Sherwood and the Trent, shut off by an
almost continuous barrier of marsh and forest from the south, was still
far behind the rest of England in civilization. The new industrial
activity of Yorkshire was not yet forty years old; in a great part of
the North money-rents had scarcely crept in, and the serfs were still
toiling on under the burden of labour-dues which had been found
intolerable elsewhere. The fines, the taxes, the attempt to bring its
people under a more advanced system of government must have pressed very
hardly on this great district which was not yet ready for it; and to the
fierce anger of the barons, and the ready hostility of the monasteries,
was perhaps added the exasperation of freeholder and serf.

Henry, however, was absolute master of the whole central administration
of the realm. Moreover, by his decree of the year before he had set over
every shire a sheriff who was wholly under his own control, trained in
his court, pledged to his obedience, and who had firm hold of the
courts, the local forces, and the finances. The king now hastened to
appoint bishops whom he could trust to the vacant sees. Geoffrey, an
illegitimate son who had been born to him very early, probably about the
time when he visited England to receive knighthood, was sent to Lincoln;
and friends of the king were consecrated to Winchester, Ely, Bath,
Hereford, and Chichester. Prior Richard of Dover, a man "laudably
inoffensive who prudently kept within his own sphere," was made Archbishop
of Canterbury. Richard de Lucy remained in charge of the whole kingdom as
justiciar. The towns and trading classes were steadfast in loyalty, and
the baronage was again driven, as it had been before, to depend on foreign
mercenaries.

War first broke out in France in the early summer of 1173. Normandy and
Anjou were badly defended, and their nobles were already half in revolt,
while the forces of France, Flanders, Boulogne, Chartres, Champagne,
Poitou, and Britanny were allied against Henry. The counts of Flanders
and Boulogne invaded Normandy from the north-east, and the traitor Count
of Aumale, the guardian of the Norman border, gave into their hands his
castles and lands. Louis and Henry's sons besieged Verneuil in the
south-west. To westward the Earl of Chester and Ralph of Fougeres
organized a rising in Britanny. In "extreme perplexity," utterly unable
to meet his enemies in the field, Henry could only fortify his frontier,
and hastily rec