House of Plantagenet

"We, however, place the love of God and His honour above our own and above the acquisition of many regions."

"If it had not been for his malice, forcing me to return, I would have been able to recover the whole of Outremer. Then, when I was in prison he conspired to keep me there so that he could steal my lands."

"Stick to your own grammar, my lord, for it is much better."

"“Sire, I say with pride That my lord is the finest knight On earth, and the most skilled to fight. Noble is he and generous. I count not sins we have in us, But if one had your qualities United and conjoined with his, We say that there could not be found In all the world that stretches round Any two princes to outvie Your every valiant quality.” The sultan heard the bishop through, And answered: “Well I know ’tis true That brave and noble is the king, But with what rashness doth he fling Himself! Howe’er great prince I be, I should prefer to have in me Reason and measure and largesse Than courage carried to excess."

"The king of England, though inferior in dignity, surpassed his rival Philip II of France] in wealth and military renown; and if heroism be confined to brutal and ferocious valour, Richard Plantagenet will stand high among the heroes of the age. The memory of Cœur de Lion, of the lion-hearted prince, was long dear and glorious to his English subjects; and, at the distance of sixty years, it was celebrated in proverbial sayings by the grandsons of the Turks and Saracens, against whom he had fought."

"A notable example to all princes that have the conquest over their enimies."

"The most shining part of this prince's character are his military talents. No man, even in that romantic age, carried personal courage and intrepidity to a greater height, and this quality gained him the appellation of the lion-hearted, 'Coeur de Lion.' He passionately loved glory, chiefly military glory; and as his conduct in the field was not inferior to his valour, he seems to have possessed every talent necessary for acquiring it. His resentments also were high, his pride unconquerable, and his subjects as well as his neighbours, had therefore reason to apprehend, from the continuance of his reign, a perpetual scene of blood and violence. Of an impetuous and vehement spirit, he was distinguished by all the good as well as the bad qualities incident to that character; he was open, frank, generous, sincere, and brave; he was revengeful, domineering, ambitious, haughty, and cruel; and was thus better calculated to dazzle men by the splendour of his enterprises, than either to promote their happiness or his own grandeur by a sound and well regulated policy."

"Despite the feats and achievements of his astonishing reign, Henry II is one of the lesser-known Plantagenet kings. Not so his third son, Richard I, 'the Lionheart' who inherited the Plantagenet empire in 1189, during the white heat of Europe's most enthusiastic crusading years. Richard – who spent a surprisingly small amount of time in England given the heroic status he achieved there within decades of his death – devoted his life to expanding the horizons of Plantagenet power. This led him to conquests as far afield of Sicily, Cyprus and the kingdom of Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, before he returned, via an expensive imprisonment in Germany, to fight for his inheritance against the French king Philip II 'Augustus.'"

"Religion, and it can merge into nationalism as orthodoxy does with the Serbs and the Russians, offers both a cause worth dying for and the promise of eternal life. The crusaders did not leave their homes all over Europe and make the long and dangerous journey to the Holy Land just to acquire loot and land. There was more and better to be had much closer to home. They were driven by what they thought was a divine mission, to retrieve the land where Christ had once lived for Christendom. Many crusaders – kings such as Richard I of England, the Lionheart, and Philip II of France and great landed magnates – left behind properties, position and families and many never returned. Egged on by religious leaders such as Pope Gregory VII, who reminded the faithful of the passage from the Book of Jeremiah ‘Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood’, they killed indiscriminately those they thought of as infidels. In the massacres in Jerusalem in 1099 the streets were said to have run with blood, in some places up to the knees of the crusaders’ horses. ‘None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared,’ said a contemporary account."

"Richard's achievements on the crusade made him one of the outstanding leaders of his age. After King Philip's precipitate return to France in July 1191, Richard was the single most important contingent leader operating in the east. Well before his arrival in the Holy Land, he had shown his mettle as a commander. On his crossing of the Mediterranean from Sicily, he had conquered Cyprus in the space of a few months... On his arrival at the port of Acre in Palestine, he brought to a conclusion, in under four weeks, a siege which had been dragging on for nearly two years, amply justifying his reputation as a master of siege warfare. On campaign in the Holy Land, he showed himself to be more than a match for Saladin... When, after two years, he and Saladin had fought themselves to a standstill, he negotiated a peace which guaranteed free access to the Holy Places and stabilised the crusader kingdoms for another century."

"[T]his triumphal and bright shining Starre of Chevalrie."

"Richard conceived of himself not just as a king, but also as a knight: as a warrior-general who could not only lead men in battle, but also wield sword, lance and crossbow with his own hands to deadly effect. In this, he was the product (and perhaps the epitome) of his age, for Richard was born into a culture newly obsessed with the notion of chivalry—one in which prowess was esteemed and honour craved; where a man’s value might be gauged by his reputation and measured by the admiration of his peers."

"One startling fact looms over Richard I’s career: though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil."

