e no other way but by depriving them
of their possessions.

1156.

While the King was thus employed at home, intelligence came that his
brother Geoffrey was endeavouring by force to possess himself of the
Earldom of Anjou, to which he had fair pretensions; for their father
considering what vast dominions would fall to his eldest son, bequeathed
that earldom to the second in his last sickness, and commanded his
nobles then about him, to take an oath that they would not suffer his
body to be buried until Henry (who was then absent) should swear to
observe his will. The Duke of Normandy, when he came to assist at his
father's obsequies, and found that without his compliance he must draw
upon himself the scandal of keeping a father unburied, took the oath
that was exacted for observance of his will, though very much against
his own. But after he was in possession of England, whether it were that
his ambition enlarged with his dominions, or that from the beginning he
had never intended to observe what he had sworn, he prevailed with Pope
Adrian (of English birth) to dispense with his oath, and in the second
year of his reign went over into Normandy, drove his brother entirely
out of Anjou, and forced him to accept a pension for his maintenance.
But the young prince, through the resentment of this unnatural dealing,
in a short time died of grief.

Nor was his treatment more favourable to the King of Scots, whom, upon a
slight pretence, he took occasion to dispossess of Carlisle, Newcastle,
and other places granted by the Empress to that prince's father, for his
services and assistance in her quarrel against Stephen.

Having thus recovered whatever he had any title to demand, he began to
look out for new acquisitions. Ireland was in that age a country little
known in the world. The legates sent sometimes thither from the Court of
Rome, for urging the payment of annats, or directing other Church
affairs, represented the inhabitants as a savage people, overrun with
barbarism and superstition: for indeed no nation of Europe, where the
Christian religion received so early and universal admittance, was ever
so late or slow in feeling its effects upon their manners and
civility.[48] Instead of refining their manners by their faith, they had
suffered their faith to be corrupted by their manners; true religion
being almost defaced, both in doctrine and discipline, after a long
course of time, among a people wholly sunk in ignora