A century of stress and repair
The twelfth century is one of the most important in English royal history, because it saw both a breakdown of royal authority and a remarkable recovery. It opened with a strong, hard-driving king, passed through almost two decades of civil war, and ended with a legal and administrative system that outlasted its creators. Dates in this period are well documented, though historians still debate how severe the civil war was in different regions.
Henry I: the administrator king
Henry I became king in 1100 after the sudden death of his brother William Rufus in a hunting accident. He issued a coronation charter promising to correct abuses, a document that later barons would remember. His reign lasted until 1135 and is usually remembered for competent, heavy-handed government.
He relied on a group of capable officials, many of them men of modest background whom he promoted, and he made the Exchequer a central part of royal finance. The Exchequer was a twice-yearly audit at which sheriffs came to account for the money they had collected, using counting boards and written records. The oldest surviving annual financial record from England, the Pipe Roll of 1130, dates from his reign. He also sent royal officials to hear cases in the counties, which extended the reach of royal justice. Historians who study the Norman kings often stress that Henry I’s reign shows how the system set up after the Domesday survey could be turned into regular royal administration.
Henry also fought to control Normandy, which was held by his elder brother Robert until Henry defeated him in 1106. For much of his reign he spent long periods in France.
The succession problem
Henry’s greatest difficulty was the succession. His son William died in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120, leaving Henry with one legitimate surviving child, his daughter Matilda. She had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor and later married Geoffrey, count of Anjou. Henry made his barons swear to accept her as his heir. There was no clear precedent for a woman ruling England in her own right, and many nobles were uneasy about the prospect of an Angevin husband and a foreign line.
Stephen and Matilda: the civil war
When Henry died in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois reached England first, was crowned, and gained the support of many barons and the church. Matilda’s claim remained alive, and from 1139 she crossed to England with the backing of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. The war that followed is often called “the Anarchy”, a name that comes from later writers and is sometimes criticized as exaggerated.
The fighting was patchy. Stephen was captured at Lincoln in 1141, and for a short time Matilda controlled much of the kingdom, but she failed to be crowned, partly because of tensions with the Londoners. Stephen was later released in an exchange. Both sides had difficulty keeping the support of barons, who often changed allegiance. Castles, including the many small motte and bailey fortifications built or strengthened without royal permission, became centers of local power. Contemporary chroniclers described severe suffering, but their accounts are partisan, and the real damage varied from region to region.
The conflict ended without a decisive military victory. In 1153, after Stephen’s own son died, the Treaty of Wallingford (often also associated with Winchester) recognized Matilda’s son Henry as Stephen’s heir. Stephen died in 1154.
Henry II and the Angevin empire
Henry II took the throne in 1154 and ruled until 1189. Through inheritance and marriage, notably to Eleanor of Aquitaine, he held a vast set of territories including England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, a collection that historians later called the Angevin empire. He was frequently away from England, which made a reliable administration essential.
Early in his reign he worked to recover royal rights and to tear down or take control of unlicensed castles built during the war. He restored the Exchequer and improved the system of traveling justices.
The legal reforms
Henry II’s most lasting contribution was the expansion of royal justice. Several measures are especially associated with him.
- The Assize of Clarendon (1166) set out procedures for dealing with serious crimes. Local juries were asked to report suspects to royal justices. This is one of the sources of later jury practice, though the early juries acted differently from modern ones.
- Possessory assizes, such as novel disseisin, offered free landholders a quick way to get a royal court to examine a recent dispossession of land. The question was put to a group of local people who knew the facts.
- Writs purchased from the royal chancery let litigants bring cases into the king’s courts instead of local or lords’ courts.
- Traveling judges visited the counties regularly, which brought more cases under a single standard.
These measures did not appear all at once, and their details developed over decades. Over time they produced a body of rules applied across the kingdom, which later came to be called the common law. Historians debate how far Henry planned this and how far it grew from practical demand. Royal courts and judges were increasingly the place where landholders wanted their cases heard. Many litigants evidently liked royal justice because it was more predictable than the courts of local lords, and the fees brought money to the crown.
Church and crown
Henry’s attempt to limit the independence of church courts led to a violent break with Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. The murder of Becket in his cathedral in 1170 shocked Europe. The king did penance, and some of his proposals about clerical trials were relaxed. The conflict is treated as its own subject elsewhere; its main significance here is that it showed the limits of royal power against the church.
The end of the century
Henry’s later years were disturbed by quarrels with his wife and sons. His son Richard the Lionheart took the throne in 1189 and spent most of his reign abroad on crusade and in wars in France. The government continued to function in his absence, largely because the administrative system developed under Henry I and Henry II was strong enough to work without the king’s presence. Richard’s death in 1199 brought John to the throne, and the heavy burdens of the early thirteenth century would test that system again.
By the end of the twelfth century, English kings had stronger courts, a regular financial audit, and a growing body of written records. That machinery later made it possible for barons and kings to argue about law and consent in documents like Magna Carta.