"For all of Richard’s successes and accomplishments, strengths and abilities, in the end he could be accused of having worked, first and foremost, not for the betterment of his realm, protection of his kin or defence of Christendom, but for himself. His eyes seem to have been fixed on the creation of a legend, rather than the foundation of a legacy. Arguably, the quest for this hollow prize placed the Angevin realm on the path to destruction, for in neglecting the issue of succession, Richard I paved the way for his younger brother’s rise to power. And it would be King John who brought England to its knees and squandered all the Lionheart’s hard-won gains."

"For the authors of chivalric literature, and even some of the more inventive historians writing in the thirteenth century, the Lionheart developed into an ideal protagonist—a heroic figure drawn from the near-past who could emulate the likes of Arthur and his knights."

"The laws the Irish use are detestable to God, and so contrary to all law that they ought not to be deemed law."

"Terra Walliae cum incolis suis, prius regi jure feodali subjecta."

"When you get rid of a turd, you do a good job."

"Perhaps he will be rightly called a leopard. If we divide the name it becomes lion and pard; lion, because we saw that he was not slow to attack the strongest places, fearing the onslaught of none. ... A lion by pride and fierceness, he is by inconstancy and changeableness a pard, changing his word and promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech."

"Edwardus Primus Scotorum Malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva"

"Here is Edward the First, Hammer of the Scots, 1308. Keep the Vow."

"In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more. After two hundred years of foreign rule, we have again a King bearing an English name and an English heart—the first to give us back our ancient laws under new shapes, the first, and for so long the last, to see that the Empire of his mighty namesake was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of dominion beyond the sea. All between them were Normans or Angevins, careless of England and her people. Another and a brighter æra opens, as the lawgiver of England, the conqueror of Wales and Scotland, seems like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus seated once more upon the throne of Cerdic and of Æthelstan."

"With the single exception of the accession of Elizabeth, no such fortunate event ever occurred in English history as that which placed Edward I. upon his father's throne. By him the bases were settled upon which the English constitution rests. With marvellous sanity he comprehended the purport of every true thought which was floating on the surface of the age in which he lived. Perhaps no man, excepting Cromwell, possessed of equal capacity for government, ever showed less inclination to exercise arbitrary rule. He knew how to mould his subjects to his own wise will, not by crushing them into unwilling obedience, but by inspiring them with noble thoughts. When he first reached man's estate, he found his countrymen ready to rush headlong into civil war. When he died, he left England free as ever, but welded together into a compact and harmonious body. There was work enough left for future generations to do, but their work would consist merely in filling in the details of the outline which had been drawn once for all by a steady hand. All the main points of the constitution were accepted at his death. That the law was to be supreme; that that law was to be obtained from a body which should represent all the various classes and interests of the kingdom, and which was therefore most likely to look with fairness upon all; that power was to be lodged in the hands of the Government sufficient to combat against anarchy, whilst it was powerless to encroach upon the rights of the subjects—were means fully acknowledged by that great King, and brought out by him into practical operation."

"In his own time, and amongst his own subjects, Edward was the object of almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national king. At the moment when the distinction between conquerors and conquered had passed away, and England felt herself once more a people, she saw in her ruler no stranger, but an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair or the English name which linked him to her earlier kings. Edward's very temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the typical representative of his race, wilful and imperious as his people, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but in the main just, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious."

"A strange tenderness and sensitiveness to affection lay in fact beneath the stern imperiousness of his outer bearing... He is the first English king since the Conquest who loves his people with a personal love, and craves for their love back again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws."

"A prince unequalled by any who had reigned in England since the Conqueror for prudence, valour and success."

"The enterprizes finished by this prince, and the projects which he formed and brought very near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom than those which were undertaken in any reign either of his ancestors or his successors. He restored authority to the government, disordered by the weakness of his father; he maintained the laws against all the efforts of his turbulent barons; he fully annexed to his crown the principality of Wales; he took the wisest and most effectual measures for reducing Scotland to a like condition; and tho' the equity of this latter enterprize may reasonably be questioned, the circumstances of the two kingdoms promised such certain success, and the advantage was so visible of uniting the whole island under one head, that those who give great indulgence to reasons of state in the measures of princes, will not be apt to regard this part of his conduct with much severity."

"Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike King: He possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigour, and enterprize: He was frugal in all expences that were not necessary; he knew how to open the public treasures on a proper occasion; he punished criminals with severity; he was gracious and affable to his servants and courtiers; and being of a majestic figure, expert at all bodily exercises, and in the main well proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by his more solid virtues."

"But the chiefe advantage which the people of England reaped, and still continue to reap, from the reign of this great prince, was the correction, extension, amendment, and establishment of the laws, which Edward maintained in great vigour, and left much improved to posterity: For the work of wise legislation commonly remain; while the acquisitions of conquerors often perish with them. This merit has justly gained to Edward the appellation of the English Justinian."

"The royal hero of this time was Edward I, a tall and relentless king who was said to be so fierce that he once literally scared a man to death. Under Edward's belligerent leadership, the English were finally induced to cease fighting one another and turn their attentions on their neighbours: Scotland and Wales. Edward I's brutal attempts to become the master not only of England but the whole of Britain are the subject of the 'Age of Arthur.' The popularity of Arthurian tales and relic-hunting increased as a new mythology of English kingship was explored. Edward cast himself as the inheritor of Arthur (originally a Welsh king) who sought to reunite the British Isles and usher in a great new age of royal rule. Despite flurries of outrage form his barons, who began to organize political opposition through the nascent political body known as parliament, Edward very nearly succeeded in his goals, and his influence over England's relations with Scotland and Wales has never entirely waned."

