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HENRY II new interpretations edited by Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent THE BOYDELL PRESS

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Henry II

new interpretations

edited by

Christopher Harper-Bill and

Nicholas Vincent

THe BOyDeLL PreSS

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Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Editors’ Preface ix

List of Abbreviations xi

Introduction : Henry II and the Historians 1 Nicholas Vincent

The Accession of Henry II 24 Edmund King

Henry II and Louis vII 47 Jean Dunbabin

Doing Homage to the King of France 63 John Gillingham

Henry, Duke of the normans (1149/50–1189) 85 Daniel Power

Henry II and england’s Insular neighbours 129 Seán Duffy

Henry II, the english Church and the Papacy, 1154–76 154 Anne J. Duggan

On the Instruction of a Prince : The Upbringing of Henry, 184 the young King Matthew Strickland

Henry II and the Creation of the english Common Law 215 Paul Brand

Finance and the economy in the reign of Henry II 242 Nick Barratt

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Henry II and the english Coinage 257 Martin Allen

The Court of Henry II 278 Nicholas Vincent

Literary Culture at the Court of Henry II 335 Ian Short

Henry II and Arthurian Legend 362 Martin Aurell

Index 395

vi Contents

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Anne J. Duggan

Henry II, the english Church and the Papacy, 1154–76

T He preponderant historical opinion of Henry II’s relations with the english Church and with the papacy is easily summarised as reasonably amicable, apart from the Becket crisis, which represented an aberration

from the broad accommodation that characterised the relationship between the regnum and the sacerdotium. Based very largely on the highly tendentious argu-ments advanced by Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, in his open letter to Becket, Multiplicem nobis of September 1166, the general historical consensus is that it was Thomas Becket who destroyed the harmony of the english kingdom by his arrogance and lack of moderation.� Gilbert had painted a very rosy picture of the pre-Becket situation :

The kingdom gave devoted and holy service to the priesthood ; and the priesthood very strongly supported to good effect every command of the king. The two swords were exercised in the Church, serving the Lord Jesus with devoted service. They did not oppose one another or, taking opposite positions, challenge one another. There was one people and, as it is written, ‘with one pair of lips’,� zealous in pursuing sins, rejoicing in the vigorous eradication of vices. The peace of Church and kingdom consisted in this : each cherished the other with reciprocal favour and were joined in a unani-mous will. In fact we were hoping and looking for an increase of graces with your promotion, and see, from that moment, everything was turned upside down because of our sins. . . . A man of your prudence should have ensured that the disagreements gradually arising between the kingdom and you did not grow too serious, that the tiny spark did not flare up into so great a fire, to the ruin of many. It was managed differently, and from

� Warren, Henry II, 400, 453, 455–6, 459, 490, 514 ; e. Türk, Nugae curialium : Le Règne d’Henri II Plantagenêt, 1145–1189, et l’éthique politique, Hautes Études médiévales et modernes, 28 (Geneva 1977), 8, 22–3, but see D. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery (London 2003), 203–04.

� Cf. Gen. 11 : 1, ‘erat autem terra labii unius et sermonum eorumdem’.

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causes too numerous to list, disagreements were multiplied, indignation was inflamed, and hatred firmly entrenched.�

Gilbert Foliot’s depiction of the genesis of the crisis, which Beryl Smalley memo-rably called ‘a tissue of half-truths and inconsistencies’,� requires substantial ad-justment.

There is indeed considerable evidence of co-operation between Henry and the papacy, with judicial appeals to the Curia, appointment of judges delegate, includ-ing Archbishop Theobald himself, and the papacy co-operating with the king. Innocent II, for example, had not countenanced the attacks made on the empress Matilda’s legitimacy at the Second Lateran Council of 1139 ;� eugenius III had, at Theobald’s request, presented by Thomas Becket, refused permission for the coronation of Stephen’s son eustace in 1151 ;� and Alexander III’s legates had au-thorised the marriage of the infant Margaret of France to Henry II’s son Henry in 1160 an arrangement that enabled the english king to take immediate control of Margaret’s dowry, the norman vexin. yet there were clouds on the horizon clouds considerably larger than a man’s hand long before Thomas Becket was made archbishop of Canterbury. At the end of January 1156, Pope Adrian Iv inserted a highly critical comment on Theobald’s policy into a mandate for the blessing of the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury. It read,

It has come to our notice by common report that the right of appeal is so smothered by you and the king of england that no one dares to appeal to the Apostolic See in your presence or his .

And he went on to say,

� Duggan, Becket Correspondence, i, 498–537 (no. 109), at 506–7 : ‘regnum sacerdotio devotum sancte prestabat obsequium, et sacerdotio firmissime fulciebatur ad bonum omne regis imperium. exercebantur in ecclesia gladii duo, devoto Domino Iesu famulantes obsequio. nec sibi stabant ex adverso, nec tendentes in contraria, repugnabant alterutro. Unus erat populus, et ut scriptum est “unius labii”, studens peccata persequi, gaudens vitia fortiter eradicari. Hec regni fuit et ecclesie pax : alterna sic gratia fovebantur, et unanimi voluntate iungebantur. In vestra vero promotione gratiarum sperabamus et expectabamus augmenta, et ecce peccatis exigentibus ilico turbata sunt universa . . . Oportebat itaque vestram providisse prudentiam, ne dissensiones inter regnum et vos paululum in inmensum excrescerent, ne de scintilla tenui in multorum perniciem tantus ignis exsurgeret. Actum secus est, et ob causas quas enumerare longum est, dissensiones adaucte sunt, inflammata est ira, et odium fortiter obfirmatum.’

� B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools (Oxford 1973), 182. For her critical assessment of Foliot, who ‘threw the mantle of piety over compromise’, see ibid., 167–86.

� raised by Arnulf of Lisieux : see p. 158 n. 5 below.� Gervase, i, 150, ‘Dominus siquidem papa litteris suis Cantuariensi prohibuerat archiepiscopo,

ne filium regis, qui contra iusiurandum regnum usurpasse videbatur, in regem sublimaret. Hoc autem factum est subtilissima providentie et perquisitione cuiusdam Thomae clerici, natione Londoniensis ; pater eius Gilebertus, mater vero Mathildis vocabatur.’

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In addition, you are in every way lukewarm and remiss in dispensing justice to those who suffer injustice, and you are said to seek the king’s favour so much and succumb to fear of him that, when we send letters to you on be-half of any one that he may have justice, he cannot secure his right through you, as we have heard from the complaints of many.�

So shocking is that rebuke that Christopher Brooke was inclined to dismiss it as another piece of St Augustine’s forgery ;� but it is corroborated by a series of letters to the pope himself and to three leading cardinals, begging to be reinstated in their favour ;� and, indeed, the legatine council over which Theobald presided in 1151, had, in Henry of Huntingdon’s colourful words, ‘gnashed its teeth (in-frenduit) against the new appeals’.� Further, one can detect a certain sensitivity on Theobald’s part on the question of appeals in the year following that rebuke. His use of the phrases ‘as was our duty’, ‘deferring to your apostolic majesty’, ‘to which we have to defer’, and ‘deferring to your honour, as we desire and ought’, in transmitting judicial appeals to the papal audience,� seems to emphasize his co-operation, but they could equally have reflected his embarrassment ; and there are also hints that he was sometimes less than enthusiastic about the process. Two letters speak respectively of the ‘subtlety of the laws and canons’ and of the ‘skill of the advocates and the subtlety of the laws’ in a manner that suggests disquiet,� despite the fact that Theobald had invited the Bolognese civilian Master vacarius to england in the early 1140s. even more telling are the letters written to Adrian Iv about the dispute between Hugh of Dover (a local baron who was later sheriff

� Historia Monasterii S. Augustini Cantuariensis by Thomas of Elmham, ed. C. Hardwick (rS 8, 1858), 411–12 no. 42, at 412, ‘Ad notitiam siquidem nostram, fama referente, pervenit, quam ita apud te et apud regem Angliae appellatio sit sepulta, quod aliquis non est, qui in tua vel in illius praesentia ad sedem apostolicam audeat appellare . . . Accedit etiam ad hoc, quod in exhibenda iustitia his, qui iniustitiam patiuntur, tepidus sis modis omnibus ac remissus, et in tantum parti regis diceris procurare favorem, eiusque timori succumbere, quos si quando litteras tibi pro aliquo, ut suam con-sequatur iustitiam, destinemus, nullatenus poterit per te, sicut iam saepius ex multorum conquestione didicimus, quod suum est obtinere.’

� C. n. L. Brooke, ‘Adrian Iv and John of Salisbury’, in Adrian IV, The English Pope (1154–1159) : Studies and Texts, ed. B. Bolton and A. J. Duggan (Aldershot 2003), 3–13, at 11 n. 38.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, nos. 8–11, respectively to Adrian Iv, cardinals roland and John of Sutri and Boso, the papal chamberlain. It is highly probable that the letter (no. 7) announcing his investiture of one Hugh with a prebend in London in obedience to Adrian’s mandate was written at this time, that is, mid 1156, not late 1155, with its insistence on Theobald’s ready obedience to apostolic mandates and his earlier resistance to princes.

� Huntingdon, 282 ; C & S, 823.� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 27, ‘nos ergo, ut oportuit, apostolicae maiestati deferentes’ ; i, 108,

‘cui deferre habemus’ ; i, 131, ‘vestro pro voto et debito deferentes honori’. � Ibid., i, 27, ‘secundum subtilitatem legum et canonum’ ; i, 107, ‘patronorum peritia et subtili-

tatem legum’.

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of Kent from Christmas 1160 to easter 1168) and the monastery of Saint-Bertin in the diocese of Thérouanne, relating to the advowson of Chilham in Kent :

We therefore entreat your highness to give orders, as it may please you, that if the monks [of Saint-Bertin] have any right on their side,� they may obtain it in such a way that we do not incur the indignation of the lord king and persecution by all the nobles, who have taken offence in this matter.�

This was followed about six months later, December 1156 or January 1157, by a letter asking the pope

to suspend the case of the monks of Saint-Bertin and that of Osbert, arch-deacon of york, and any business that concerns us or the realm of england, until those messengers arrive,� since they will inform your majesty on all these matters, and after hearing them you will, by God’s favour, be able to proceed with greater security and profit.�

These letters were written against a background of increasing royal pressure and in the context of John of Salisbury’s great disgrace (1156–7). When he re-turned from the papal Curia in spring 1156, John found that he had lost the king’s favour an event that spelt career disaster, even for a clerk in the archbishop’s service. The reasons were explained at the time (summer/autumn 1156) to his closest friend, Peter, abbot of Montier-la-Celle :

I alone in all the realm am accused of diminishing the royal dignity. . . . If any among us invokes the name of rome, they say it is my doing. If the english Church ventures to claim even the shadow of liberty in mak-ing elections or in the trial of ecclesiastical causes, it is imputed to me, as

� The matter of lawful ownership was extremely complicated, for the monks had received the church (or a share in it) from William of ypres, captain of King Stephen’s mercenary troops c.1152–3, but the lordship had reverted to Hugh of Dover on William’s expulsion in 1155 : Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 259.

