Henry II & Becket: Church-Crown Conflict in Medieval England
Church vs. Crown: Henry II and Thomas Becket
Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle (c. 1201)
To his most loving father and lord…During the Nativity of our Lord…And inasmuch as…
Chronicle is the most important work of the 12th-century English chronicler Roger of Hoveden (Howden).
Henry II, who came to the throne in 1154, was the leader of a great empire. In 1150, he had become Duke of Normandy. In 1151, he became nobleman of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine. In 1152, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of Louis VII of France, obtained a divorce and remarried Henry. To Henry, she brought large parts of the south of France. In 1154, on Stephen’s death, Henry became nobleman of England. Henry’s emblem was a plant called Planta genesta; from then on, his dynasty was to be called the Plantagenet dynasty.
In England, he re-established the authority of the center after the weak government of Stephen’s reign. He created the common law system, according to which every freeman had a right to court in royal courts, even against his feudal lord. Henry also remade the Exchequer, which, being responsible for the collection of taxes, was at the center of royal government.
In the Middle Ages, there was continuous conflict between the monarchs and the Church. The Church stated as true that the appointment of bishops was its own exclusive right. Kings, however, believed that they should have some say in the appointment of Church leaders.
In 1162, Henry decided to appoint his personal friend, the Chancellor Thomas Becket, to the vacant archbishopric of Canterbury. Becket at once put his loyalty to the Church before his loyalty to Henry. Becket condemned Henry for his action against the Church, and in 1164, Henry exiled Becket. In 1170, Becket condemned the Archbishop of York and six other bishops, who had, in Becket’s absence, crowned Prince Henry, their heir apparent, at Henry II’s request. The Archbishop of York and the six bishops ran away to Henry in Normandy and told him of Becket’s actions.
The murder of Becket in 1170 shook the whole of Christendom. In 1172, the enmity between Henry and the Church was settled at Avranches. It was agreed that the Church would invest the bishops, but the king would have to be consulted on the choice of candidates. The king and the English Church continued to work together until the Reformation in the 1530s.
In 1171, Henry assumed the lordship of Ireland. War with France continued. Prince Henry died in 1183, and when Henry II died in 1189, he was succeeded as king by his second son, Richard.
The Hundred Years’ War
Shakespeare, Henry V (1599)
Westmorland: (O that we now had here…But one ten thousand of those men in England). KING: (What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmorland?
Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, written in 1599. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453)
Edward III’s war was entirely with France. In 1337, Edward refused any longer to pay tribute to Philip and claimed the throne of France through his mother. Therefore began the Hundred Years’ War. English sovereigns did not formally renounce their claim to the French throne until the Peace of Amiens (1802).
The most significant point to emerge from the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War was that the French army could not beat the English; at the same time, however, England could never conquer France.
In 1337, Edward III was succeeded by his young grandson, Richard, son of the Black Prince.
Richard was just ten years old, and power was therefore exercised by a regency council headed by the Black Prince’s younger brother, the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
In 1348-1350, plague swept over the country, killing about one-third of the population. Feudalism was already breaking down before the arrival of the Plague. It was not possible to keep peasants on one estate when a neighboring lord was willing to offer employment at higher wages. The feudal system was upheld by the Statute of Labourers, passed in 1351. The Act was detested by the peasantry, who also suffered from terribly heavy taxes, which the government imposed to pay for the costs of the war for an increasingly expensive administration.
The complaints of the peasantry came to a head in 1381. Led by Wat Tyler, angry peasants marched to London. At Smithfield, the young King Richard II met the rebel leaders. They demanded the withdrawal of oppressive statutes, the abolition of serfdom, and the division of Church property. Richard had no intention of giving way to rebel demands, and all who had rebelled were punished.
The monarchy and the aristocracy undertook a campaign against the followers of a religious reformer, John Wyclif. He wished to cleanse the Church of corruption and to reform it.
Richard II tried to build a party around himself. The great nobility, led by the Earls of Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, disliked the royal policy of excluding them from influence, and they attacked the king’s party in 1386.