"He was so handsome and great, so powerful in arms, That of him may one speak as long as the world lasts. For he had no equal as a knight in armour For vigour and valour, neither present nor future."

"Edward had friends, but no favourites; he picked out suitable or congenial men as he pleased, but it never enterred his mind to "pack" his court. He was the king. He used aliens freely and had foreign friends, but he did not put them in positions of permanent trust at the centre of affairs, nor did he admit them to the intimate places of household administration. There were few foreign clerks in the wardrobe during his reign. The court was so English that the large number of aliens in Edward's service raised no outcry."

"No king laid more emphasis on his duty to hold his own and to recover what he had lost. And it was a social duty, to be enforced on him by his counsellors if he neglected it himself. In matters touching his state he insisted on discussion in council, sometimes in parliament, before he had made a decision... The king takes good and learned counsel. He and his vassals are one. Justice must be observed, self-help restrained, corruption—the curse of social relationships everywhere—investigated and punished."

"Which puissant Princes raigne and life, wee cannot heere shut up with a nobler Euloge, than that where-with our Great and Judicious Antiquary [William Camden] hath already deportrayed him, as a Prince of chiefe renowne, to whose heroicke minde God proportioned (as a most worthy Mansion) a bodie answerable, so that as well in beautie and goodly presence, as in wisedome and valour, hee was sutable to the height of his Regall Dignitie, whose flourishing youth his Destinie did exercise with many warres and troubles of the State, so to frame & fit him for the British Empire; which, being King, he so managed with the glory of his Welsh and Northern victories, that by due desert he is to be reputed a chiefe honour of Britannie."

"On the 21st September [1274] Burnell was made Chancellor. From that date, and with the able assistance of that minister, began the series of legal reforms which have gained for Edward the title of the English Justinian; a title which, if it be meant to denote the importance and permanence of his legislation and the dignity of his position in legal history, no Englishman will dispute."

"It is true that Edward I has been far less roughly handled by historians than have some of the English kings. He has not suffered the fate of Charles I, who has been arraigned, tried and sentenced over and over again since he faced his judges in Westminster Hall, although in these later proceedings not his life but his reputation has been at stake. On the other hand, Edward's posthumous career among scholars has not been as spectacular as that of the Conqueror, but it is not entirely unremarkable. During the last two centuries he has been turned from a strong ruler into a national king; from a national king into an aspiring tyrant; and now from an aspiring tyrant into a conventional, if competent, lord. That these changes represent a growth of knowledge about him and his age is clear enough. What is no less important, they represent a growth of understanding as well."

"That Edward was above all things an English king, no one will deny. That the most important results of his work were seen in the organisation of English institutions and in the attempted extension of English rule over the rest of the British Islands is equally plain. But it is a very false and one-sided view that ignores his constant and vivid interest in his Aquitanian inheritance, and that puts aside as of no account his watchful care of English interests in Europe, and his constant efforts, in cases where direct English interests were very little involved, to uphold some sort of European balance, while strenuously striving to preserve or restore the peace of Europe."

"When all deductions are made, Edward remains one of the greatest of English kings even in his foreign relations. He won for England a sure and foremost place in the councils of Europe. His honesty of purpose and his ability of conception have won the warmest praises both from his own contemporaries abroad and from those modern foreign writers to whose works we must, to the disgrace of English scholarship, have recourse if we wish to learn how truly great was the great English king when all Europe welcomed him as the mediator of peace, when his friendship was sought by every power of Western Europe, and when he made the name of England respected and feared in Germany, in France, in Spain, and in Italy."

"As he lay dying he sent his last words of counsel to his absent son. He urged him to persevere in the subjection of Scotland, and to avoid unworthy favourites. His last thoughts turned to the two great enterprises on which he had bent his mind—the subjection of Scotland and the recovery of the Holy Land. Even after his death he longed to share in those great works. He begged his son to carry his bones about with him in his Scottish campaigns, so that even the dead Edward might still lead his warriors to victory against the hated enemy. He also requested that his heart should be sent to the Holy Land with a train of a hundred knights to fight for the recovery of the Sepulchre of the Lord."

"Henrico regi Angliæ natus est filius, quem ab Othone legato baptizatum, in honorem gloriosissimi confessoris et regis Edwardi, Edwardum vocavit."

"A son was born to Henry, King of England, whom the ambassador Otto baptized and named Edward in honour of the most glorious confessor and King Edward."

"We will and concede for us and all our heirs and successors, by the common counsel, assent and consent of the prelates, magnates, earls and barons and communities of our realm in our parliament that the Kingdom of Scotland, shall remain for ever separate in all respects from the Kingdom of England, in its entirety, free and in peace, without any kind of subjection, servitude, claim or demand."

