History of England 1-6

He was restless by temperament, and impatient of any restraint; he never could sit still, and even when attending Mass he fidgeted and conversed with his courtiers. He always had to be in movement or in activity, even if the activity consisted of gambling or disputation. He often ate his food standing up, so that he might be more quickly done with it. He was stocky and strong, with the look of a huntsman or of a soldier. He had a florid complexion that burned brighter when he was vexed. Yet he was readily approachable, and there are accounts of his modest and benign demeanour when surrounded by throngs of his beseeching subjects. Some of them caught him by the sleeve, in their urge to speak to him, but he never lost his good humour. His jester was known as ‘Roland the Farter’, and ‘every Christmas he used to leap, whistle and fart before the king’.

There is one story that illuminates the happier side of his character. Bishop Hugh of Lincoln had been summoned by the king to explain why he had excommunicated a royal forester. Henry was so incensed that he ordered his courtiers not to notice or greet the bishop on his arrival. Hugh of Lincoln was therefore met with silence and indifference. Nevertheless he eased himself into a position close to the king. Hugh watched his sovereign as he took up a needle and thread to stitch a leather bandage on a finger he had injured; Henry was always careless of his person. Then Hugh suddenly remarked, in French, ‘How like your cousins of Falaise you look’. At which remark the king collapsed in laughter, and started rolling on the ground. The ‘cousins of Falaise’ were related to the illegitimate William the Conqueror; they were well known as lowly leather-workers in that Norman town. The king had seen the joke about his bastard great-grandfather.

In matters of state he was always cautious and circumspect; contemporaries relate that he was a very good manager of business, and that he had an excellent memory for facts and for faces. These were now necessary qualities for any sovereign. His principal purpose was to maintain and organize his empire, and for that it was necessary to be a master of calculation. That is also why he took care never to reveal his feelings, except to those most intimate with him; he needed to remain inscrutable to achieve his ends. Yet, in matters of high policy, he often broke his word.

The year after he had reduced the magnates to submission, he sailed to Normandy where in similarly determined spirit he seized control of his dominion. He took with him his young chancellor. Thomas Becket was a close companion, a friend as well as a counsellor. One of the king’s secretaries, Peter de Blois, wrote that ‘if the king once forms an attachment to a man, he seldom gives him up’; yet that admirable fidelity was tested to breaking point with Becket. It would need a muse of fire adequately to describe their relationship.

Becket was a Londoner, of Norman blood, who was quickly singled out for royal service. He was witty and fluent, serious without being scholarly. More importantly, perhaps, he had a very firm sense of his own dignity and importance. He had come to the attention of the king through the agency of the archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald, who had already learned to appreciate the young archdeacon’s formidable skills as clerk and adviser. Becket soon found himself in the sun of the king’s favour, and as chancellor quickly became indispensable. He was one of those men, like Wolsey after him, who resolve the cares of the sovereign while never encroaching on his majesty. Henry disliked the formal and ritual panoply of kingship, preferring instead sudden judgment and quick action; so Becket became the orator and the ambassador, gladly embracing all the matters of state that the king found unpalatable.

When Becket travelled, he travelled in procession. On a diplomatic visit to Paris, in 1158, he was preceded by 250 foot soldiers and surrounded by an escort of 200 knights and squires. His private wardrobe contained twenty-four changes of silk robes. When three years later Henry mounted an expedition to take the city and region of Toulouse, close to his lands of Gascony and Aquitaine, Becket led his own force of 700 knights.

Shortly afterward, the king proposed that he become archbishop of Canterbury in succession to Theobald. The king himself was not especially pious. He wanted a compliant churchman, effectively just an extension of his own power, and he considered Becket still to be a royal servant and adviser. In this, however, he was mistaken.