KING AND STATESMAN

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30733, 24 April 1965, Page 4

KING AND STATESMAN

Henry Plantagenet. By Richard Barber. Barrie and Rockliff. With Pall Mall Press. 280 pp.

The film “Becket,” based on the Anouilh play of the same name, has gone quite a long way towards the creation of a legend wherein King Henry II is seen as a rather foolish monarch, devoted to hunting and his own pleasures and involved in a quarrel with his former boon companion over the right of the Church to preserve its authority. This new biography of Henry 11 therefore appears opportunely. It is not concerned with a dramatic presentation of a conflict between Church and State and between King and Archbishop of Canterbury; it is concerned with the accurate presentation of the facts to be derived from careful scholarly research. Its author, a Cambridge scholar now in London, has written a very good biography which will appeal to all interested in English medieval history

and, to those who enjoy biographical studies of great men.

. Henry 11, who ruled EngI land from 1154 to 1189, was a [very great man. Professor ; Reginald Treharne, a distinguished historian of the periled, who will, incidentally, be 'lecturing at Canterbury UniI versify for the second term of | this year, recently said “There | were few great kings in 'medieval England but Henry |II was the greatest of them all.” Mr Barber terms Henry | “England's greatest medieval statesman” and goes a long i way towards justifying this [title.

[ In his “Prologue,” the author gives an excellent background to the life of the great king. Writing with a clear direct style, he describes the political, social and economic conditions in England and France in the early twelfth century. For example, he points out that when Henry Il came to the throne eighty-

eight years after the Norman Conquest, the line of division between Norman and Saxon had become blurred to a great extent. Property was the basis of any continuing division, but “a Norman lord was hardly distinguishable from a Saxon one after a century.” In his genuine concern for his subjects’ welfare, Henry was farsighted and generous in his actions. But he suceedl ed to a difficult situation since the great administrative system of his grandfather had been laid waste during the anarchy of Stephen’s reign. His task was to impose his authority on most of France and all of England, and to maintain his lands in peace and justice against his enemies, both within and without. He sometimes stimulated opposition instead of reducing it. This was often because he could not tolerate in others what was quite obviously his own ruling trait: love of power. This was very much the case in his struggle with Becket and the Church. Henry had inherited a kingdom full of poverty and disorders: his first aim was to repress lawlessness and to replace it by law and order, through legal reforms and clear intelligible definitions of the laws of England. It was perhaps unfortunate that he began by trying to define the position of the Church, the most powerful interest in feudal England. The Constitutions of Clarendon were a very reasonable interpretation of the part the Church could be expected to play in the society of the day. Becket took a stronger line than can be justified, especially on the question of the rights of the king’s courts to try clerics who had offended against the secular law. and the tragedy of the conflict wound its way to’ a more or less inevitable end which defeated Henry’s purpose for a new order for Church and State.

This biography also examines carefully Henry's struggles in France: his clashes with the barons and, later, with his own sons. His main contributions to admintrative and judicial reconstruction are rightly held to ’be highly important. His genius was to perfect much that had previously been illdeveloped in the judicial system of England. He was a very great statesman and deserves to be remembered as something more than the opponent of a popular saint.