"...our progenitors, the kings of England, have before these times been lords of the English sea on every side...and it would very much grieve us if in this kind of defence our royal honour should be lost."

"...we benignly wish that all and each of the natives of the kingdom who will subject themselves willingly to us, as the true King of France according to wise counsel, before next Easter, offering due fidelity etc. to us, as King of France, performing their duties...should be admitted to our peace and grace and to our special protection and defence."

"Whan Kyng Philip of Frauns was fled thus cowardly fro the sege of Caleys, thei of the same town offered the town to Kyng Edward withoute any poyntment. And he lay in the town a month, considering the strong disposicion thereof. Thanne, at instauns of the Pope, was taken trews betwix the two Kyngis for a yere. Aboute the fest of Seynt Michael, the Kyng took the se into Ynglond and there had he grete tempest, and mervelous wyndes; and thanne he mad swech a compleynt onto oure Lady, and seide, "O blessed Mayde, what menyth al this? Evyr, whan I go to Frauns, I have fayre wedir, and whanne I turne to Ynglond intolerable tempestes.""

"Here lies the glory of the English, the flower of kings past, the pattern for kings to come, a merciful king, the bringer of peace to his people. Edward III, who attained his jubilee. The undefeated warrior, a second Maccabeus, who prospered while he lived, revived sound rule, and reigned valiantly, now may attain his heavenly crown."

"...an English ship we had, noble it was and high of tower, it was held in dread throughout Christendom: the rudder was neither oak nor elm but Edward the Third, the noble knight."

"He was the flower of earthly warriors, under whom to fight was to rule, to go forth was to prosper, to contend was to triumph ... Against his foes he was grim as a leopard, toward his subjects mild as a lamb."

"Few were the blemishes which may be thought to tarnish the lustre of this reign of Edward the Third. Few and short were the struggles between him and his people; for as he was fierce and terrible to his enemies, he was amiable and indulgent to his subjects. He not only observed the laws, but he made the sense of the nation, in some measure, a law to him. On this principle, in which, to a considering mind, there will appear as much wisdom as goodness, he removed a son, nay a favorite mistress from court."

"Edward the third, your King of rich renowne, Against the French did use his conquering sworde: Mauger their beardes, he did possesse their Crowne, The French were faine, to serve him as their Lord. Take courage then, maintaine your Countries right, Gainst Rabsica, in Gods name enter fight."

"The greatest of all the Plantagenet kings was Edward III. Edward inherited the throne as a teenage puppet king under his mother and her lover Roger Mortimer, who were responsible for the removal of Edward II. He soon shook off their influence, and the next three, triumphant decades of his reign are described in Part VI, 'Age of Glory.' In these years, the Plantagenets expanded in every sense. Under the accomplished generalship of Edward, his son the Black Prince, and his cousin Henry Grosmont, England pulverized France, and Scotland (as well as other enemies, including Castile), in the opening phases of the Hundred Years' War. Victories on land at Halidon Hill (1333), Crécy (1346), Calais (1347), Poitiers (1356) and Najera (1367) established the English war machine – built around the power of the deadly longbow – as Europe's fiercest. Success at sea at Sluys (1340) and Winchelsea (1350) also gave the Plantagenets confidence in the uncertain arena of warfare on the water. Besides restoring the military power of the English kings, Edward and his sons deliberately encouraged a national mythology that interwove Arthurian legend, a new cult of St George and a revival of the code of knighly chivalry in the Order of the Garter. They created a culture that bonded England's aristocracy together in the common purpose of war. By 1360, Plantagenet kingship had reached its apotheosis. Political harmony at home was matched by dominance abroad. A new period of greatness beckoned."

"This diplomatic revolution, part of the growing bureaucratization of government, was complemented by a revolution in political ideas that we can measure in the changing use of the term “state.” In the fourteenth century the Latin term status (and vernacular equivalents such as estat or state) was mainly used with reference to the standing of rulers themselves, much as we would today use the term “status.” Thus the chronicler Jean Froissart, describing King Edward III entertaining foreign dignitaries in 1327, recorded that his queen “was to be seen there in an estat of great nobility.” Gradually, however, usage was extended to include the institutions of government. In the works of Machiavelli, written in the 1510s, lo stato becomes an independent agent, separate from those who happen to be its rulers. In a similar vein, Thomas Starkey, the English political commentator of the 1530s, claimed that the “office and duty” of rulers was to “maintain the state established in the country” over which they ruled. The thrust of such arguments was to limit the power of kings by postulating their higher obligation to the common good. In radical hands this implied that subjects had the right to overthrow tyrannical rulers, which is what happened in the English civil wars of the 1640s and Europe’s bitter wars of religion. Responding to this crisis of governance,Thomas Hobbes moved the debate to a different level, defining the state as “an artificial man” abstractly encapsulating the whole populace, who enjoys absolute sovereignty (his “artificial soul . . . giving life and motion to the body”) which is exercised in practice through a sovereign ruler. This gradual but dramatic word shift, from the medieval state of princes to the person of the Hobbesian state, was hugely important for political thought. It also reinforced the decline of dynastic summitry: diplomacy, like governance, was no longer regarded as the sole prerogative of princes."

