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The Plantagenet Kings:

© Phyllis Agronsky

It was in this area that one of the great battles was fought between two forceful personalities. Henry had been trying to apply justice with an even hand, but there was one group of people who were exempt from his control, the priests. Only the Church could prosecute a person who was in holy orders,(which the Church seldom did) and this didn't sit well with the king. His archbishop was long-time friend and confidant, Thomas Becket, whom he had elevated to Canterbury with the understanding that Becket would remain Chancellor of England as well. Becket promptly resigned his secular position, and became the defender of the English Church's prerogatives.

In 1164, Henry II went so far as to codify his laws in the Constitutions of Clarendon, which ordered that priests be tried in the secular courts. In this Becket irrevocably opposed him. The situation continued to escalate, until, in 1170, four of Henry's knights rode off and murdered Becket at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral. The backlash was harsh and inevitable. The public outcry was so great that Henry had to rescind the Constitutions of Clarendon, and do penance for the murder of the martyred archbishop (Becket was later canonized by the Church).

Henry was very much a product of his times, as farsighted as he sometimes was. He subdued the Scots by defeating their king, Henry the Lion, in battle, and held on to his conquest with sheer brutality. Ireland was also conquered, though that unhappy island never rested easily under English domination. Henry II envisioned himself as a western Holy Roman Emperor, and to prove it, he undertook to have his oldest son, Henry, the Young King, crowned in his own lifetime. Richard the Lionhearted became Duke of Normandy, Geoffrey the Duke of Brittany. Only the youngest son, John, had no territory of his own. Henry gave him Ireland.

Henry II's final years were made nightmarish by the fact that his sons and his wife were in revolt against almost constantly from 1173 until his death in 1189. Henry locked Eleanor up in Salisbury Castle for 16 years, to keep her under control. Henry the Young King died, and Richard was now next in line for the throne. Richard was never known for his patience under the best of circumstances, and Henry II's habit of playing both sides against the middle finally backfired. Sometimes individually, sometimes in combination, usually with the connivance of Phillip II of France, his sons tried to wrest control from the aging king. When Henry died at Chinon Castle on July 6, 1189, he was a broken man.