§ 31. THOMAS BECKET AND HENRY II. 125
tody of nearly all the royal grants and favors, including va cant bishoprics, abbacies, chaplaincies, and other ecclesiastical benefices.
Henry, the first of the proud Plantagenets, was an able, stirring, and energetic monarch. He kept on his feet from morning till evening, and rarely sat down. He introduced a reign of law and severe justice after the lawless violence and anarchy which had disturbed the reign of the unfor tunate Stephen.1 But he was passionate, vindictive, and licentious. He had frequent fits of rage, during which he behaved like a madman. He was the most powerful sover eign in Western Europe. His continental dominions were more extensive than those of the king of France, and em braced Maine and Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, reaching from Flanders to the foot of the Pyrenees. He afterwards (1171) added Ireland by conquest, with the authority of Popes Adrian IV. and Alexander III. His marriage to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had been divorced for in fidelity from King Louis VII. of France, enriched his realm, but involved him in protracted wars with France and in do mestic troubles. Eleanor was jealous of her rivals,2 incited her sons, Geoffrey and Richard, to rebel against their father, was imprisoned in 1173, and released after Henry's death in
1 Tennyson describes Stephen's reign as —
" A reign which was no reign, when none could sit By his own hearth in peace; when murder common As nature's death, like Egypt's plague, had filled All things with blood."
2 The tradition ran that she poisoned his favorite concubine, Rosamund de Clifford, who, with her labyrinthine bower, figures largely in the literature of romance, also in Tennyson's Becket. On her tomb were inscribed the lines: —
" Hicjacet in tumba ROSA MUNDI, non ROSA MUNDA, Non redolet, sed olet, quw redolere solet."
" Here Rose the graced, not Rose the chaste, reposes ; The smell that rises is no smell of roses."
126 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1 123-1 li»8.
1189 by his successor, Richard I., Coeur de Lion, who made her regent on his departure for the Holy Land. She after wards retired to the abbey of Fontevrault, and died about 1203.
Becket occupied the chancellorship for seven years (1155- 1162). He aided the king in the restoration of order and peace. He improved the administration of justice. He was vigorous and impartial, and preferred the interests of the crown to those of the clergy, yet without being hostile to the Church. He was thoroughly loyal to the king, and served him as faithfully as he had served Theobald, and as he after wards served the pope. Thorough devotion to official duty characterized him in all the stations of his career
He gave to his high office a prominence and splendor which it never had before. He was as magnificent and omnipotent as Wolsey under Henry VIII. He was king in fact, though not in name, and acted as regent during Henry's frequent absences on the Continent. He dressed after the best fashion, surrounded himself with a brilliant retinue of a hundred and forty knights, exercised a prodigal hospitality, and spent enormous sums upon his household and public festivities, using in part the income of his various ecclesias tical benefices, which he retained Avithout a scruple. He pre sided at royal banquets in Westminster Hall. His tables were adorned with vessels of gold, with the most delicate and sumptuous food, and with wine of the choicest vintage. He superintended the training of English and foreign nobles, and of the young Prince Henry. He was the favorite of the king, the army, the nobility, the clergy, and the people.
The chancellor negotiated in person a matrimonial alliance (three years before it was consummated) between the heir of the crown (then a boy of seven years) and a daughter of the king of France (a little lady of three). He took with him on that mission two hundred knights, priests, standardbearers, all festively arrayed in new attire, twenty-four