"Laymen ought not to be accused save by dependable and lawful accusers and witnesses in the presence of the bishop, yet so that the archdeacon lose not his right or anything which he ought to have thence. And if there should be those who are deemed culpable, but whom no one wishes or dares to accuse, the sheriff, upon the bishop's request, shall cause twelve lawful men of the neighbourhood or the vill to take oath before the bishop that they will show the truth of the matter according to their conscience."

"And let all the sheriffs make a list of all fugitives who have fled from their counties; and let them do this before the county courts, and they shall bring the names of these men in writing before the justices when first they come to them, in order that they may be sought throughout all England and their chattels seized for the benefit of the king."

"What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!"

"O wretched Man that I am, who shall deliver me from this turbulent Priest?"

"[He said] that he was very unfortunate to have maintained so many cowardly and ungrateful men in his court, none of whom would revenge him of the injuries he sustained from one turbulent priest."

"Will no one rid me of him? A priest! A priest who jeers at me and does me injury."

"Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?!"

"Henry's choice of these two men was a signal that the criteria for deciding who was a friend and who a foe had changed with the coronation and that from that moment on those who worked loyally for his program of centralization were to be his friends, while those who opposed the increase of monarchial power were his enemies, regardless of former affiliations."

"To a mind such as Henry’s Thomas’s preference for principle, even to the point of personal disloyalty, was incomprehensible. Within the black and white cavities of the king’s mind the idea was forming that Becket must have been carrying on a false front all these years in hopes of greater preferment, and that his present rejection of the secular office was an act of disloyalty and even treason."

"Once again Henry showed a lack of subtlety which remained his own worst enemy throughout his life. His obsession with order and precise definition smashed the interplay of fragile and tacit forces which is required for successful diplomacy. He disregarded the first law of negotiation, namely, always to give your opponent the opportunity to save face, especially when he is yielding the substance of his position."

"What separated the king and archbishop was more than the personality of the two antagonists. Each had become by the time of Clarendon a fierce and unyielding representative of opposing views regarding the nature and purpose of law. Germanic law, which only in the Angevin lands was maintaining its purity against the spread of the Roman concept of justice, operated pragmatically to settle disputes by appealing to earlier practices. Custom and precedent, rather than an abstract concept of “justice,” determined what was just in a given case. This explains Henry’s conservatism and obsessive search for the practices of his ancestors. By Roman (and Canon) lawyers, on the other hand, a law was deemed just not because it was aligned to the past, but because it borrowed its justness from an a priori, rational, transcendental concept of justice."

"As a by-product of his attempt to solve the problem of law and order, the Plantagenet king was creating the foundation of English common law."

"Henry II’s introduction of English authority into southern Ireland was to last exactly 750 years. Eight centuries later the native Irish in the north were still discontent with the nature of English rule."

"Henry was the type of ruler who brought to every problem a preconceived solution designed to increase his own power. Most of his time and energy was then devoted to devising ways of forcing others to adopt his point of view."

"The production at this time of the Dialogue of the Exchequer, which a leading historian would characterize as “one of the most wonderful things of Henry’s wonderful reign,” further suggests that Henry’s innovative days were over, for only after an institution has settled down and begun to harden is it considered worthwhile to commit such a detailed description of it to writing."

"Of the two pillars of Henry Plantagenet’s monument, the continental fiefs of the Angevin lands and an England that was assuming some of the early trappings of nationhood, the first did not survive the life span of his sons while the second continued on with varying fortunes to become a political unit that would occupy the center of world history and turmoil for seven centuries. The Angevin realm, like its creator, foundered on the ineptitude and pettiness of Henry’s sons."

"Henry Plantagenet, no less than any political leader in the second half of the present century, was confronted with such varied problems as law and order, a war weariness which brought about a military organizational revolution, economic inflation, the choice between isolation and “internationalism,” sovereignty, and even, on a personal level, women’s lib. To maintain that any of these tensions are new to the twentieth century is the highest form of self-adulation and to hold that nothing can be learned from their past appearances the height of historical nearsightedness."

"To him, as to many since his time, order was synonymous with political centralization, and in effecting this centralization lies one of Henry Plantagenet’s greatest accomplishments."

"The cornerstone of the English and Norman races."

"You have to deal with one whose astuteness is dreaded by those at a distance, whose power is feared by those close at hand, and whose severity is felt by those who are subject to him; whom continuous success and good fortune have rendered so sensitive that every act of disobedience is rewarded by an outrage; whom it is easy to provoke as it is difficult to placate; who does not encourage rashness by impunity, but whose vengeance is instant and summary. He will sometimes show himself amenable to humility and patience, but will never submit to compulsion; whatever he does openly must appear to have sprung from his own will and not from weakness. He is more covetous of glory than of gain, which fact might be deemed commendable in a prince, if virtue and truth, not vanity and the honeyed flattery of courtiers, provided the substance of that glory. He is great, indeed the greatest of monarchs, for he has no superior of whom he stands in awe, nor subject who may resist him. His innate ferocity has not been tamed by injuries inflicted upon him by foreigners from abroad, but all who have had occasion to contend against him have preferred to conclude precarious treaties of an empty peace rather than run the risk of a trial of strength with one pre-eminent in the abundance of his riches, the number of his forces and the strength of his power."

