Henry the Second | Page 2

time of the Saxon kings. The mass of the people was of
no account in politics. The trading class scarcely as yet existed. The
villeins tied to the soil of the manor on which they had been born, and
shut out from all courts save those of their lord; inhabitants of the little
hamlets that lay along the river-courses in clearings among dense
woods, suspicious of strangers, isolated by an intense jealousy of all
that lay beyond their own boundaries or by traditional feuds, had no
part in the political life of the nation.
But the central government had proved in the long run too weak to
check the growth of feudal tendencies. The land was studded with
fortresses--the homes of lords who exercised criminal jurisdiction
without appeal, and who had their private prisons and private gallows.
Their manor courts, whether they were feudal courts established by the
new nobility of the Conquest, or whether they represented ancient
franchises in which Norman lords succeeded to the jurisdiction of
earlier English rulers, were more and more turned into mere feudal
courts. In the Shire courts themselves the English sheriff who used to
preside over the court was replaced by a Norman "vicecomes," who
practically did as he chose, or as he was used to do in Normandy, in
questions of procedure, proof, and judgment. The old English hundred
courts, where the peasants' petty crimes had once been judged by the
freemen of the district, had now in most cases become part of the fief of
the lord, whose newly-built castle towered over the wretched hovels of
his tenants, and the peasants came for justice to the baron's court, and
paid their fees to the baron's treasury. The right of private coinage
added to his wealth, as the multitude of retainers bound to follow them
in war added to his power. The barons were naturally roused to a
passion of revolt when the new administrative system threatened to cut
them off from all share in the rights of government, which in other
feudal countries were held to go along with the possession of land.
They hated the "new men" who were taking their places at the
council-board; and they revolted against the new order which cut them
off from useful sources of revenue, from unchecked plunder, from fines
at will in their courts of hundred and manor, from the possibility of

returning fancy accounts, and of profitable "farming" of the shires; they
were jealous of the clergy, who played so great a part in the
administration, and who threatened to surpass them in the greatness of
their wealth, their towns and their castles; and they only waited for a
favourable moment to declare open war on the government of the court.
In this uncertain balance of forces in the State order rested ultimately
on the personal character of the king; no sooner did a ruler appear who
was without the sense of government than the whole administration
was at once shattered to pieces. The only son of Henry I. had perished
in the wreck of the _White Ship_; and his daughter Matilda had been
sent to Germany as a child of eight years old, to become the wife of the
Emperor Henry V. On his death in 1125 her father summoned her back
to receive the homage of the English people as heiress of the kingdom.
The homage was given with as little warmth as it was received. Matilda
was a mere stranger and a foreigner in England, and the rule of a
woman was resented by the baronage. Two years later, in 1128, Henry
sought by means of a marriage between the Empress Matilda and
Geoffrey, the son of Count Fulk of Anjou, to secure the peace of
Normandy, and provide an heir for the English throne; and Matilda
unwillingly bent once more to her father's will. A year after the
marriage Count Fulk left his European dominions for the throne of
Jerusalem; and Geoffrey entered on the great inheritance which had
been slowly built up in three hundred years, since the days of the
legendary Tortulf the Forester. Anjou, Maine, and Touraine already
formed a state whose power equaled that of the French kingdom; to
north and south successive counts had made advances towards winning
fragments of Britanny and Poitou; the Norman marriage was the
triumphant close of a long struggle with Normandy; but to Fulk was
reserved the greatest triumph of all, when he saw his son heir, not only
of the Norman duchy, but of the great realm which Normandy had won.
But, for all this glory, the match was an ill-assorted one, and from first
to last circumstances dealt hardly with the poor young Count. Matilda
was twenty-six, a proud ambitious woman "with the nature of a man