The Plantagenet Kings:

Henry II, the first Plantagenet king of England,took control of a country in chaos after a decades-long war between Henry's mother, Matilda Empress, and Stephen I, the king of England. It was a bitter family quarrel, Matilda and Stephen being cousins. Both were descendants of William the Conqueror, and had inherited a full measure of that king's grasping nature. After nineteen years of war, in which first Stephen and then Matilda's half-brother, Robert of Gloucester were both captured and imprisoned, an agreement was reached. Upon Stephen's death, Matilda's son Henry Plantagenet would accede to the throne.

The barons of England, Normans to a man, had pretty much done as they pleased under Stephen. Castles bristled all over England, and the number of men under arms was alarming. It was under the new young King that order was restored. With the help of Thomas Becket, who was acting as his chancellor, he curbed the power of the barons, and razed many of the illegal castles to the ground. He took more and more power into own hands, and was able to better the lives of his subjects.

He was a tireless campaigner, and a very able soldier. During his reign, the English Empire stretched from the river Tweed to the Pyrenees. Some of these additions came about through marriage. Aquitaine, for instance, was his Queen's duchy. Eleanor had been Queen of France for 15 years, and when her marriage to the King was annulled, he returned Aquitaine to Eleanor. Normandy came to Henry II from his mother and Anjou from his father. He made illustrious and politically advantageous marriages for his children, which brought him more land and wealth. What he couldn't gain by scheming, he acquired at sword point, mostly at the expense of the King of France.

Some of the most critical precedents in jurisprudence came about during the 35-year reign of Henry II. For years, guilt or innocence had been decided in a ritual called "trial by ordeal". The accused would be forced to participate in some gruesome task, such as pulling a piece of red-hot iron out of a fire, after which the "jury" would examine his hand. If he showed no evidence of blistering, he was judged innocent. This was not scientific enough for Henry, who abolished trial by ordeal and instituted the forerunner of the modern legal system. He appointed circuit judges, whose sole job was to travel their districts dispensing the King's justice. No corner of his fast-growing empire was exempt.

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.

Henry II remains one of England's best kings. He had broken the power of the lawless barons at the beginning of his reign. Though he couldn't subject the Church to his will with the Constitutions of Clarendon, his judicial reforms were far-reaching and lasting. For the first time in England's history, there was a centralized justice system accessible to all freemen. It would remain to future generations to settle the issue of Church vs. State. Most importantly, Henry II gave England a taste for empire that would govern many of the decisions made in future reigns.