"You ask me to send you an accurate description of the appearance and character of the king of England. That surpasses my powers, for the genius of a Vergil would hardly be equal to it. That which I know however I will ungrudgingly share with you. Concerning David we read that it was said of him, as evidence for his beauty that he was ruddy. You may know then that our king is still ruddy, except as old age and whitening hair have changed his colour a little. He is of medium stature so that among small men he does not seem large, nor yet among large men does he seem small. His head is spherical, as if the abode of great wisdom and the special sanctuary of lofty intelligence. The size of his head is in proportion to the neck and the whole body. His eyes are full, guileless and dove-like when he is at peace, gleaming like fire when his temper is aroused, and in bursts of passion they flash like lightning. As to his hair he is in no danger of baldness, but his head has been closely shaved. He has a broad, square, lion-like face. His feet are arched and he has the legs of a horseman. His broad chest and muscular arms show him to be a strong, bold, active man."

"He does not loiter in his palace like other kings, but hurrying through the provinces he investigates what is being done everywhere, and is especially strict in his judgment of those whom he has appointed as judges of others. There is no one keener in counsel, of more fluent eloquence, no one who has less anxiety in danger or more in prosperity, or who is more courageous in adversity. If he has once loved any one, he rarely ceases to love him, while one for whom he has once taken a dislike he seldom admits to his favour. He always has his weapons in his hands when not engaged in consultation or at his books. When his cares and anxieties allow him to breathe he occupies himself with reading, or in a circle of clerks tries to solve some knotty question."

"Your victories vie with the world itself, since you, our Alexander of the West, have stretched out your arms from the Pyrenean mountains to the farthest and most western borders of the ocean. In these parts you have spread your triumphs as far as nature has spread her lands. If the bounds of your expeditions be sought, we reach the ends of the earth before we find their limits. For though your brave spirit may find no more lands to conquer, victory never deserts it; and its triumphs will never fail but with the want of materials for triumph."

"He brought not only strong peace with the aid of God's grace to his hereditary dominions, but also triumphed victoriously in remote and foreign lands, a thing of which none of his predecessors since the coming of the Normans, not even the English kings, had proved capable... Indeed, he was sometimes wont, since "his mouth spoke from a full heart", to let fall spirited and ambitious words among his intimates to the effect that the whole world was too small a prize for a single courageous and powerful ruler. Thus, throughout the world the fame of his honoured name was so spread abroad that it abounded in glory above the kings, princes and liegemen of the whole earth and to the terror of the nations."

"In times of war, which frequently threatened, he gave himself scarcely a modicum of quiet to deal with those matters of business which were left over, and in times of peace he allowed himself neither tranquillity nor repose. He was addicted to the chase beyond measure; at crack of dawn he was off on horseback, traversing waste lands, penetrating forests and climbing the mountain-tops, and so he passed restless days. At evening on his return home he was rarely seen to sit down either before or after supper. After such great and wearisome exertions he would wear out the whole court by continual standing."

"He was a man easy of access and condescending, pliant and witty, second to none in politeness, whatever thoughts he might counsel within himself; a prince so remarkable for charity that as often he overcame by force of arms, he was himself vanquished through showing too great compassion. Strenuous in warfare, he was very prudent in civil life. But always he dreaded the doubtful arbitrament of war, and with supreme wisdom, in accordance with the ancient comic poet, he essayed every method before resorting to arms. For those lost in battle he grieved more than any prince, and was more humane to the dead warrior than to him who survived; the dead indeed he mourned with a grief far greater than the love he bore the living. When difficulties pressed hard upon him, none was more amicable, but none sterner once safety was regained. He was fierce towards those who remained untamed, but merciful to the vanquished, harsh to his servants, expansive towards strangers, prodigal in public, thrifty in private. Whom he had once hated he scarcely ever loved, but whom he had once loved he scarcely ever called to mind with hatred."

"Although he was daily set amidst a host of faces, he never again forgot anyone whom he had once closely scrutinized. Anything he had once heard worthy of remembrance he could never obliterate from his mind. So he had at his fingers' end both a ready knowledge of nearly the whole of history and also practical experience of almost everything in daily affairs. To compress much in a few words, if he had to the very end remained a chosen vessel to the Lord and had turned himself to his obedience, he would have been beyond comparison among the princes of this world for his many natural gifts."

"He was a link in the chain of great men by whom, through good and evil, the English nation was drawn on to constitutional government. He was the man the time required. It was a critical time, and his actions and policy determined the crisis in a favourable way. He stands with Alfred, Canute, William the Conqueror, and Edward I., one of the conscious creators of English greatness. His reign was the period of amalgamation, the union of the different elements existing in the country, which, whether it be looked on as chemical or mechanical, produced the national character and the national institutions."

"The course of history might have been radically different if Henry II, instead of devoting himself principally to the pursuit and exploitation of the rights of lordships which fell to him fortuitously, had turned his energies to forging the unity of the British Isles."

