The Project Gutenberg eBook, Henry the Second, by Mrs. J. R. Green

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Title: Henry the Second

Author: Mrs. J. R. Green

Release Date: December 18, 2003 [eBook #10494]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY THE SECOND***

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HENRY THE SECOND

BY

MRS. J. R. GREEN

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

HENRY PLANTAGENET

CHAPTER II

THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE

CHAPTER III

THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST REFORMS

CHAPTER V

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON

CHAPTER VI

THE ASSIZE OF CLARENDON

CHAPTER VII

THE STRIFE WITH THE CHURCH

CHAPTER VIII

THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND

CHAPTER IX

REVOLT OF THE BARONAGE

CHAPTER X

THE COURT OF HENRY

CHAPTER XI

THE DEATH OF HENRY

CHAPTER I

HENRY PLANTAGENET

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 the mode of government which has
actually grown up among us is in fact due to the genius of the great king
by whose will England was guided from 1154 to 1189. He was a foreign king
who never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the most part
in a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of Brabancons and
hirelings; and who in intervals snatched from foreign wars hurried for a
few months to his island-kingdom to carry out a policy which took little
heed of the great moral forces that were at work among the people. It was
under the rule of a foreigner such as this, however, that the races of
conquerors and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they were
one. It was by his power that England, Scotland, and Ireland were
brought to some vague acknowledgment of a common suzerain lord, and the
foundations laid of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It
was he who abolished feudalism as a system of government, and left it
little more than a system of land-tenure. It was he who defined the
relations established between Churc