� Ibid., i, 41 (from no. 24), ‘supplicamus ergo dignationi vestrae quatinus ea moderatione quod placebit super hoc praecipiatis ut monachi si quid iuris habent, id ita consequantur, ne nos indigna-tionem domini regis et persecutionem omnium procerum, qui scandalizati sunt in hoc verbo, incur-ramus.’ For the case, see ibid., i, 258–61. Thomas Becket was later to confirm the monks’ possession in nov. 1164, citing an earlier charter from Archbishop Theobald, ‘quam vidimus’, which itself named Hugh son of Fulbert [of Dover] as the donor : EEA, ii (Canterbury), no. 40 ; cf. A. Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury (London 1956), 464–5 no. 240.

� A special deputation to be sent in lieu of Theobald’s own formal ad limina visitation ; unfortu-nately, their identity has not been recovered.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 42 (no. 25), ‘Placeat itaque dignationi vestrae usque ad illorum adventum causam monachorum sancti Bertini et Osberti eborac(ensis) archidiaconi et si qua nos vel regnum Angliae negotia contingunt suspendere, quoniam illi super his omnibus discretionem vestram facient certiorem et, auditis eis, ad singula, Deo propitio, tutius et utilius procedatis.’ Cf. no. 26, which makes the same request in different words.

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158 Anne J. Duggan

if I were the only person to instruct the lord of Canterbury and the other bishops what they ought to do. �

The explicit nature of this explanation seems to me to exclude the reason some-times given for the loss of the king’s favour, that is, John’s impetration of the bull Laudabiliter,� which was thought to have given Adrian Iv’s approval for Henry II’s planned conquest of Ireland, and which contained an assertion of papal jurisdic-tion over islands. not only is the text of the bull, as transmitted by Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambrensis), so dubious that little reliance can be placed upon it, there is nothing in John of Salisbury’s own letters from the time to suggest that it played any part in his loss of royal favour.�

The agent of John’s discomfiture was the ambivalent Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux, who had been a member of the royal embassy which secured the grant and who had observed John’s intimacy with the new pope at Benevento at the beginning of the year (1156).� This highly educated norman bishop was himself in an am-biguous situation, since he had impugned the marriage of Henry’s grandparents (Henry I and edith-Matilda) at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, and he was anxious to demonstrate his loyalty to the new king.� It was in this highly fraught atmosphere (in mid 1156) that Theobald felt constrained to send Pope Adrian a written report on the state of the english Church, which its bearer, ‘your Her-bert’, alleged had been stolen from him. We know about this communication only from a second letter, written in summer or autumn of the same year, whose penultimate sentence declared : ‘you should know that it is free for all to appeal, which you can realise because some who fly to you have escaped by this remedy alone.’� At that juncture, the case of Osbert of york would have been high on any list of examples.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 32 : ‘Solus in regno regiam dicor minuere maiestatem . . . Quod quis nomen romanum apud nos invocat, michi inponunt. Quod in electionibus celebrandis, in causis ecclesiasticis examinandis vel umbram libertatis audet sibi Anglorum ecclesia vendicare, michi in-putetur, ac si dominum Cantuariensem et alios episcopos quid facere oporteat solus instruam.’

� G. Constable, ‘The Alleged Disgrace of John of Salisbury in 1159’, EHR, 69 (1954), 67–76 ; Let-ters of John of Salisbury, i, 257–8 ; K. Guth, Johannes von Salisbury (1115/20–1180) : Studien zur Kirchen-, Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte Westeuropas im 12. Jahrhundert (St. Ottilien 1978), 132–5.

� For a critical reappraisal of Laudabiliter and its context, see A. J. Duggan, ‘Totius christianitatis caput : The Pope and the Princes’, in Adrian IV, ed. Bolton and Duggan, 105–55, at 138–52 ; idem, ‘The Making of a Myth : Giraldus Cambrensis, Laudabiliter, and Henry II’s Lordship of Ireland’, Stud-ies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser., 4 (2007), in press.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 48 ; Duggan, ‘Totius christianitatis caput’, 143.� Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, pp. xv, xxx–xxxii ; The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, ed. M.

Chibnall (Oxford 1986), 84.� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 20 (no. 12), ‘noveritis liberum esse omnibus appellare, quod ex eo

vobis constare poterit quod aliqui ad vos confugientes hoc solo remedio evaserunt.’ The identity of ‘your Herbert’, who, against Theobald’s instructions, had spent more than a month with the king’s chancellor (Thomas Becket), is shrounded in mystery.

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Theobald was clearly very uneasy in 1156–7. John of Salisbury’s disgrace, which almost led to his fleeing to the security of Peter of Celle’s monastery near Troyes, was seen as a signal to the archbishop. Henry made no overt move against the man who had supported his claims since 1148 and who had anointed him king in December 1154, but he manifested his displeasure by ostracizing his principal spokesman, and it took about a year of petitioning by John’s friends, including Pope Adrian, Archbishop Theobald and Thomas Becket, to appease the royal anger.� A letter to Bishop Hilary of Chichester, probably from the same period (1156–7), expresses the archbishop’s anxiety about what was going on in the royal court :

not one of our brethren or our faithful friends who are with you has seemed to care for us sufficiently to inform us of what is happening in the entourage of the king, or to warn us of events of which we are ignorant.�

After thanking Hilary for his ‘wisdom and foresight’, Theobald continued,

Because a rather serious situation seems to have arisen, we earnestly beseech you as our brother and our most dear friend to inform us of everything that you think will be of use. . . . And the way by which you may make your absence profitable to us is this : make it your study to promote everything that may contribute to the safety of our Church. Farewell.

This is the letter of a frightened man ; and Theobald was not alone in his ap-prehension. Slightly later, in november 1157, John of Salisbury spoke of William de Turba, bishop of norwich, being caught between the ‘authority of the pope’ and the ‘king’s majesty’ in the matter of his dispute with Walkelin, archdeacon of Suffolk ;� this was a description which might equally have been applied to Theobald himself.

In the light of this evidence, what should be made of the appeals transmitted, seemingly without difficulty, to the papal court ? In fact, of the 135 letters in John of Salisbury’s first letter collection, only thirty-two are strictly speaking apostoli, letters of appeal issued by the judge from whom the appellant had appealed ; and

� Ibid., i, no. 31, announcing to Peter of Celle that the storm had passed. For John’s efforts to recover the king’s grace, see ibid., nos. 27 (to Master ernulf, Becket’s clerk) and 28 (to Becket, to-gether with a papal letter in John’s favour).

� Ibid., i, 79 : ‘nemo siquidem fratrum aut fidelium nostrorum qui circa vos sunt tantam nostri curam visus est habuisse, ut eorum quae circa dominum regem fiunt nos certos faceret aut ignaros eventuum praemuniret. . . . et quia articulus gravior videtur incidisse, vos sicut fratrem et amicum carissimum rogamus attentius ut nos in singulis quae expedire noveritis praemuniatis. . . . et hic est modus quo vestram absentiam nobis facere poteritis fructuosam, si quae ecclesiae nostrae salubria studueritis procurare. valete.’

� Ibid., i, 72 : ‘hinc auctoritas apostolica inde maiestas regis’. For the Walkelin affair, see ibid., nos. 14–15.

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160 Anne J. Duggan

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of those, five relate to two cases, reducing the number of cases to twenty-nine.� Moreover, reconsideration of their probable dates suggests that at least nine may have been issued early, that is, during the period 1147/8–1154, before Henry II’s coronation, � and that number could be augmented by a further seven, for which there are no dating clues at all.� It is possible, therefore, that as many as sixteen of the twenty-nine letters of appeal transmitted by Archbishop Theobald, that is, about half, belong to the last years of King Stephen’s reign, and two of the four letters that refer to the reception of papal judicial mandates seem to be equally early.�

There is, of course, a serious problem with John of Salisbury’s letter collection. It was certainly not a register of appeals, although letters to the papacy predomi-nate ; nor was it arranged chronologically, or by genre. As we have it in the earliest manuscripts,� and presumably as it left his hands for presentation to Abbot Peter of Celle soon after Theobald’s death in 1161, it has few helpful headings or ad-dresses. Letters to the pope are generally addressed ‘domino pape’ or ‘eidem’,� or

� Ibid., i, nos. 2, 4, 16 (Osbert v. Symphorian), 23–4, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73–5, 76, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 131 (the Anstey case), 132. Of these, nos. 23–4 and 73–5 each refer to one case. For the rest, it is far from clear whether no. 82 (citing a papal mandate about the payment of tithes by Boxley) was strictly a judicial matter ; no. 3 is a notification of the appeal conveyed by no. 4 ; nos. 14 (from Theobald) and 15 (from John of Salisbury) were written in support of William of norwich in the Walkelin case ; no. 29 (supported by John’s own no. 30) was written on behalf of William Cumin ; no. 40 (supported by John’s own no. 41) was pleading for nigel of ely ; no. 46 is a letter of complaint against Baldwin archdeacon of norwich ; no. 48 is a letter of sup-port for r., precentor of Lincoln (1154–9) ; no. 85 is a letter of support for petitions by Tewkesbury Abbey ; no. 86 is a letter of support for nicholas, who has been deprived of a benefice by Bishop David of St Davids (likely to be early) ; no. 87 seeks papal support for Maurice, the exiled bishop of Bangor ; and no. 89 was written in support of a priest who was travelling to the Curia.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, nos. 2, 4, 55 (elias of Stafford, 1150–55), 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 65.� Ibid., i, nos. 54, 58, 63, 64, 66, 80, 81.� Ibid., i, nos. 47 (which refers to a mandate of ‘eugenius of happy memory’) and 113 (which

cites ‘your mandate’) could be as early as 1154. The remaining two reports on the execution of a commission, nos. 45 and 103, are dated 1156 and 1156–61 respectively.

� There are only two, both from the late-12th-century Paris, Bn, MS lat. 8625, fols. 1–32, whose order of quires has been disturbed, and a derivative from it (which I date to the late 12th, rather than the early 13th, century), Biblioteca Apostolica vaticana, MS lat. 6024, fols. 158ra–211rb, whose order reproduces the original order of the Paris MS. The much later (14th-century) CUL, MS Ii. 31, fols. 119–31, which is incomplete, contains a reordering of seventy-five letters and one fragment : see Letters of John of Salisbury, i, pp. lvii–lxi.

� Ibid., i, nos. 8, 12, 14, 16, 18, 23–6, 29, 30, 45, 46, 51, 57–9, 62–4, 68, 73, 80, 83, 85–7, 89 (‘Domino pape’) ; 32, 37 (‘Ad eundem/eidem’) ; cf. Anne J. Duggan, ‘Authorship and Authenticity in the Becket Correspondence’, in Vom Nutzen des Edierens : Akten des internationalen Kongresses zum 150-jährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung Wien, 3.–5. Juni 2004, ed. B. Merta, A. Sommerlechner and H. Weigl (vienna/Munich 2005), 25–44, esp. 25–6.

