Henry the Second

In the January of 1163 Henry once more landed in England. His absence off our and a half years had given time for dangers and alarms to spring up in the half-settled realm. Myst...

The building up of his mighty empire was not the only task which filled the first years of Henry's reign. Side by side with this went on another work of peaceful internal admini...

The Assize of Clarendon was drawn up in February 1166, and in March Henry sailed for France. Trouble awaited him there on every hand, and during the next two years he had to mee...

All hope of progress, of any wise and statesmanlike settlement of Ireland, utterly died away when, on Easter night, 16th April 1172, Henry sailed from Wexford. The next morning...

The history of the English people would have been a great and a noble history whatever king had ruled over the land seven hundred years ago. But the history as we know it, and t...

The new kingdom which Henry had added to his dominions in France might well seem to a man of less inexhaustible energy to make the task of government impossible. The imperial sy...

In the years that followed the Assize of Northampton Henry was at the height of his power. He was only forty-three, and already his triumph was complete. One of his sons was Kin...

In the last nine years of Henry's reign his work lay elsewhere than in his English kingdom. They were years spent in a passionate effort to hold together the unwieldy empire he...

Nearly a hundred years before William Rufus once stood on the cliffs of Wales, and cried, as he looked across the waters towards Ireland, "For the conquest of that land I will g...

Henry began his work of reorganization by taking up the work which his grandfather had begun--that of replacing the mere arbitrary power of the sovereign by a uniform system of...

The flight of the archbishop marked the opening of a new phase in the struggle. Thomas sought refuge at the Papal Court at Sens. There kneeling at Alexander's feet, and surround...