufficiently close to something Henry did say. He himself admitted this at a later date. Four of his knights took him at his word. They left Henry’s court in northern France and, riding along separate routes, made their way to th
e Channel. They met by prearranged agreement at Saltwood Castle in Kent, not far from Canterbury. From there they rode to the cathedral.
Becket was conducting business in an inner chamber and, when they entered, he greeted them calmly enough. Their intentions were not clear, however, perhaps not even to themselves. There are some indications that they planned to arrest him, or to oblige him to leave the country once again. But then the red mist descended. They began to insult and threaten the archbishop; he argued with them and refused to be cowed by their hostile demeanour. He proceeded into the cathedral to hear vespers. The monks wished to bar the doors, but he would not permit it. One of the monks with him at the time, William Fitzstephen, reports that he could have escaped at any moment. Dark passages and winding stairs of stone were all around him; he might have concealed himself in the crypt. But he stayed in the church, and prepared himself for the service.
The four knights burst open the doors and went after him with their weapons. One of them struck Becket on the shoulder with the flat of his sword, saying, ‘Fly! You are a dead man.’ They tried to drag him out of the cathedral, but he forcibly resisted them. He was wounded in the head, and fell to his knees. Another stroke cut off the upper part of his skull. They butchered him where he lay.
In death, Becket was triumphant. The leaders of Christendom were genuinely appalled by the slaughter of an archbishop in his own cathedral; only the murder of the pope would have been comparable. The king knew that the obloquy of the world would now be turned upon him. He retired to his chamber for three days, refusing food and drink. His enemies were, in turn, contemplating a very satisfying revenge. The king of France, Louis VII, declared that ‘the man who commits violence against his mother [the Church] revolts against humanity … Such unprecedented cruelty demands unprecedented retribution. Let the sword of St Peter be unleashed to avenge the martyr of Canterbury’. Becket was already wearing the martyr’s crown, although he was not canonized for three years.
Very quickly there grew up a cult around the site of the killing. Immediately after the death certain members of his household, and perhaps also some of the people of Canterbury, rushed into the cathedral and cut off pieces of their clothes before dipping them in the archbishop’s blood; they anointed their eyes with the precious fluid. It is reported that others also brought vessels to capture the blood as it flowed from the prone body. This was the tactile and instinctive aspect of medieval piety. At a later date the monks of Canterbury developed a thriving trade in the miraculous properties of ‘Becket water’ that contained a tincture of the blood. Small vessels of tin alloy were manufactured on a large scale, each one bearing the inscription (in Latin), ‘All weakness and pain is removed, the healed man eats and drinks, and evil and death pass away’. If this miraculous healing did not take place, it was agreed that the afflicted man or woman lacked sufficient piety. After Becket’s tomb was constructed, and a shrine erected, the pilgrims began to arrive in multitudes. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is devoted to them.
One of those pilgrims was the king himself. In the summer of 1174 Henry, beset by enemies invading from Scotland and from Flanders, made a formal and ritual penance for the death of Becket. He dismounted from his horse a mile (1.6 kilometres) from Canterbury and took off his silken robes; then he walked barefoot to the cathedral, badly lacerating his feet on the way. As soon as he entered the church he prostrated himself, weeping, before the shrine. The bells of the cathedral had been ringing to summon as many spectators as possible for this act of piety. The king was led into the crypt where he stripped off his shirt. The assembled bishops inflicted ‘correction’ on his body with a whip of several lashes; they were no doubt gentle with their royal lord. The king then spent the whole of the next day and night in fervent prayer, taking no nourishment, and finished his pilgrimage by drinking some of the water blessed by Becket’s blood. He had been cleansed. The effect was immediate, and almost miraculous. His Scottish enemies were defeated.
Yet his return to papal favour came at a price. He was forced to concede that churchmen would only be tried in church courts. So was established the practice known as ‘benefit of clergy’, which was slowly extended to cover literacy as well; anyone who could read a short passage from the Bible, generally the beginning of the fifty-first psalm, known as the ‘neck verse’, was spared the death penalty. ‘Benefit of clergy’ was in fact not removed from the provisions of the criminal law until the 1820s.