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162 Anne J. Duggan

nothing at all,� and there are no protocols. even the more informative heading, ‘domino pape A.’,� cannot distinguish between Anastasius Iv (1153–4), Adrian Iv (1154–9) and Alexander III (elected 1159, but recognised in england and France only from mid 1160). The fact that Commendatio cuiusdam was addressed to a pope, has to be deduced from its contents ;� and the one occurrence of ‘Domino pape Al(exandro)’ is wrong.� It was this absence of the historical minutiae upon which historians rely that led the original editors, W. J. Millor and H. e. Butler (and C. n. L. Brooke, who revised the order and dating), to be somewhat conservative in their chronological attributions, so that they assigned nearly the whole dossier to post 1154. even more significant in the present context, they held back from suggesting any dates at all for twenty of the appeal letters, which were presented in a more or less continuous sequence in the middle of the edition.�

If the redating suggested here is correct,� we may be looking at ‘normal rela-tions’ in the late 1140s, giving way after Henry II’s accession to an acute crisis in which Henry sought to restrict but not prohibit appellate contact with the papacy.� Within the english Church, there is evidence of his intervention in ecclesiastical cases. The startling case between Symphorian and Osbert of york, in which the clerk Symphorian accused Archdeacon Osbert (de Bayeux) of richmond of murdering Archbishop William of york by poisoning the chalice at Mass, had begun in Stephen’s court but, as Theobald recorded in his apostoli of 1156, ‘we just, and only just, succeeded in recalling it from the hands’ of the new king, ‘with much difficulty and by strong pressure, to the indignation of the king and all the nobles’,� and, as we have seen, that case was stalled in the papal Curia, presumably because of King Henry’s displeasure.� Another landmark example

� See Letters of John of Salisbury, i, nos. 2, 3, 4, 21, 53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 65, 66, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, 84, 102, 113, 131.

� Ibid., i, no. 52.� Ibid., i, no. 49.� Ibid., i, no. 108. � Ibid., i, nos. 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84. � This early dating has to accommodate John of Salisbury’s attendances at the papal Curia : nov.

1149 – Feb. 1150 (rome) ; summer 1150 (Apulia) ; nov. 1150 – summer 1151 (Ferentino) ; spring 1152 (Segni) ; Dec. 1153 (rome) : see Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 253–5. Allowance has also to be made for the lengthy travelling time required in the journeys to and from Italy : between a month and six weeks in each direction.

� There is, indeed, an example, from Feb. or Mar. 1162, of Henry ordering the execution of a judgment given by papal judges delegate in favour of St Mary’s, Warwick, concerning parochial rights and a 30d. pension : English Lawsuits, ii, 363 (no. 402C). For Pope Alexander’s confirmation of the delegate’s judgment, see ibid., 464 (no. 402D).

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 26 (from no. 16), ‘de cuius manibus [Henry II] vix cum summa difficultate in manu valida, cum indignatione regis et omnium procerum, iam dictam causam ad examen ecclesiasticum revocavimus.’

� Osbert claimed that he had purged himself of the accusation in Pope Adrian Iv’s presence, but the archbishop of york, roger of Pont-l’Évêque, forced him to resign the archdeaconry : John

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was the Battle Abbey case (1157), in which the king insisted that Bishop Hilary of Chichester should withdraw his excommunication of the abbot and receive him publicly with the kiss of peace. Professor vincent has demonstrated that the Battle Chronicle’s account of the bishop’s discomfiture is shot through with forgery (of documents) and fiction (in its narrative) ;� nevertheless, the process took place not in an ecclesiastical council (as it should have) but in a royal council dominated by royal administrators, and it demonstrates the king’s intervention to protect a fa-voured institution against the obvious rights of the diocesan bishop, incidentally brushing aside a papal judgment. And there are three or four further instances of the king intervening in ecclesiastical cases by ‘prayers’,� mandate� or letter, in the last of which the priest of Ingatestone, in a case against the abbess of Barking relating to tithes and parochial dues, renounced his appeal to the papal audience, and presented a royal mandate.� even the king’s younger brother William of Anjou was recorded as prohibiting the knight richard from entering into a suit about tithes in his absence.�

This all adds up, not so much to a policy, perhaps, but to persistent interven-tion (which Jolliffe long ago characterised as tending to droit administratif ),� and to a degree of acceptance, willing or not, on the part of Church authorities. Par-ticularly instructive in this regard is Archbishop Theobald’s directive to a dioc-

Gillingham, ‘Two yorkshire Historians Compared : roger of Howden and William of newburgh’, HSJ, 12 (2002/3), 15–37, at 33–4.

� n. vincent, ‘King Henry II and the Monks of Battle : The Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages : Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, ed. r. Gameson and H. Leyser (Oxford 2001), 264–85, cf. Saltman, Theobald of Canterbury, 156–9. For the Chronicle’s account of the case, see English Lawsuits, ii, 310–23 (no. 360). In the light of Professor vincent’s demonstration of the falsity of the abbey’s account, van Caenegem’s comment that Becket’s later words ‘do not have the ring of genuinely outraged honesty about them’ (ibid., 323 n. 18) needs to be revised.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 91 (no. 53) : ‘Intervenientibus vero precibus domini regis, causa, an-tequam sententia ferretur, sortita est dilationem (But at the prayers of the lord king, before sentence was passed, the matter was postponed).’

� Ibid., i, 123 (no. 78) : ‘postquam fuerat ad nos [Theobald] appellatum, fraternitas vestra sub regiae iussionis obtentu quadam inmagine iudicii iam dictum A(lexandrum) advocatione ecclesiae sancti Andreae de ringet’ conata sit spoliare, ut in r(adulfum) extraneum transferretur (after the appeal [from the court of Archdeacon roger of norfolk] had been made to us, you, our brother, under pretext of a royal command, and after the semblance of a trial, attempted to deprive Alexan-der of the advowson of the church of St Andrew of ringstead, in order that it might be transferred to ralph Lestrange).’

� Ibid., i, 239 (no. 132) : ‘rog(erius) ad nos cum litteris domini regis accedens, appellationi quam fecerat renuntiauit, et pro reverentia regii mandati petiit sibi iustitiam exhiberi (roger approached us with letters from the lord king, renounced the appeal that he had made, and asked that out of respect for the king’s command we should grant him his just claim).’

� Ibid., i, 99 (no. 58).� Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 43, cf. the chaps. on ‘Vis et voluntas’ and ‘Ira et malevolentia’, ibid.,

50–86, 87–109.

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esan bishop, probably Walter of Coventry, in a case concerning the Augustinian monastery of Lilleshall in Shropshire :

We have received a letter from the lord king in which he complains that Abbot William and his church of Lilleshall have been hardly treated by you, and asks that the case that is in train between you and the said abbot should be brought to a canonical conclusion by us. And unless you acquiesce, he will not allow you to have anything further to do with the said church. But we have persuaded the abbot to abandon all appeals, if you too are ready to do this and submit to our judgement ; and he has already on this condition renounced all appeal whether already made or yet to be made. . . . And in this way you will be able to retain the king’s favour, which is most necessary, and which you will lose altogether, if you should desire to crush a church of his by some reckless act of injustice.�

The nature of this case remains obscure ; but its significance in the present con-text is clear enough : the king, and it is likely to be Henry rather than Stephen, has intervened to prevent appeal to the papal Curia in a case concerning ‘his mon-astery’, and if the bishop does not ‘acquiesce’, he risks losing not only whatever rights he has over the church, but also the king’s favour.� The king’s designation of Lilleshall as ‘his’ monastery implies a rather wide concept of royal proprietary rights, for the evidence of any royal involvement in its foundation is remote. The house had been colonised from Dorchester c.1143 ; and Dorchester had been established by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln c.1141, though with an additional en-dowment from the empress Matilda.� A more forceful prohibition of appeal was recorded by Arnulf of Lisieux’s letter (c.1157–9) on behalf of a Master Symon, ‘qui propter appellationem reclusus in carcerem ac miserabili tortus inedia’.� equally

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 165–6 (no. 104) : ‘Suscepimus litteras domini regis quibus queritur Willelmum abbatem et ecclesiam suam de Lilleshulla a vobis male tractatam esse, petens causam quae inter vos et iam dictum abbatem vertitur, a nobis fine canonico terminari. et nisi velitis adqui-escere, non patietur quod in iam dicta ecclesia aliquid amodo habeatis. nos autem iam dicto abbati persuasimus ut appellationi omni renuntiet, si et vos renuntiare volueritis et nostrum subire iudicium, et iam sub hac conditione renuntiavit appellationi et factae et faciendae. . . . et hoc modo regium, qui pernecessarius est, poteritis retinere favorem, quem amittetis omnino si ecclesiam suam aliqua inprobitate volueritis conculcare.’

� Cf. Henry’s confirmation of the bishop’s rights, dated Mar. or Dec. 1155 : English Lawsuits, ii, 305 (no. 359) : ‘I order and grant that Walter bishop of Coventry shall have all his liberties and cus-toms . . . as well, peacefully and quietly as his church best had them in the time of King edward and earl Leofric, the builder of the church, and as a charter of the king my grandfather testifies that Bishop robert deraigned those rights in his [the king’s] court at Portsmouth.’

� MRH, 156, 164.� Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, 21 (from no. 16). According to Arnulf, the germs of contempt for the

Apostolic See were already springing up in ‘those areas’ (normandy). Only one of Arnulf ’s early letters provides evidence of a successful appeal : ibid., no. 17 (early 1159).

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interesting is Theobald’s account of the case between ernald of Devizes and earl reginald of Cornwall, who was supporting his clerk Osbert, about possession of the church of Hinton :

A writ from the king was likewise produced, instructing us to give the earl [reginald of Cornwall]� justice in respect of the advowson of his church [Hinton] and to restore to Osbert the church of which he had been deprived since the king’s departure and against his edict. To this ernald replied that he held lawful possession of the church by the authority of the bishop and with the assent of the patron. But the patron (so he said) and other of his friends were so terrified by the power and by the threats of the earl, that none of them dared to appear against him in this court, or any in the king-dom, more especially since the earl and his Osbert were bringing to bear all the weight, not only of their own power, but of the king’s as well . . .�

The reference to ‘the king’s departure’ points to January 1156 or August 1158 as the terminus post quem ;� that to the ‘edict’ suggests the royal directive that es-tablished the ‘custom of the realm’ cited by Glanvill in the late 1180s, whereby no one need answer in the court of his lord for his free tenement without a royal writ.� In this and similar cases, the ‘free tenement’ in question was the right to nominate a cleric for a benefice the right of advowson whose exercise by lay persons caused considerable disquiet among reforming churchmen. Many laymen, indeed, were induced to transfer such patronage to religious institutions especially the canons regular but the problem remained ; and many of the

� An illegitimate son of Henry I, he was earl of Cornwall, 1141–75.� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 163 (no. 102) : ‘Proferebatur etiam mandatum regis, quo praecip-

iebamur comiti super advocatione ecclesiae suae iustitiam exhibere aut O(sberto) praetaxatam ec-clesiam restituere, qua post dicessum regis contra ipsius edictum fuerat destitutus. Ad haec ernaldus se iuste per episcopum assensu advocati ecclesiam possidere dicebat. Sed advocatus ille et alii amici eius potentatu et minis comitis (ut asserebat) adeo terrebantur, quod nullus eorum in hoc iudicio vel regno contra ipsum apparere audebat, praesertim cum comes et suus O(sbertus) non modo sua sed et regiae magnitudinis pondere in iudicio niteretur contra pauperem’. Cf. English Lawsuits, ii, 353–4 (no. 395), where the case is dated 1156–61. Osbert abandoned the case when ernald appealed to the papal Curia, on the grounds that the church in question was not worth the expense.