"Given the framework within which Henry II chose to operate, his achievement is remarkable... He overcame the old disintegrating force of baronial separatism, and resisted the newer ones of municipal independence and clerical exclusiveness, not in order to destroy – for Henry II was fundamentally a conservative – but in order to bring all into balance under royal control. Much of his skill, and wisdom, and ingenuity which went into the work doubtless derived from those who were known as the king's familiares; but the will to do it was the will of one man, Henry of Anjou. It was a will which refused to accept that any problem was insoluble. If a frontal assault failed he would find a way in through the back door, of, if necessary, via the sewer. He was an irresistible force demonstrating – and relishing the demonstration – that immovable obstacles could be moved."

"Fair lords, though we be so few against that mighty power of enemies, let us not be dismayed; for strength nor victory lies not in multitudes, but those to whom God gives it. If he will it that the day be ours, the highest glory of this world shall be given to us. If we die, I have the noble lord my father and two fair brothers, and you have each of you many a good friend, who will avenge us well. Thus then, I pray you, fight well this day; and if it please God and St. George, I will also do the part of a good knight."

"Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead."

"I have tried to make this book as representatively English as I might; with less thought of robust and resounding 'patriotism' than of that subdued and hallowed emotion which, for example, should possess any man's thoughts standing before the tomb of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral: a sense of wonderful history written silently in books and buildings, all persuading that we are heirs of more spiritual wealth than, may be, we have surmised or hitherto begun to divine."

""Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John." The terrible verdict of the King's contemporaries has passed into the sober judgment of history. Externally John possessed all the quickness, the vivacity, the cleverness, the good-humour, the social charm which distinguished his house. He was fond of books and learned men, he was the friend of Gerald as he was the student of Pliny. He had a strange gift of attracting friends and of winning the love of women. But in his inner soul John was the worst outcome of the Angevins. He united into one mass of wickedness their insolence, their selfishness, their unbridled lust, their cruelty and tyranny, their shamelessness, their superstition, their cynical indifference to honour or truth."

"The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that it was no weak and indolent voluptuary, but the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and perished in a struggle of despair against English freedom."

"The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices, equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself, and destructive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty; all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect, that the disagreeable picture has been any-wile overcharged by the prejudice of the antient historians. It is hard to say, whether his conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects was most culpable; or whether his crimes in these respects were not even exceeded by the baseness, which appeared in his transactions with the King of France, the Pope, and the barons. His dominions, when they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive than have, ever since his time, been ruled by any English monarch: But he first lost by his misconduct the flourishing provinces in France, the antient patrimony of his family: He subjected his kingdom to a shameful vassalage under the fee of Rome: He saw the prerogatives of his crown diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction: And he died at last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter as a fugitive from the pursuit of his enemies."

"No king of England was ever so unlucky as John. From the moment when France came to the strong hands of Philip II his conquest of Normandy was only a matter of time. Richard staved off its loss by a fierce concentration on its protection and by reckless expenditure on defence and allies; expedients that brought their own unfortunate consequences for John. Barons who resented both fighting and paying to keep their king's continental lands resented the loss of them only when they found to their surprise that it meant the loss of their own lands in France as well as the king's. After that, there was never confidence and trust between the king and his barons. Each felt resentment against the other."

"In considering the other side of the picture it must be remembered that for lack of evidence judgement must be reserved about the blackest charges against John. Nor should present-day standards of morality be used for judgement of only the unsuccessful kings. Nor should any chronicler be believed who is not strictly contemporary, and is not supported by record evidence when he makes extravagant statements about the king's evil deeds, but when all has been said which may lighten the picture of this most enigmatic king, there remains the mistrustful sovereign who binds his subjects to him by taking their sons as hostages for good behaviour, who charges individuals, even his best servants, with an insupportable weight of debt, who forces every debtor to find sufficient sureties to cover the whole obligation so that the sureties themselves become enmeshed, who seems as irresponsible in his occasional pardons as in his impositions; the king whose arbitrary conduct drives his subjects to rebellion."

"For John even in the abject humiliation of his end we have no word of pity as we have had none of sympathy. He has deserved none. He has no policy of either aggression or defence. We do not credit him with a deliberate design on the rights of his people, simply because he never showed the consciousness of any rights they had, but took his own evil way in contempt of law, and in a wilful ignoring of dangers he dared not face. He made no plans and grasped at no opportunities. He was persistent only in petty spite and greedy of easy vengeance. He staked everything on the object of the moment and made no effort to avert his ruin until it was consummated. He looked neither before him nor behind him, drew as little from experience as he sacrificed to expediency, or as he utilised the present for the ends of the future. He had not sufficient regard for virtue to make him play the hypocrite, and lost even the little defence that such a cloak gives to kings. He had neither energy, capacity, nor honesty; he availed himself neither of the help of those who had common interests, nor of the errors of those whom he regarded as his enemies. He met honest service with contempt, and the best advice with the treatment due to dangerous conspiracy. He is an exception to the class of men who are well hated only in this, that none even pretended to love him. And as he is without wisdom for himself, he has no care for his people; on them, the weaker and more innocent the better, he wreaks the vengeance, the savage vengeance, that the stronger and less innocent have provoked, as if burning villages and slaying peasants was an enjoyment to be set against defeat in council and disgrace in the field. And now the heart that was obdurate against the sufferings of the people, that had been unmoved by the cries of the tortured as it was inexorable to the prayers of friendship, virtue, and sorrow, is broken by the loss of his treasure. And he who had defied God by word and deed all his life, sought shelter from the terrors with which superstition, not conscience, had inspired him, by being buried in the habit of a monk: a posthumous tribute to religion, which he had believed only to outrage."

