ment the national force grew stronger, just at the time that the feudal force was growing weaker. All initiative in command was reserved for the king; but the strength which would enable him to act would come neither from a standing army specially attached to his own person, nor from a feudal army specially attached to the defence of its own social position. It would come from his headship of the nation, from the willing co-operation of men who were, during most of their lives, farmers or merchants, and who stepped forward when their swords were needed to defend interests which were their own as well as the king's.

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forms.

The principle which prevailed in Henry's military reforms prevailed also in his judicial reforms. If there dicial Rewas nothing absolutely new in the system which he introduced, if something, was derived from the old customs of the English, and something, through his Norman ancestors, from the Carolingian Empire, he made it his own by the extension which he gave to it, and by the constant reliance which he placed in it. In civil disputes relating to land, he bade his judges decide in accordance with the sworn testimony of twelve recognitors or knights living in the vicinity of the estate in dispute, so as to be able to tell the truth from their own knowledge. In criminal matters the accused was presented by sworn accusers, who also brought their charge from their own knowledge of the facts, or from information on which they believed themselves to be able to depend. A similar system was adopted in the assessment of payments due to the Crown. Such modes of investigation were very far from perfect. They admitted of no sifting of evidence or cross-examination of witnesses. Many changes would have to take place before the trial by judge and jury, with which so many generations of Englishmen have been familiar, could come into

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$ 20. Political Ar

rangements.

existence. The importance of Henry's work lies not in the positive excellence of his achievement, but upon the firmness with which he planted himself on that union of the two forces by which alone permanent progress is rendered possible. In the ancient world, Athens had failed because she relied upon the energies and patriotism of ordinary citizens, without caring to labour for the development of special talent for judicial, civil, or military leadership; whilst Rome had failed because, as the empire grew older, it rested more entirely every day on the special talent of administrators, judges and generals, and despised the help of ordinary citizens. Henry showed his practical sense in combining the two elements.

It was as well that Henry did not conform his political to his military and judicial institutions. No doubt he made such use of the Great Council of his tenants in chief which had taken the place of the Witenagemot, as no king since the Conquest had done. But he used it as a council, and not as a modern parliament. It had no wish to shake off his authority. It could therefore give advice without even wishing to exercise control. Even if it had wished to do so it had not the power. The feudal military support upon which alone it could reckon was, in part at least, the support of the men who were paying scutage to buy for themselves exemption from service. The thousands who were being organised into an army by the assize of arms would, on all ordinary occasions, rally to the king and not to his vassals. It was much indeed to do what Henry had done; to blend together the feudal elements with the wider national element. As always happens when success is achieved, he had assisted nature, and had not attempted to supplant her. Time had worn away the distinction between Norman and Englishman, and if French was usually spoken at one end of the social scale and English

But the

at the other, no man in the higher ranks could speak of himself as exclusively of one race or the other. consciousness of national unity was slow in growing, and it would hardly become a motive power in events till it had been awakened by common resistance to aggression. For the present there was local vigour putting itself gladly at the disposal of the central authority of the king. But the men who would gladly assist the royal judges in tracing out criminals, or ascertaining rights of property, put forward no pretensions to share in the political authority of the king. They were content to leave that in Henry's hands. To ask these men to send representatives to a national parliament would merely have been to establish a sham, as the StatesGeneral who were summoned in the fourteenth century by Philip IV. of France to denounce the Pope or to plunder the Templars were a sham. It was better that the full forms of parliamentary institutions should not be there, till there was a nation behind them to inspire them with life. It was enough that the Great Council should hand down from the older Witenagemot the tradition of government by persuasion as something higher than government by compulsion.

In the very midst of the gradual promulgation of these reforms, Henry found himself involved in a quarrel with the Church. The time was not come when the authority of the State, even in Henry's hands, could be safely entrusted with control over the clergy. Yet not only was the State better organised under Henry II. than it had been under Henry I., but the demands of the Church were of a lower order than those which had been put forward by Anselm. Anselm had been distinctly the righteous man defending the poor and innocent against injustice and tyranny. Becket's main contention was that the clergy, whatever crimes they had committed, should not

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be judged by the ordinary justice of the realm. No doubt Becket had on his side the general feeling of the clergy, and he may well have thought that to surrender the outworks of their defence would only lead to a baser and more complete surrender hereafter. As for Becket himself, the king in placing him in the archbishopric, in order that he might betray to the Crown the liberties claimed by the Church, had asked him to perform an act of treason as contemptible as that of the man who accepts the command of a fortress in order to betray it to the enemy. Yet the liberties which the new archbishop defended, even if they had still an universal aspect, were far more professional in their nature than those for which Anselm contended, and Becket himself had far more of the champion of a profession about him than was in accordance with the character of the meek and gentle opponent of William II. and of Henry I. His quarrel with Henry II. was one which could best be settled by a compromise, and Becket would hear of no compromise. His strength lay in the weakness of his adversary. The State could claim the submission of the Church when it could do justice to friend and foe alike. The king who fined Becket enormous sums on frivolous pretexts, who punished Becket's kinsmen when he could not reach Becket himself, who rolled on the floor and gnawed straw with his teeth when bad news reached him, and who, by his wrathful words, despatched the murderers on the archbishop's track, was not in a position to claim the obedience which is due to the fountain of justice. The murder of Becket completed the lesson, that the great interests of the Church and society were not as yet safe in being left entirely in the hands of the king. Popular enthusiasm hailed the new martyr; and the miracles reported to be performed at his tomb seemed to ratify the popular belief

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land and

Yet even thus, the edifice erected by Henry was too firmly established to be shaken by the storm. Men who had no wish to see the clergy prostrated at his feet, had no desire to see the foundations of national order broken up. Of one great movement of this age, the historian of § 22. EngEnglish progress has little to tell. Before the end of the Cru the eleventh century, the feudal nobility of the western sades. part of continental Europe were eagerly leaving home and lands to share in the enterprise of wresting the Holy Land from the Infidel. The crusading spirit took possession of the minds of these men just in proportion as they were without a national life to occupy their thoughts. In England, in the worst of times, a national life existed. In the days of the Conqueror and his sons, both Normans and Englishmen found enough to occupy their energies at home without turning their attention elsewhere. When, at the end of the reign of Henry II., the news arrived that Jerusalem had fallen once more into Mahometan hands, there was no widely spread feeling of horror. If Richard I. led not a few followers to the Holy War, they were animated rather by the spirit of adventure than by a deeply seated sense of duty. Richard was himself little more than a great adventurer. For England and its national development he cared nothing.

$23.

Richard I.

Hubert

If Richard cared nothing for England, he cared much for the money of Englishmen. In Archbishop Hubert and Walter he found, during the latter years of his reign, a Walter. minister who could draw wealth from his subjects without subjecting them to the miseries of an irregular and capricious tyranny. Walter's administration therefore was a time of silent growth in England. Henry's system of assessment by jury received under him a wider extension, and the representative system for judicial and financial purposes struck firm root, to be ready in time for an unexpected application to political objects.