� eyton, Itinerary, 16, 40. Henry’s first absence lasted from Jan. 1155 to early Apr. 1157 : ibid., 25. � That is, the writ of right, from which a more specialised writ of right of advowson was later

developed : Glanvill, 148 (xii. 25), ‘Preterea sciendum quod secundum consuetudinem regni nemo tenetur respondere in curia domini sui de aliquo libero tenemento suo sine precepto domini regis vel eius iusticie capitalis’ ; cf. ibid., 137 (xii. 2–3). For the place of the writ of right in Henry II’s de-fence of seisin, see Royal Writs, 212–31, although van Caenegem believed that Glanvill ’s citation of ‘custom’ should be taken to mean that there was no constitutio or statutum on the matter (ibid., 224). He did, however, believe that there was a specific constitutio protecting the seisin of advowson, citing this case (ibid., 332 and n. 1). Cf. M. Cheney, ‘The Litigation between John Marshal and Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1164 : A Pointer to the Origins of novel Disseisin’, in Law and Social Change in British History, ed. J. A. Guy and H. G. Beale (London 1984), 9–26.

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landed gentry retained their rights. What was at issue in these cases, however, was not the right of lay patronage itself which was one of the customs more or less tolerated by the Church but jurisdiction over any resulting litigation between competing claimants. The Hinton case was abandoned, but raoul van Caenegem’s English Lawsuits provides evidence of similar royal action in the same period. Two writs issued in 1156 ordered Bishop William of norwich to grant Abbot William of St Benet’s Holme the advowson of the church of ransworth, as adjudged to him by a jury of lawful men (1156) and to assign the churches of Caistor to the same Abbot William and his knight, Alexander, on the basis of a recognition (1156). It is possible that William did not execute the first writ, for a third mandate, dated c.19 May 1157, ordered the bishop to restore ransworth to Abbot William, if it could be shown that it was transferred to someone else’s fee without judgment. A further two writs, dated August and november 1158, ordered the same bishop to ‘do right’ to the same abbot in respect of the church of repps.� There is no hint of appeal to the papal court, but it is possible that William de Turba was intimidated : in 1157, as we have seen, John of Salisbury had spoken of William being trapped between the twin authorities of pope and king.� In all four cases, the king’s authority was invoked by an abbot against his diocesan bishop in cases involving advowson or the possession of churches, and the king, in turn, invoked the archbishop’s against the bishop ‘if you do not do so, the archbishop of Canterbury will (et nisi feceris, archiepiscopus Cantuariensis faciat)’, in a manner that made the archbishop into the king’s agent.�

The much more high-profile St Albans’ case (1159–63), between the great abbey of St Albans and its diocesan bishop (of Lincoln), displayed similar fea-tures.� The monastery had stolen a march on Lincoln in 1156 by securing from Pope Adrian Iv a large dossier of privileges and directives that confirmed its total exemption from episcopal jurisdiction ; but when that pope died and his successor Alexander III was duly recognised in england, Bishop robert (de Chesney) made a double démarche, respectively to King Henry and to the pope, in an attempt to circumvent the privileges. The approach to the king produced a writ to the Justi-ciar, earl robert of Leicester, who summoned both parties to Winchester ; but he postponed judgment in order to scrutinize the documentary evidence. The appeal to the pope produced a commission (16 March 1162) to two judges delegate (Hi-lary of Chichester and William of norwich) to inspect St Albans’s privileges, send

� English Lawsuits, ii, 307–8, 309–10, 344–5, nos. 354 (ransworth), 355 (Caistor), 359 (rans-worth), 383a–B (repps).

� See p. 159 and n. 3 above. Theobald’s own notification of an award, given in his own court, at the command of Henry II, relates to the seisin of land : English Lawsuits, ii, 351 no. 393 (1154–61).

� For the virtual disappearance of the nisi feceris clause after 1172, see n. vincent, ‘regional vari-ations in the Charters of King Henry II (1154–89)’, in Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland, ed. M. T. Flanagan and J. A. Green (Basingstoke 2005), 70–106, at 87–90.

� English Lawsuits, ii, 368–79 (nos. 408a–B).

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copies to Lincoln, and transmit to the papal court the depositions of witnesses and copies of the documents produced by both parties, so that the pope could reach a final conclusion on the matter. The bishop probably thought that by ap-pealing simultaneously to king and pope he would secure a satisfactory outcome. The two bishops were about to go forward on the papal mandate when Henry returned from the Continent in January 1163 and, in some displeasure, summoned all the parties before him in the presence of an imposing array of archbishops, bishops, nobles, and officials, in the chapel of St Catherine at Westminster.

What is interesting are the behind-the-scenes tactics of Abbot robert de Gor-ron (1151–66).� Supported by his relative, richard du Hommet, he made a suc-cessful proffer of one hundred pounds for the king’s favour, before the public hearings in the king’s presence.� In addition to the douceur, he was particularly astute in the way in which he presented his papal privileges, alleging that the earliest had been obtained from Calixtus II at the request of Henry I, and that the privileges granted by Adrian had not been impetrated by him : ‘they were not obtained by me or through me, indeed they were sent without my knowledge to the church of St Albans by your countryman Pope Adrian, who as we certainly know was himself born in its district’.� The assertion that Henry I had requested the Calixtus bull could have been deduced from its inclusion of the phrase ‘pro charissimi filii nostri Henrici regis dilectione’ ;� but if robert of St Albans did indeed claim that he had nothing to do with securing the papal bulls,� then he was telling a barefaced lie, and one, moreover, that the king should have spot-ted. robert had travelled to Benevento, partly on royal business, in the company of three norman bishops in late 1155, and he personally obtained a dossier of thirteen privileges and mandates in February 1156 ;� and the obnoxious ‘mitred (cornuta)’ bull was secured, on his instructions, by two of his own relatives (his

� MRH, 67 ; Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani : A Thoma Walsingham, . . . compilata, ed. H. T. riley, 3 vols. (London 1867–9), i, 110–82.

� English Lawsuits, ii, 373, where ‘r(obert) de Humez’ should be corrected to richard du Hom-met, the King’s constable for normandy, and see p. 300 below.

� Ibid., ii, 376 (Gesta Abbatum, i, 152–3) : ‘Abbas . . . confidenter dixit : “Domine, quae dicuntur ‘cornuta’ ad manum habemus privilegia. Sed veraciter testor, quod a me vel per me non sunt im-petrata, immo a papa Adriano, indigena vestro, ecclesiae Sancti Albani, in cuius pago ipsum fuisse natum constat, me sunt ignorante transmissa.” ’

� Papsturkunden in England [= PUE], ed. W. Holtzmann, 3 vols. (Abhandlungen . . . Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse iii 3rd ser. 33, Göttingen 1952), iii, 128–30 (no. 5), at 129.

� The account of the St Albans case is as problematical as the Battle Abbey case so expertly dissected by nicholas vincent. Although based on 12th-century sources, the first part of the Gesta Abbatum was written by Matthew Paris in the mid 13th century, at some considerable remove from the events. Its documentary sources are generally sound, but the record of oral exchanges may be suspect.

� PUE, iii, 234–54 (nos. 100–110, 112–13) : see B. Bolton, ‘St Albans’ Loyal Son’, in Adrian IV, ed. Bolton and Duggan, 75–103, at 85–95 ; A. J. Duggan, ‘Totius christianitatis caput’, 143 n. 182.

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brother Geoffrey and a kinsman, robert), both monks in St Albans, in May 1157.� If robert of St Albans lied, King Henry willingly colluded in the deceit. In this case, Henry was swayed, partly no doubt by the proffer ; but also by the abbot’s acknowledgement� that St Albans was ‘his’ abbey ;� and it was his adjudication that finally settled the case :

Therefore I will that henceforth the monastery of St Albans and the fifteen aforesaid churches shall be free to receive chrism for themselves and oil and blessing for their abbot and all other sacraments of the Church from whatsoever bishop they want, without any protest on the part of the church of Lincoln.�

To which he added :

And the abbey shall forever remain free in my hand as my demesne church . . .�

‘Free’, of course, meant freedom from the bishop of Lincoln.What this case demonstrates is that english ecclesiastics were ready to seek

advantage over their adversaries wherever they could find it like the york cleric Symphorian, who accused Archdeacon Osbert in King Stephen’s court, offering secular proofs, or the anonymous litigant against whom John of Salisbury com-plained to Adrian Iv that he preached (and practised) appeal to the Apostolic See while simultaneously invoking the authority of the king or the queen, ‘so that he may escape the hands of the bishops and kindle the indignation of the king or queen’.� Such ambivalence played into the hands of the king, who usu-ally had the final say. As Henry was alleged to have said to the new archbishop, Thomas Becket, in the course of the St Albans’ case in March 1163, ‘It would not be honourable for our majesty if a case decided in our palace were to be

� PUE, iii, 258–61 (no. 118), Religiosam uitam (14 May 1157), 260 (cf. Adrian IV, ed. Bolton and Duggan, 322–5, at 324–5) : ‘videlicet ut, sicut ei per antiqua privilegia concessum est habere omnia pontificalia iura, ita et pontificalia habeat ornamenta, mitram scilicet, cyrothecas, anulum et san-dalia’.

� English Lawsuits, ii, 371 : ‘since the king was their special founder and patron’.� Ibid., ii, 375. Commenting on the reference to the annual census of one ounce of gold that St

Albans owed to the papacy in Celestine II’s privilege, 19 Oct. 1143 (PUE, iii, 166–8 no. 43, at 167), Henry declared that ‘you were never allowed to make my church (meam ecclesiam) tributary to the roman see without my consent, nor should the roman pontiff have done this’.

� English Lawsuits, ii, 378–9 (no. 408B), at 379 : ‘Quare volo quod decetero liberum sit monaste-rio beati Albani et xv iamdictis ecclesiis crisma sibi et oleum et benedictionem abbati suo et cetera omnia sacramenta ecclesie absque reclamatione Linc’ ecclesie a quo voluerint episcopo accipere’.

� Ibid., ii, 379 : ‘et abbatia sicut dominica ecclesia in manu mea in perpetuum libera remanebit’.� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 89 (no. 51). The reference to the queen’s jurisdiction suggests

a date of late 1158, when Queen eleanor exercised regency powers during King Henry’s absence overseas : eyton, Itinerary, 40–43. eleanor’s second regency, 31 Dec. 1159 – Sept. 1160 (ibid., 49–51), is unlikely, because of the nine-month delay in recognizing Alexander III.