God may have blessed him against his enemies, but He cursed him with his children. The remaining years of Henry’s reign were dominated by the struggles with his four sons who, like their Angevin forebears, were violent and rapacious. Henry had, in theory, divided his empire. His eldest son, Henry, was destined to inherit the kingdom of England together with Anjou and Normandy; the second son, Richard, was granted the dukedom of Aquitaine. The third son, Geoffrey, became by marriage duke or count of Brittany. The youngest son, John, had nothing at all; hence arose his nickname ‘John Lackland’.
It was a most quarrelsome family from the vicissitudes of which Shakespeare could have profited greatly. The play of these warring parties would have out-Leared Lear. The brothers were united only by self-interest; selfishness was in their blood. They were concerned only with their honour and with their power; they fought one another over the extent of their respective territories; they built castles in each other’s lands, and they refused to allow the king to mediate between them.
In some spasm of dynastic madness, the two eldest sons rose in rebellion against their father. In this act of subversion they were aided and abetted by their mother who had, for all practical purposes, severed herself from her husband. When the king marched up to Limoges, the headquarters of the young Henry, he encountered a storm of arrows. Yet the king’s army prevailed and, in fear of his liberty, the prince escaped from the city. He wandered through his dominion, picking up very little support, and in the process succumbed to dysentery. The young Henry had lacked the resolution and competence of his father; he was at the time considered to be a perfect prince, courteous and debonair, but he would have made a wholly disappointing king. He seemed to be capable of rule, but only as long as he never ruled. He died in the summer of 1183, unreconciled to the father who had become his enemy.
And then there were three. It was supposed that Richard, now the eldest son, would come into Henry’s patrimony. In return the king demanded that he transfer the sovereignty of Aquitaine to Prince John; Richard, standing on the principle of natural right, refused to do this. He fled from the court and returned to Aquitaine. The king advised John to recruit an army and march against his elder brother. But John had no army of his own and instead allied himself with his other brother, Geoffrey, who had command of a large army of mercenaries in Brittany. Together the two younger sons marched against their elder brother. They achieved very little, apart from some vainglorious victories in skirmishes, and in retaliation Richard invaded Brittany itself.
It seemed to Henry II that his empire was in an advanced state of upheaval, and that it might fall apart under the combined strains of these internecine wars. He summoned his three sons to England. Here it was agreed that John should become king of Ireland, effectively cancelling his claim to Aquitaine. Richard returned to his dukedom. But he was not to rest easy in this apparent success. It seems likely that the king had now decided to reverse the order of inheritance and to bequeath England and Normandy to Geoffrey; these Anglo-Norman territories fitted well with Geoffrey’s fiefdom of Brittany. It was a neat territorial redaction, but it was soon undone. Geoffrey was killed while jousting at a tournament in Paris.
And then there were two, Richard and John, known to the more romantic nineteenth-century historians as Richard the Lionheart and Evil King John. In truth very little separated them, both of them rapacious and arrogant with no interest in their English kingdom except for the purpose of enrichment. Henry kept his sons at bay for five years, principally by refusing to name his successor, but as he grew older t
he issue became more and more important. In 1188 Richard agreed to submit his duchy to French jurisdiction, much to the displeasure of his father.
At a subsequent conference of the interested parties – Richard together with the king of England and the king of France – the matter of succession was explicitly raised. Richard demanded his father’s assurance that he would be named as his heir. Henry refused to comply. ‘Then,’ Richard said, ‘I can only take as true what previously seemed incredible.’ He unbuckled his sword and, kneeling before the king of France, did homage for Normandy and Aquitaine. He was, in other words, denying his father’s claims over a large part of the Angevin Empire. Father and son walked off in different directions.
It seems unlikely, in retrospect, that Henry would have disinherited the elder son; it would have struck at the very heart of the medieval principle of rightful inheritance. But of course Richard could not be sure. He pressed the matter into open warfare against his father, fought among the towns and castles of northern France. The summer of 1189 was hot, and the English king was ailing. The tide of war turned against him. Who would wish to defend the old king of England against a young prince and the king of France?
Foundation Page 17