n
which the adventurers had won.

[Sidenote: Revolt of the younger Henry]

Had fate suffered Henry to carry out his purpose, the conquest of Ireland
would now have been accomplished. The King of Connaught indeed and the
chiefs of Ulster refused him homage, but the rest of the Irish tribes
owned his suzerainty; the bishops in synod at Cashel recognized him as
their lord; and he was preparing to penetrate to the north and west, and
to secure his conquest by a systematic erection of castles throughout the
country, when the need of making terms with Rome, whose interdict
threatened to avenge the murder of Archbishop Thomas, recalled him in the
spring of 1172 to Normandy. Henry averted the threatened sentence by a
show of submission. The judicial provisions in the Constitutions of
Clarendon were in form annulled, and liberty of election was restored in
the case of bishopricks and abbacies. In reality however the victory
rested with the king. Throughout his reign ecclesiastical appointments
remained practically in his hands, and the King's Court asserted its
power over the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops. But the strife with
Thomas had roused into active life every element of danger which
surrounded Henry, the envious dread of his neighbours, the disaffection
of his own house, the disgust of the barons at the repeated blows which
he levelled at their military and judicial power. The king's withdrawal
of the office of sheriff from the great nobles of the shire to entrust it
to the lawyers and courtiers who already furnished the staff of the royal
judges quickened the resentment of the baronage into revolt. His wife
Eleanor, now parted from Henry by a bitter hate, spurred her eldest son,
whose coronation had given him the title of king, to demand possession of
the English realm. On his father's refusal the boy sought refuge with
Lewis of France, and his flight was the signal for a vast rising. France,
Flanders, and Scotland joined in league against Henry; his younger sons,
Richard and Geoffry, took up arms in Aquitaine, while the Earl of
Leicester sailed from Flanders with an army of mercenaries to stir up
England to revolt. The Earl's descent ended in a crushing defeat near St.
Edmundsbury at the hands of the king's justiciars; but no sooner had the
French king entered Normandy and invested Rouen than the revolt of the
baronage burst into flame. The Scots crossed the border, Roger Mowbray
rose in Yorkshire, Ferrars, Ear