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dependent on another sentence in the consistory of the lord pope.’� Once the king’s authority was invoked, it was very difficult indeed to withdraw a case from his jurisdiction.

My reading of the letters of John of Salisbury suggests that relations between Theobald and the court were deteriorating before the old man’s death, and that the archbishop was almost pathetically anxious to prevent any serious rift with the king. Avrom Saltman and Christopher Brooke had also seen hints of this, but they were inhibited from making a firm judgment by the insecure dating of many of John’s letters. yet, even if we set aside the evidence of the judicial letters, something of Theobald’s diffidence can be seen in the extreme circumspection with which he handled the crisis following Adrian Iv’s death. King Henry was overseas in October 1159, when news of the dual election of Alexander III and ‘victor Iv’ (7 September) reached england, and although most of the english bishops (excluding Hugh of Durham) were in favour of the man who secured by far the most votes of the college of cardinals, no action could be taken without the king’s permission. The right to decide the allegiance of the country in such circumstances had been claimed by the norman kings ; and although Archbishop Anselm had contested it in William II’s reign, Theobald made no attempt to challenge Henry’s assertion of the same. On the contrary, Theobald confirmed in writing that ‘it is unlawful in your realm to accept either of them, save with your approval’ ; and besought him ‘to make provision in this matter’.� The editors as-cribe the letter to ‘early 1160’, but its reference to Theobald’s inability, by his own authority (‘auctoritate nostra’), to prevent english ecclesiastics approaching either pope, suggests that it was written before, and may even have prompted, Henry’s writ of late December 1159, which forbade any contact with the papacy until he had informed the bishops of his decision and instructed them so to manage their exercise of ecclesiastical justice that no-one should have a just cause for griev-ance at the denial of appeal to the Apostolic See.� For his own part, not only did Henry hold off acknowledging Alexander’s legitimacy until late July 1160,� a full nine months after the election in September 1159, but he took stern action against anyone who anticipated his decision. One of the examples of Becket’s skilful

� English Lawsuits, ii, 374 : ‘Tunc rex . . . ad archiepiscopum Thomam Cantuariensem conversus, ait . . . “Quod dicit abbas, rationi consentaneum est. neque enim nostrae maiestati honorificum foret, si lis in palatio nostro decisa, in domini papae consistorio iteratam praestolaretur sententiam.” ’

� Letters of John of Salisbury, i, 190–92 (no. 116), at 190, 191. � C & S, 837–8 : ‘Mando vobis et precipio quatinus neutri de supradictis electis assenciatis vel

obediatis neque occasione huius negotii sive appellacionis Angliam exeatis, donec . . . vobis no-tificemus. erit igitur discretionis vestre et studium ita iurisdictionem vestram moderare in iusticia omnibus exhibenda sive conservanda ut nullus de vobis iuste conqueri debeat neque detrimentum paciatur, ex hoc quod sibi non liceat ad sedem apostolicam appellare.’

� M. G. Cheney, ‘The recognition of Pope Alexander III : Some neglected evidence’, EHR, 84 (1969), 474–97, at 475–8, 484–5, 497.

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handling of King Henry’s moods, reported by William fitz Stephen, recorded two such reactions. When Archbishop Hugh of rouen sent his nephew, Archdeacon Gilo, to instruct the norman bishops to accept Alexander, Henry ordered the immediate destruction of the archdeacon’s houses, and when Bishop William de Passavant of Le Mans followed suit, the king issued similar orders : in both cases the Chancellor was able to protect the prelates from the king’s wrath, but the implications are clear enough.� And before he gave his own adhesion, he had wrung from the legates representing Alexander in France (Henry of Pisa, William of Pavia, and Otto of S. nicola in Carcere Tulliano) the celebration of the mar-riage of his son Henry to the infant Margaret, daughter of King Louis, in order to acquire control of the norman vexin, which was part of Margaret’s dowry.�

eventually, probably in June 1160, the king did allow an ecclesiastical council to be convened in england ; but the extraordinary letter in which Theobald re-ported its deliberations tells us a great deal about Henry’s power in respect of the english Church and the papacy :

When at your command the english Church was gathered together, the question was put for the hearing of the wise about which, in the sincerity of your faith, you had rightly deigned to consult the magnates of your realm. A great number of arguments were recited on this side and on that . . . By the grace of the Father of mercies we got so far that the truth emerged from the statements of the two parties ;� for unexpected witnesses presented themselves and fortified the cause of truth by their evidence before us, and the infamous deeds of the schismatic were proclaimed to be common know-ledge. On the issue before us we gave no definite judgement, since that was not permitted ; nor did we make any decision to the prejudice of the king’s Majesty, for that would have been wrong. But as was both permissible and right and in accordance with your majesty’s command, we have, God being our witness and our judge, framed our advice, which the faithful prudence of his subjects would have been bound in duty to offer to their king, even if it was not asked of them. . . . We have, as you requested, caused our advice to be sealed in the books of our conscience, which we have ordered to be opened to you by the bearers of these present, Master Bartholomew the

� MTB, iii, 27–8. What stirred Henry’s anger was that the prelates had acted on the decision reached by the councils held at neufmarché and Beauvais (late July 1160) without waiting for for-mal instructions from him. Arnulf of Lisieux’s early acknowledgement of Pope Alexander (late 1159 : Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, 30–33 no. 24) may have been privileged.

� An action that, not surprisingly, ‘scandalised’ the French : see Arnulf of Lisieux’s justification of the dispensation on the grounds of ‘inexpugnabilis necessitas’ and ‘inestimabile bonum recom-pensationis’ : Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, 48 (from no. 29, addressed to the College of cardinals) ; cf. Cheney, ‘recognition of Pope Alexander III’, 493–5.

� The king had sent copies of the manifestoes issued by Alexander III and ‘victor Iv’ to eng-land : Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, 36–7.

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archdeacon and William de vere, your [or our] chaplain . . . We . . . beseech you . . . to receive with kindness our petitions which are in their hands.�

What weight Henry gave to the advice of the english Church is impossible to gauge, but the english bishops were not allowed to publish their findings until the king had made up his mind. This is clear evidence, if further evidence were needed, that Henry’s recuperation of what he believed were the rights of his an-cestral Crown as exercised by his royal grandfather included the re-establishment of the norman regime in respect of the Church, as his later (? January 1162) reis-sue of William I’s constitutions of Lillebonne (1080) confirmed.�

Contemporaneously, he had been moving forward on parallel fronts in other areas of law. early in his reign he had issued a mandate that no person need answer for his free tenement without a royal writ. The precise formulation and date of that edict have not been established, since the decree is known only from Glanvill,� but the examples of royal intervention cited above suggest promulga-tion as early as late 1155, before Henry’s first departure from england after his accession. Set in this context, the Becket controversy becomes less an aberration from a smooth pattern of mutual co-operation and collaboration between regnum and sacerdotium than the culmination of growing tension. There can be little doubt that by Theobald’s death, the king’s aim was to draw clearer boundaries between his jurisdiction and that of the Church, and between what should be decided in the island and what might be appealed to rome. In the circumstances of the papal

� Letters of John of Salisbury i, 216–17 : ‘Cum enim ex mandato vestro Anglorum convenisset ec-clesia, proposita est in auribus sapientium quaestio super qua fidei vestrae sinceritas, ut oportuit, optimates regni vestri dignata est consulare. Lecta sunt hinc inde plurima . . . propitiante Patre mi-sericordiarum, processum est ut ex assertionibus partium veritas eluceret cum et testes ab insperato procedentes apud nos causam veritatis instruxerint et nefanda scismatici opera praeconante fama publicarentur. Itaque secundum ea quae proposita sunt, non quide iudicatum est quia nec licuit, non statutum aliquid in praeiuducium regiae maiestatis quia nec debuit, sed quod licuit, quod debuit, quod iussio maiestatis vestrae exegit, consilium, Deo teste et iudice, formatum est quod fidelis prudentia subditorum vero principi dictare debuerat non rogata ; . . . prout praecipistis sine omni publicatione in libris conscientiae signari fecimus, quos vobis a latoribus praesentium magistro Barthol(omaeo) archidiacono et Willelmo de ver cappellano vestro [var. nostro] iussimus aperiri. . . . rogantes attentius ut . . . nostras quae in manibus eorum sunt petitiones benigne admittatis.’ From John’s own letter to Master ralph of Sarre, then teaching in reims, we know that ecclesiastics in england and France worked very hard to persuade their kings (Henry II and Louis vII) to make the right choice : ibid., i, 204–15 (no. 124). For the intervention of Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, see Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, 38–43 (no. 28). What either hierarchy would have done if the decision had gone against their judgment is a matter for speculation.

� P. Chaplais, ‘Henry II’s reissue of the Canons of the Council of Lillebonne of Whitsun 1080 (? 25 February 1162)’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 8 (1973), 627–34 ; repr. in idem, Essays in Medi-eval Diplomacy and Administration (London 1981), no. 19. Cf. F. Barlow, The English Church, 1066–1154 (London/new york 1979), 103, for Henry’s policy.

� Glanvill, 148 (xii. 25).

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schism, he expected an easy victory. The conclusion of the letter in which he an-nounced his recognition of Alexander’s papacy makes very interesting reading :

Therefore I ask you very kindly and entreat you with all humility to receive me as your very own spiritual son and, if it please you, hearken to me in my petitions. Kindly receive Brother r., the bearer of these present letters, in whose mouth I have placed my affairs to explain them to you more fully, and grant assent and effect to what he says to you on my part. I am ready to obey your will and I offer myself and mine to be expended entirely accord-ing to your judgment. Witnessed by the Chancellor [Thomas], at rouen. �

Setting aside the specifics of Brother r.’s mission, which are not known, King Henry’s offer of material support (‘I offer myself and mine to be expended entirely according to your judgment’) in return for favourable treatment by Pope Alexander carries clear implications for royal–papal relations. The concept of filius proprius, his very own son, implied a particularly close relationship, in which the filius expected preferential treatment : papal acquiescence in the king’s ‘petitions’ was part of the deal. After all, his continued support of Alexander III against the imperially supported anti-pope was surely worth a few concessions.

From Henry’s perspective, Alexander’s weakness was his opportunity ; and Theobald’s death in the following year (1161) was to provide another. A poten-tially pliant pope was to be joined by a docile archbishop, in the person of the chancellor, Thomas Becket. But, as the world knows, the scheme broke down for reasons that will be debated as long as there are historians. Thomas resigned the chancellorship, and the scene was set for the acrimonious dispute that ended only with Becket’s spectacular murder in Canterbury Cathedral’s north transept on 29 December 1170.� That the dispute took so long and ended so violently owed at least as much to Henry as to Thomas : it was Henry who forced the issue by reducing the ‘customs of the realm’ to writing at Clarendon in January 1164, who demanded that the bishops swear to observe them, who insisted that the schedule be sealed ; and his methods were, to say the least, forceful. Gilbert Foliot’s description of the scene at Clarendon bears repetition (and he was a firm supporter of Henry II) :

� Actes Henri II, i, no. 139 ; Die Admonter Briefsammlung nebst ergänsenden Briefen, ed. G. Hödl and P. Classen, MGH, Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 6 (Munich 1983), 123–4 no. 68 ; C & S, 840–41, at 840 : ‘vos igitur clementissime rogo, et cum omni humilitate obsecro, ut me in proprium et spiritualem filium recipiatis, et in meis peticionibus me si vobis placet exaudiatis. Latorem presen-tium fratrem r., in cuius ore mea negotia posui, plenius vobis exprimenda, benigne suscipiatis, et his que ex parte mea vobis dixerit assensum et effectum adhibeatis. ego ad vestram voluntatem sum paratus, et me et mea vobis expono, arbitrio vestro penitus exponenda. Teste cancellario, apud ro-tho(magum).’

