Zack Kemper
12-15-05
8th period

Henry II of England

Henry II of England will be one of England’s greatest medieval kings, because he made a type of courts and trial by jury. He was the first king to let certain people be magistrate, the power to render legal decisions on a wide range of civil matters in the name of the crown. He developed the structure of royal justice. He visited England in 1149 to help his mother in her try to claim to the English throne. Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. His first son William, Count of Poitiers, was born in 1153, but died in infancy. In 1170, Henry and Eleanor's fifteen-year-old son, Henry, was crowned king, but he never actually ruled and does not figure in the list of the monarchs of England; he became known as Henry the Young King to distinguish him from his nephew Henry III of England. A horse trampled one of his sons, Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany.

He was born on the 5th of March 1133, at Le Mans to the Empress Matilda and her second husband, Geoffrey the Fair, Count of Anjou. He controlled Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. He was the Count of Anjou, Brittany, Poitou, Normandy, Maine, And Gascony. He was promoted to King of England from 1154-1189. His reign brought conflict with Tomas a Becket. His reign was destroyed by two of his sons who helped kill him.

In August 1152, Henry, previously occupied in fighting Eleanor's ex-husband Louis VII of France and his allies, he went back to her, and they spent several months together. About the end of November 1152 they left each other: Henry went to spend some weeks with his mother and then sailed for England, arriving on 6 January 1153.

During Stephen's reign the barons had subverted the state of affairs to undermine the monarch's grip on the realm; Henry II saw it as his first task to reverse this shift in power. Henry had castles which the barons had built without authorisation during Stephen's reign torn down.. Record keeping improved dramatically in order to streamline this taxation.

Henry made a type of courts system and trial by jury. Also he made the first written legal textbook, providing basics of today’s “Common Law”. Jury trials were replaced with “trial by ordeal”, and wager of battle”. They did not abolish these until 1819. As a consequence of improvements in the legal system, the power of the church courts waned.

Conflicts with Thomas a Becket began with dispute over whether the secular courts could try clergy who had committed a secular offence. Henry tried to subdue Becket and his follow church people by making him swear to obey the “customs of the realm”. Becket left England in 1164. Becket left to get support from Pope Alexander III.

He returned to England, to disagree with Henry over time over the coronation of Prince Henry. Henry’s knights assassinated Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170. Hnery was offerd in 1184 by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem, for him to accept the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but he denied it.

Henry sent money to the Crusader states in Palestine, which the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar would guard until Henry arrived to help out the crusades. Henry delayed his crusade for many years and in the end never went at all.

When Henry tried to divided his titles among his sons it made them revolt againts him. They had help from Louis VII of France. His third son Richard the Lionheart, with the assitance of Philip II Augustus of France, attacked and defeated Henry on July 4, 1189. Henry died at the Chateau Chinon on July 6, 1189. Richard the Lionheart then became King of England. He was followed by King John, the youngest son of Henry II.