Henry II of England

"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."