� For a full discussion of the dispute, see A. Duggan, Thomas Becket (London 2004).

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when the princes and all the great nobles of the realm had already broken out into a very great rage, they came shouting and clanking into the room where we were sitting and, throwing off their cloaks and thrusting out their arms, they addressed us in these words. ‘Pay heed, you who scorn the laws of the realm and do not accept the king’s commands. These are not our hands that you see here, nor our arms, nor these in fact our bodies : they belong to our lord the king, and they are most ready to be directed at this very moment in accordance with his every pleasure, to avenge every wrong committed against him, to carry out his will, whatever it is. Whatever he commands will be wholly just to us, simply because it comes from his will. Withdraw your resolution ; bend your wills to his command, so that, while it is lawful, you may avoid the danger that it will soon not be possible to escape.�

That process left no room for compromise or accommodation between royal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Henry was an astute and cynical manager of men. He knew that Becket’s former royal service hung like a millstone round his neck and that the mode of his appointment, by royal fiat and against the wishes of the Canterbury monks, many of the bishops, and perhaps even of Alexander III himself,� undermined his leadership of the episcopate. He also hoped that Pope Alexander’s weakness would force him along the path of dissimulation and com-pliance ; hence the relentless pressure applied between October 1163 and March 1164 to secure papal approbation, first for the ‘customs’, then for the Constitu-tions of Clarendon,� then for papal condemnation of the ‘traitor’. Throughout the six years of Becket’s exile, he clung adamantly to these same customs or dignities, and his refusal to withdraw or modify them, and Becket’s refusal to accept them, undermined all efforts to resolve the dispute and restore Archbishop Thomas to Canterbury.�

That the king committed so much diplomatic effort to maintaining the Consti-tutions is a measure of their importance to his general political strategy. Whether concerned with ‘justice’ or not, he had perceived the potential of centrally-man-aged legal process, both as an instrument of control and as a source of regular income. The authority to summon anyone before a royal judge, or to command any seigneurial court to ‘do justice’, or to exercise a monopoly over tenurial dis-

� Duggan, Becket Correspondence, i, 508–11 (from. no. 109).� Suggested by Katherine Christensen, in a paper read at the Leeds International Medieval

Congress (2005), on the basis of Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence’s report of the apparent delay in conferring the pallium in 1162 : La Vie de Saint Thomas le Martyr, ed. e. Walberg (Lund 1922), ll. 596–640 ; cf. J. Shirley, Garnier’s Becket (London 1975), 17–18.

� For the Latin text, see C & S, 877–83 ; eng. trans., EHD, ii, 766–70. The learned translators’ note to clause 3 (p. 768), should be compared with Duggan, Thomas Becket, 48–58.

� Duggan, Thomas Becket, 124–61.

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putes or felonies, greatly enhanced the power as well as the status of the king : Clarendon (1164) was an attempt to bring ecclesiastical jurisdiction into the royal net. Its first clause summarily drew all disputes about ecclesiastical patronage into the royal court, making no exception for episcopal, clerical or monastic patronage and allowing no appeal to an ecclesiastical tribunal, whether episcopal or papal :

If a dispute arises between laymen, or between laymen and clerics, or be-tween clerics, concerning the advowson and presentation of churches, it should be tried and concluded in the court of the lord king.�

The deliberately ambiguous clause 3 directed that all clerical suspects answer before a royal court before appearing before an ecclesiastical court, after which they were to be deprived of the Church’s protection ; that is, subjected to secular punishment, their clerical status being set aside :

Clerks accused and arraigned for any cause shall, when summoned by the king’s justice, come before the king’s court to answer there concerning whatever shall seem to the king’s court to be answerable there, and before the ecclesiastical court for what seems should be answered there ; in such a way that the king’s justice shall send to the court of holy Church to see in what manner [or on what ground] the case is there tried. And if the clerk shall be convicted or shall confess, he should no longer be protected by the Church.�

And clause 8 interposed the king between the english Church’s appellate struc-ture and the papacy :

Concerning appeals, if they occur they should proceed from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop ; and if the archbishop defaults in giving justice, [the case] must finally come to the lord king, so that by his command the dispute can be settled in the archbishop’s court, in such a manner that it should not proceed further without the assent of the lord king.�

� C & S, 879 : ‘De advocatione et presentatione ecclesiarum, si controversia emerserit inter lai-cos, vel inter clericos et laicos, vel inter clericos, in curia domini regis tractetur et terminetur.’

� Ibid. : ‘Clerici retati et accusati de quacunque re, summoniti a iusticia regis, venient in curiam ipsius, responsuri ibidem de hoc unde videbitur curie regis quod sit ibi respondendum, et in curia ecclesiastica unde videbitur quod ibidem sit respondendum ; ita quod iusticia regis mittet in curiam sancte ecclesie ad videndum qua ratione res ibi tractabitur. et si clericus convictus vel confessus fuerit, non debet de cetero eum ecclesia tueri.’ For a full discussion, see Duggan, Thomas Becket, 48–58.

� C & S, 880 : ‘De appellationibus, si emerserint, ab archidiacono debent procedere ad epis-copum, et ab episcopo ad archiepiscopum ; et si archiepiscopus defuerit in iusticia exhibenda, ad dominum regem perveniendum est postremo, ut precepto ipsius in curia archiepiscopi controver-sia terminetur, ita quod non debet ulterius procedere absque assensu domini regis’ ; cf. Duggan, Thomas Becket, 58–60. In his excellent study From Becket to Langton : The English Church, 1170–1213

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The relationship between these three clauses and the policies pursued in the period 1155–63 is self-evident. The Constitutions of Clarendon were an auda-cious attempt to turn occasional royal interventions in ecclesiastical affairs into unchallengeable legal process. That Henry failed to achieve all his objectives was the result of over-ambition (in trying to force through a radical programme by threat) and bad luck (in losing the initiative through the murder, by members of his court, of the archbishop of Canterbury). Finding that he was unable to bend either Pope Alexander or the sequence of papal envoys to his will that he could neither extort approval of the customs/constitutions/dignities nor rid himself of the troublesome archbishop he took a series of steps that compelled Alexander to authorise the very thing he (Henry) did not want : an interdict. And to avoid the interdict, he took the step, not of attaching himself to an anti-pope, but of formalising a kind of localised schism, when he issued the 1169 decrees.�

Usually given short shrift in the general literature, they indicate how far Henry was able to go in paralysing papal authority in england, and how far he was prepared to go. Oaths that they would not obey any papal or archiepiscopal sen-tences of excommunication or interdict were imposed on the entire male popula-tion of the kingdom ; anyone bearing interdict letters from the pope or Becket (contemptuously called ‘Canterbury’, without any acknowledgement of his sta-tus) was to be seized and kept in captivity until the king or his justices declared the king’s will ; no one might appeal to pope or archbishop or hear pleas on their mandate or receive any of their mandates in england : anyone who did was to be seized and held ; any bishops, abbots, clergy, or laity who observed a sentence of interdict were without delay to be cast out of the kingdom, with all their kin, tak-ing nothing with them, and their chattels and properties were to be taken into the king’s hand. It was these measures that forced Alexander’s hand ;� and he author-ised the imposition of interdicts if Henry failed to make an honourable peace with the archbishop.� Archbishop roger of york’s coronation of Henry’s son (14 June 1170), against papal prohibition, was the final straw ; and it was under threat of impending interdicts on his english and Continental lands that Henry was finally reconciled in the peace of Fréteval (14 July 1170). But the ‘peace’ could not have been more unwilling ; and he made it abundantly clear that Becket remained per-sona non grata. Although effectively paralyzed by royal disfavour, his mere survival

(Manchester 1956), 87–118, C. r. Cheney, it seems to me, underestimated both Henry II’s aims and the threat which they posed to the smooth operation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

� C & S, 926–39, at 930–36.� They were known in the papal Curia by 19 Jan. 1170, when Alexander commissioned Arch-

bishop rotrou of rouen and Bishop Bernard of nevers to make a final push for peace, after which they were to enjoin the king ‘in delictorum suorum veniam’ to ‘cancel entirely those wicked customs [Clarendon], and especially those which he has recently added [1169] (consuetudines illas pravas, et illas maxime quas ipse de novo adjecit . . . deleat penitus)’ : MTB, vii, 200–201 (from no. 623).

� MTB, vii, 212–14, 218 (nos. 629–30, 634 : 18 Feb. 1170).

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as archbishop of Canterbury was an affront to the king’s dignity. Whether or not Henry gave some kind of encouragement to the four barons who hacked Becket to death in Canterbury, the murder weakened his position, at least temporarily. The universal execration that he suffered, and the cult that he was unable to stop, forced the so-called ‘compromise’ of Avranches and the concessions to Cardinal Hugh Pierleone in 1175–6.

Henry II’s reconciliation with the Church at Avranches marked the end of what one might call the overtly aggressive phase in Henry’s relations with the Church ; but whether that reflected a more conciliatory tone on the part of Beck-et’s successor, richard of Dover (1174–84),� or a less abrasive tone on Henry’s, remains a moot point. yet there is no doubt that Becket’s murder had put the king on the back foot. Although his envoys had managed to avert excommunication in 1171, Henry was subject to a personal interdict that was not lifted until he had made his peace with the two cardinal legates who supervised his readmission to full communion with the Church.� In the event, he did, contrary to contemporary belief, perform significant penance for Becket’s murder� and subjected the four perpetrators to salutary secular penalties.� The ‘Process of Avranches’ was much more than the simple ‘compromise’ described in english historiography. It was a major european event ; and the legates, no doubt acting on Alexander’s instruc-tions, ensured that the king’s submission to ecclesiastical censure was as well publicised as the conditions of the time allowed. not only was Henry’s purgation and acceptance of the carta reconciliationis repeated twice (at Avranches itself on

� For an important re-evaluation of richard’s role, see C. Duggan, in Oxford DNB, xlvi (2004), 697–9, which concluded (p. 699), that ‘his cultivation of Henry II’s goodwill enabled him to pursue canonical policies which consolidated the jurisdictional position of the english Church in harmony and cooperation with secular authority’. Cf. idem, ‘From the Conquest to the Death of John’, in The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages, ed. C. H. Lawrence, 2nd edn (Stroud 1999), 65–116 at 93.