"He was certainly a great prince, but enjoyed no great success and, like Marius, met with both kinds of luck. He was generous and liberal to aliens but he plundered his own people. He ignored those who were rightfully his men and placed his trust in strangers. Before his end his people deserted him, and at his end few mourned for him."

"His life was moral, and he seems to have been a good deal under the influence of his clever and accomplished queen. To Dante, who placed him in the valley where they sat who had been careless of the great reward, and yet had not been unfruitful or evil, he was ‘il Re della simplice vita.’ Nevertheless he was inordinately extravagant, and squandered his subjects' money recklessly in gratifying his private tastes and ambitions, and on his foreign relatives and favourites. Utterly un-English in feeling, he loved to be surrounded by foreigners, and had no sympathy with the tendencies of the nation. His religion was rather that of a Roman than an Englishman, and he did not hesitate to injure the national church by conferring bishoprics and other benefices on foreign adventurers, ignorant of the language of the people, and unfit to be their spiritual guides. Though obstinate, he was infirm of purpose, and no dependence could be placed upon him. The union of pertinacity and weakness in his character rendered him irritable. When crossed or in difficulties he had no self-command, although in ordinary circumstances he was not devoid of wit or courtesy of manner. His nobles did not fear or respect him. Faithful service never won his gratitude; he was incapable of valuing his best and wisest counsellors, and was always ready to believe slanders against them. Physically brave, he was morally a coward, easily frightened, and quick to lean on others for support. Shifty and false, he met open opposition with evasion and secret influence, and the most solemn oaths failed to bind him. He had no talent for administration; in affairs of state he was content with a hand-to-mouth policy, and his campaigns were disgracefully mismanaged. Most of his difficulties were of his own making; some part of them, however, arose from the change which was passing over the spirit of the constitution. If he had been a capable king he might have taken advantage of this state of change, and of the party jealousies and struggles which accompanied it, to found a new despotism. As it was his long reign was a period during which the checks placed on the monarchy in his father's days had time to gather strength, so that when he was succeeded by such an able ruler as Edward I all danger that they might be broken up had passed away."

"Edward I.'s general political outlook was so conservative that his method of choosing his servants differed rather in practice than in theory from that of Henry III. There was, no doubt, all the difference in the world between an orderly mind, loving efficiency and method, and a thriftless, easy-going temperament, desiring chiefly to be surrounded by personal friends and dependents; between the king who was a good Englishman and mainly served by English-born followers, and the king who was surrounded by foreign favourites, both of high and low degree. But father and son shared the same general point of view, the same distrust of the magnates, both in church and state, and the same desire to work through the royal household staff, whose ways were familiar to them through long years of constant intercourse."

"In person the new king was almost as striking a man as Edward I. He was tall, handsome, and of exceptional bodily strength... But though well fitted to excel in martial exercises, he never showed any real inclination for a warlike life, or even for the tournament. As soon as he was his own master he avoided fighting as much as he could, and when compelled to take the field his conduct was that of an absolute craven. Lack of earnest purpose blasted his whole character. He had been trained as a warrior, but never became one. He had been drilled in the routine of business, but had only derived from it an absolute incapacity to devote himself to any serious work. His only object in life was to gratify the whim of the moment, reckless of consequences. Much of his folly and levity may be set down to habitual deep drinking. His favourite pastimes were of a curiously unkingly nature. He disliked the society of his equals among the youthful nobility, and, save for a few attached friends, his favourite companions were men of low origin and vulgar tastes... He was also a good athlete, fond of racing and driving, and of the society of watermen and grooms. He was passionately devoted to horses and hounds and their breeding... He was not well educated, and took the coronation oath in the French form, provided for a king ignorant of Latin. He was fond of fine clothes, and with all his taste for low society liked pomp and state on occasions. He had the facile good nature of some thoroughly weak men. Without confidence in himself, and conscious probably of the contempt of his subjects, he was never without some favourite of stronger will than his own for whom he would show a weak and nauseous affection. Sometimes with childlike passion he would personally chastise those who provoked his wrath. He could never keep silence, but disclosed freely even secrets of state. He had no dignity or self-respect."

"Edward II sat down to the game of kingship with a remarkably poor hand, and he played it very badly."

"The harshness of the king has today increased so much that no one however great and wise dares to cross his will. Thus parliaments, colloquies, and councils decide nothing these days. For the nobles of the realm, terrified by threats and the penalties inflicted on others, let the king's will have free play. Thus today will conquers reason. For whatever pleases the king, though lacking in reason, has the force of law."