� Albert de Morra, cardinal priest of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, and Theodwin, cardinal priest of S. vitale : A. J. Duggan, ‘Thomas Becket’s Italian network’, in Pope, Church and City : Essays in Honour of Brenda M. Bolton, ed. F. Andrews, C. egger and C. M. rousseau (Leiden 2004), 177–201, at 181, 183, 187, 192, 201. Albert, who may have taught Becket canon law at Bologna, was successively cardinal deacon of S. Adriano al Foro, 1156–8, cardinal priest of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, 1158–87, chancellor of the roman Church, 1178–87, and finally Pope Gregory vIII, 21 October – 17 December 1187 : J. M. Brixius, Die Mitglieder des Kardinalkollegiums von 1130–1181 (Berlin 1912), 57–8, 112–13 ; B. Zenker, Die Mitglieder des Kardinalkollegiums von 1130 bis 1159 (PhD diss., Würzburg 1964), 125–9. His colleague, Theodwin, was cardinal priest of S. vitale, 1166–79, and cardinal bishop of Porto, 1179–86 : Brixius, 66, 126, 135, 140 ; Duggan, ‘Thomas Becket’s Italian network’, 183, 187.

� A. J. Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status, and Conscience : Henry II’s Penance for Becket’s Murder’, in Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte : Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen dargebracht, ed. K. Borchardt and e. Bünz, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1998), i, 265–90 ; cf. e. M. Hallam, ‘Henry II as a Founder of Monasteries’, JEH, 18 (1977), 113–32.

� n. vincent, ‘The Murderers of Thomas Becket’, in Bischofsmord im Mittelalter : Murder of Bishops, ed. n. Fryde and D. reitz (Göttingen 2003), 211–72.

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21 May and at Caen on 30 May 1172), but a copy was sent to the Curia and sum-maries were dispatched to some if not all primates in europe.�

From the point of view of the english church and the papacy, the most impor-tant element was clause 3 of the carta, enjoined, like the rest, by papal authority, for the remission of the king’s sins :

you [Henry II] shall neither impede appeals in ecclesiastical causes to the roman Church nor allow them to be impeded, but they are to be made freely, in good faith, without fraud and trickery, so that the roman pontiff may consider and terminate such cases ; but in such a way that if any [appel-lants] are suspect to you, they shall give security that they are not seeking injury to you or to your realm.�

Allowing for the king’s right to require guarantees from ‘suspect’ appellants, this virtually annulled Clarendon clause 8.� That procedure would certainly have subordinated the english segment of the Church’s emerging appellate system to the royal process and stalled, perhaps fatally, the right of appeal to the papal audience.

The final clause of the carta, which recorded the oath of allegiance sworn by King Henry and his son, the younger King Henry, to ‘Pope Alexander and his Catholic successors’, was directed against Henry’s astute exploitation of the schism :

Out of reverence for the divine majesty, you [Henry II] have sworn all this in the presence of a multitude of people ; and your son [Henry, the young King] has also sworn, except in respect of those matters which concern you alone [that is, the penances]. And you have both sworn that you will not withdraw from the lord pope Alexander and his Catholic successors, as long as they regard you as Catholic kings like your forebears. In addition, you have ordered your seal to be attached, so that these undertakings may remain firmly in the memory of the roman Church.�

� Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status, and Conscience’, 272–8. � A. J. Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium : The Official record of Henry II’s reconciliation at Avranches

(21 May, 1172)’, EHR, 115 (2000), 643–58, at 658 : [3] ‘Appellationes nec impedietis nec permittetis impediri, quin libere fiant in ecclesiasticis causis ad romanam ecclesiam, bona fide, et absque fraude et malo ingenio, ut per romanam pontificem cause tractentur, et suum consequantur effectum ; sic tamen ut si vobis suspecti fuerint aliqui, securitatem faciant, quod malum vestrum uel regni vestri non querent.’

� See p. 173 n. 3 above.� Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 658 : ‘Hoc sane coram multitudine personarum iuravistis vos pro

Divine reverentia maiestatis. Iuravit et filius vester, excepto eo quod personam vestram specialiter contingebat. et iuravistis ambo quod a domino papa Alexandro et catholicis successoribus eius, quamdiu vos sicut antecessores vestros et catholicos reges habuerint, minime recedetis ; atque, ut in memoria romane ecclesie firmiter habeatur, sigillum vestrum precepistis apponi.’ The final sentence,

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Taken together, the two clauses were intended to secure the institutional and legal links that bound the english Church to the papacy, and the fourth was directed against the Constitutions of Clarendon :

you [Henry II] shall utterly abrogate the customs that were introduced against the churches of your lands during your time, nor shall you exact them further from the bishops.�

Its effectiveness, however, was fatally weakened by the ambiguity of the words ‘introduced against the churches of your lands during your time’. Henry was a notoriously subtle negotiator.� The phrase could be interpreted to exclude most of the Constitutions, on the ground either that they were not to the Church’s disadvantage� or that they pre-dated the king’s ascent to the throne. Henry’s own gloss, ‘which I reckon to be few or none’, attached to the summary of the Avranches agreements that he sent to english bishops, suggests that he held the latter view.� Such lack of precision which may have been the diplomatic price Cardinals Albert and Theodwin had to pay for the agreement left Clarendon’s clauses 1 and 3, on jurisdiction over advowson and criminous clerks,� in limbo ; but in the aftermath of the Avranches agreement, the two cardinals were able to extract a formal commitment to freedom of episcopal and abbatial election, which represented a significant withdrawal from Clarendon’s clause 12 ;� and when, in mid 1173, his own son, the young King Henry, challenged the legality of the elec-tions, the elder king was compelled to assure the pope that he had indeed granted such freedom :

‘atque . . . apponi’, which is wanting in robertson’s edition of the letter (MTB, vii, 518), is supplied from Howden, Chronica, ii, 37.

� Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 658 : [4] ‘Consuetudines que inducte sunt contra ecclesias terre vestre tempore vestro penitus dimittetis, nec ab episcopis amplius exigetis.’

� Duggan, Becket Correspondence, ii, 1044–55 no. 243, at 1050–51 : ‘sic amfractus verborum (quod familiare habet) invertens, ut simplicioribus videretur universa concedere, cautioribus autem perver-sas et non ferendas inmiscere conditiones (so twisting the meaning of words in his usual fashion that he seemed to the more simple-minded to be granting everything, while to the more cautious he seemed to include perverse and intolerable conditions).’

� Alexander III had deemed clauses 2, 6, 11, 13, 14, 16 that is, six of the sixteen ‘tolerable’ : Duggan, Thomas Becket, 46.

� Letters of John of Salisbury, ii, 752–5 no. 309, at 754–5 : ‘et, quod consuetudines, quae tempore meo contra ecclesias terrae meae inductae sunt dimittam, quas quidem aut paucas aut nullas aestimo.’

� See p. 173 nn. 1–2 above.� C & S, 882 : ‘in capella ipsius domini regis debet fieri electio, assensu domini regis et con-

silio personarum regni, quas ad hoc faciendum vocaverit (the election should be conducted in the chapel of the lord king himself, with the assent of the lord king and the advice of the dignitaries of the kingdom whom he has summoned to do this)’ ; Select Charters, ed. W. Stubbs, 9th edn (Oxford 1946), 166.

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The roman Church has long known the extent of the freedom that our ancestors had in relation to the institutions of the Church ; this we have tempered according to the rule of canonical restraint, out of respect for God and at the intervention of your prayers, in accordance with the admonitions of the venerable Al[bert] and Th[eodwin], legates of your holiness. Accord-ingly we have now [? for the present] granted free election to the english church.�

Practice did not quite match the rhetoric, as the election of John of Oxford at Woodstock in 1175� and of Peter de Leia to St Davids in 1176 (setting aside both local and general support for Gerald de Barri),� and the complex manoeuvrings of the Canterbury election in 1173� and the Bury St edmunds election in 1182� amply demonstrate ; but, at the very least, the king had been compelled to pay some lip-service to the concept of free elections, and not only to allow, but also to participate in, appeals on the matter to Pope Alexander III.

Further progress towards the settlement of the outstanding issues was inter-rupted by the great rebellion that engulfed all parts of the ‘Angevin empire’ in 1173–4, and it was not until between late 1175 and mid 1176 that a second papal legation, conducted by Cardinal Hugh Pierleone,� was appointed to deal with them. But Hugh’s position was very different from that of Albert and Theodwin. They had been sent to reconcile a penitent ; he had been requested by King Henry, and it was the king, not the cardinal, who reported the settlement to Pope Alexander.�

[1] We have conceded . . . that a clerk shall not in future be drawn in his own person before a secular judge for any criminal matter (de aliquo crimi-nali ), or for any trespass (de aliquo forifacto), except the trespass of my forest,�

� MTB, vii, 553–4 no. 790 : ‘novit ecclesia romana ex longo temporis tractu quantam libertatem antecessores nostri circa institutiones ecclesiarum habuerint ; quam nos, intuitu Dei et precum ves-trarum interventu, secundum admonitiones venerabilium virorum Al[berti] et Th[eodwini] legatorum vestrae sanctitatis, ad aequitatem canonicae moderationis temperavimus. Impraesentiarum itaque liberam electionem ecclesiae Anglicanae annuimus’ ; cf. Diceto, i, 367–8 ; p. 183 below with nn. 3–4. Alexander had urged free canonical elections, without royal nomination, in 1168 : MTB, vi, 505.

� Howden, Chronica, i, 79. His episcopate was marked by ‘prolonged and bitter tension between the bishop and the chapter’ : EEA, vi (norwich), pp. xxxiv–xxxvi, at p. xxxvi.

� Described by Gerald himself : Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, i, 40–44.� Gervase, i, 240–44 ; Diceto, i, 368–9 ; MTB, vii, 555–7 no. 792, at 556 ; LCGF, 291–5 no. 220. Cf.

r. Foreville, L’Église et la royauté en Angleterre sous Henri II Plantagenet (1154–1189) (Paris 1943), 375–7.� The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. H. e. Butler (nMT 1949), 7, 16–24.� Cardinal deacon of S. Angelo, 1173–8, cardinal priest of S. Clemente, 1178–82 : Brixius, 62,

121 ; H. Tillmann, ‘ricerche sull’origine dei membri del collegio cardinalizio nel XII secolo’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 26 (1972), 369–70.

� Diceto, i, 410 ; new edn in C & S, 996.� The Forest justices were given explicit authority to proceed against clerics in the Assize of the

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and except for lay fee for which lay service is owed to me or to another secular lord.

[2] I concede also that archbishoprics, bishoprics and abbacies shall not be held in my hand for more than a year, except for urgent and evident necessity concerning a cause that was not invented so that they can be held longer.

[3] I concede also that murderers of clerks, who kill them knowingly or with premeditation, convicted or having confessed before my justice (coram iusticiario meo), in the presence of the bishop or his Official, shall suffer perpetual disinheritance, themselves and their heirs, of the heritage which belongs to them, in addition to the customary punishment for laymen.

[4] I concede also that clerks shall not be forced to fight a duel.

The fourfold repetition of the verb concedere belaboured the point that it was Henry who bestowed the privileges, and he did so ‘out of respect for the holy roman Church and the devotion that we have and have always had for her and for you, dear father, and your brethren . . . at the instance of the discreet and wise Hugh Pierleone, cardinal of the Holy roman Church, legate of the Apostolic See, our friend and relative’ and against strong opposition from the ‘elder (majores) and more discreet men’ of the land. On the face of it, they appear substantial. The jurisdictional immunity of the clergy, except in respect of forest offences and lay fee, was confirmed, rescinding Clarendon clause 3 for the most part ; major eccle-siastical vacancies were to be restricted to a maximum of one year ; severe secular penalties were imposed on the wilful murderers of clerks ;� and all clergy were exempted from trial by combat. Contemporaries were not impressed, however.

Forest (1184), c. 9 (Select Charters, 188 : ‘[the king] has given strict orders to his foresters that if they find any such [clerics] trespassing there, they shall not hesitate to lay hands upon them in order to arrest them and to secure their persons, and he himself will give them his full warrant (praecepit bene forestariis suis quod si invenerint eos forisfacientes, non dubitent in eos manum ponere, ad eos retinendum et attachiandum, et ipse eos bene warantizabit).’ This royal authorisation constituted an important exception to the general law (Si quis suadente), promulgated by the Second Lateran Council in 1139, which imposed automatic excommunication on anyone who laid violent hands upon a cleric.

� This was almost certainly in response to Archbishop richard’s plea that such murderers be punished by the secular law (MTB, vii, 561–64 no. 794), but it also reflected the action which Henry had himself taken against Becket’s murderers in 1172–3 (vincent, ‘Murderers of Thomas Becket’, 251, 255–63). Contrary to Professor Mayr-Harting’s interpretation (H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Henry II and the Papacy’, JEH, 16 (1965), 39–53, at 44), Archbishop richard’s rejection of the application of the ‘bis in idipsum’ principle to such murderers was hardly an example of ‘stinging sarcasm’ or indica-tive of his willingness to abandon Becket’s position on criminous clerks ; rather, it was a rebuttal of the arguments used by royal justices to justify their refusal to punish the guilty. As vincent quite rightly wrote, citing english precedent for such punishment, the conciliar decree (Si quis suadente, 1139), which reserved violence against clerks to papal judgment, ‘in no way excluded the secular authorities from passing judgment of their own’ : ‘Murderers of Thomas Becket’, 255 and n. 191.

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roger of Howden called the cardinal a ‘limb of Satan (membrum Sathanae)’ for al-lowing the king’s court to try clerks for breaches of the forest law� (although he omitted the comment from the Chronica, compiled in the mid 1190s) ;� and ralph de Diceto, the Dean of St Paul’s, introduced the text of the king’s letter with the sarcastic comment : ‘the contents of the following short note (brevicula) reveal how much the english Church, longing for freedom, owes to him [Cardinal Hugh]’.� In his opinion, Hugh’s legation was nothing less than disastrous (infausta), because he permitted clerics to be drawn before a secular judge for trespass of the forest and disputes about lay fee.�

One can see why. The subjection of clerics to the authority of foresters was particularly grievous, for the royal forests covered about a third of the land of england, and the Forest Law was a royal prerogative law that affected not only the hunting and trapping of wild animals but virtually every aspect of estate man-agement in the affected areas. Specially appointed foresters with powers of arrest supervised it, and special courts, to whom all were subject, enforced it.� Con-temporaries had hoped for tighter limits to secular jurisdiction over clerics, not its consolidation ; yet the king’s courts retained jurisdiction over advowson, with the development of the whole barrage of procedures described in Glanvill ’s book iV : specialized writs, including a version of praecipe quod reddat, a ‘writ prohibit-ing a plea about an advowson in an ecclesiastical court’, and the Assize of Last Presentment (1179), with its own writs.� Moreover, despite his formal concession of freedom of election,� Henry retained virtual control of episcopal and major monastic appointments ; bishops and major Benedictine abbots held the territo-rial endowment of their churches by barony, owing the same service as secular magnates, and the king had charge of their estates during vacancies.�

At the same time, clerks and bishops were not only prominent in his service, but played a major rôle in the exercise of royal justice. Among the twelve key justices who shaped and administered Henry II’s law in the 1170s and 1180s were six clerics. At their head stood three bishops (richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester, 1173–88 ; John of Oxford, bishop of norwich, 1175–1200, and Geoffrey ridel, bishop of ely, 1174–89), supported by three clerks who became

� Howden, Gesta Regis, i, 105, � Howden, Chronica, ii, 86.� Diceto, i, 410.� Ibid., i, 402–3 : ‘quia praestitit auctoritatem trahendi clericos ante iudicem saecularem pro

forifacto forestae, et pro laico feudo’.� Warren, Henry II, 390–95 ; cf. Dialogus, 59–60.� Glanvill, 43–53, 160–63 ; cf. J. W. Gray, ‘The Ius Praesentandi in england from the Constitutions

of Clarendon to Bracton’, EHR, 67 (1952), 481–509.� See p. 178 above with n. 1.� M. Howell, Regalian Right in Medieval England (London 1962), 32–44 ; e. U. Crosby, Bishop and

Chapter in Twelfth-Century England (Cambridge 1994), 39–40, 366–72, 377–8.

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bishops (Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, 1189–93, archbishop of Canterbury, 1193–1205 ; richard fitz nigel, author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, bishop of Lon-don, 1189–98, and Godfrey de Lucy, bishop of Winchester, 1189–1204).� richard of Ilchester, John of Oxford and Geoffrey ridel, of course, had been prominent in executing Henry’s legal and diplomatic campaign against Thomas Becket, and their elevation to the episcopate seemed to confirm the king’s triumph, despite Avranches.

Surveying the evidence just cited, and much more besides, Henry Mayr-Harting, reacting to Charles Duggan’s demonstration of the rapid expansion of ecclesiastical jurisdiction through the 1170s and 1180s, argued that it was hard to see what Henry had lost from the judicial concessions after Becket’s death, since the mass of routine cases heard by ecclesiastical tribunals or appealed to the Curia ‘was of little concern to the king’, and he was always able to intervene in cases that concerned him.� This argument confuses the institutional with the personal. It is true that Henry had no personal interest in routine ecclesiastical cases ; but he was not personally interested in the thousands of cases that came before local secular courts, either. That did not stop the relentless growth of the royal system through the Assizes of Clarendon (1166) and northampton (1176)� and the elabo-ration of a battery of standardised writs and processes, all operating routinely.� ‘Justice is a great little earner ( Justicia est magnum emolumentum) !’ With the expan-sion of royal jurisdiction came the expansion of multiple sources of income : fees for writs ; fines and amercements for non-appearance or for failure to prove a case ; proffers for justice, etc.� If the totality of the Clarendon programme had remained in place, there is little doubt that more and more ecclesiastical justice would equally have been drawn into the royal courts. What Henry lost was systematic

� P. Brand, The Making of the Common Law (London 1992), 92–3 and nn. 73–4. The prominence of such episcopal involvement with royal justice was balanced, however, by the exclusion of bish-ops’ names from writs and charters relating to lay fee after 1172 : vincent, ‘regional variations’, 90–91, a shift brought about (p. 93) ‘because the king himself was forced to admit more stringent limitations upon the involvement of bishops in secular justice’.

� Mayr-Harting, ‘Henry II and the Papacy’, 39–40 ; C. Duggan, Twelfth-Century Decretal Collec-tions and their Importance in English History (London 1963), esp. 146, 148–50 ; cf. idem, Decretals and the Creation of New Law in the Twelfth Century : Judges, Judgements, Equity and Law (Aldershot 1998), especially nos. i–iV.

� Select Charters, 167–73, 178–81 ; eng. trans., EHD, ii, 440–43, 444–6.� P. Brand, ‘Multis vigiliis excogitatam et inventam : Henry II and the Creation of the english Com-

mon Law’, HSJ, 2 (1990), 197–222, repr. in idem, Making of the Common Law, 77–102.� It is a matter of record that the ‘profits of justice’ grew exponentially from 1165/6 onwards :

see PR 12–34 Henry II (1165/6–1188/9), under the headings De placitis, Nova placita et nove conven-tiones, etc. ; Dialogus, 104–05 ; cf. Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 233–7, In this, as in so much else, the second Henry was following in the footsteps of his grandfather Henry I : see J. A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge 1986), 78–94, 95–117, esp. 86–8, 100–105, and the analysis of PR 31 Henry I (1129–30) on 223–5 ; cf. Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, 155–7.

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jurisdiction over clerical crimes and misdemeanours, and systematic intervention in the church’s evolving appellate system. That did not mean that he could not intervene per voluntatem, when it suited him, just as he could intervene in secular cases which concerned him. ‘Besides the rule of law’, wrote Jolliffe, ‘there was always another rule per voluntatem.’�

The importance of the Clarendon programme for Henry can be gauged from the persistence with which he clung to it until after Becket’s death. It is highly unlikely, indeed, that he would have retreated from any one of its controversial clauses, ‘if he had not been constrained, first by the consequences of Becket’s murder, then by the great rebellion of 1173–4. Only after those two serious crises, which some contemporaries saw as cause and effect, was he willing to negotiate with the Church, and in a manner inconceivable during Becket’s lifetime.’�

The operative word here is ‘negotiate’. The process followed at Clarendon in 1164 was very different from that which produced the Avranches settlement and the concessions to Pierleone. In the former, he demanded sworn adherence to a schedule of customs/dignities drawn up, without consultation, by his own legal team ; in the latter the king engaged in high-level consultations, in which he was willing to work out a modus vivendi, in which there was genuine give and take be-tween the Crown and the Church. Appeals to the papacy were admitted ; clerical immunity was recognised, with some exceptions ; and the formal requirements of canonical election were put in place. On the other hand, Henry usually got the bishops and abbots he wanted ; papal legates entered the country only with his permission ;� prelates required his approval to attend papal councils ;� and he could still intervene in ecclesiastical cases when he deemed that his own interests were

� Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 57–8 ; cf. ibid., 301 : ‘The King’s will is, in the last recourse, free, un-inhibited, incontrovertible. . . . If vis et voluntas were for the schoolmen the vice of royalty, they were the vital force of Angevin kingship.’

� Duggan, Thomas Becket, 254 ; cf. F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London 1986), 274 ; M. Cheney, ‘The Compromise of Avranches of 1172 and the Spread of Canon Law in england’, EHR, 56 (1941), 177–97, esp. 197.

� When in July 1176 Cardinal vivian entered england without royal licence, en route to conduct a roving legation in Ireland, Scotland, and norway, Bishops richard of Winchester and Geoffrey of ely were sent to require him to give his word that he intended nothing to the detriment of the king or kingdom ; that being obtained, the king gave him safe conduct to Scotland and ordered all the abbeys and bishoprics through which he passed to receive him with the honour befitting a cardinal : Howden, Gesta Regis, i, 118. Cf. the similar promise given by the subdeacon Albert, when he was allowed to summon english clerics to the Third Lateran Council in 1179 : Diceto, i, 429, ‘praestita fidelitate de regia dignitate servanda’,

� Howden, Gesta Regis, i, 221.

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