Henry the Second | Page 7

was never at
fault. With the ruddy face and unwieldy frame of the Normans other
gifts had come to him; he had their sense of strong government and
their wisdom; he was laborious, patient, industrious, politic. He never
forgot a face he had once seen, nor anything that he heard which he
deemed worthy of remembering; where he once loved he never turned
to hate, and where he once hated he was never brought to love. Sparing
in diet, wasting little care on his dress--perhaps the plainest in his
court,--frugal, "so much as was lawful to a prince," he was lavish in
matters of State or in public affairs. A great soldier and general, he was
yet an earnest striver after peace, hating to refer to the doubtful decision
of battle that which might be settled by any other means, and stirred
always by a great pity, strange in such an age and in such a man, for
lives poured out in war. "He was more tender to dead soldiers than to
the living," says a chronicler querulously; "and found far more sorrow
in the loss of those who were slain than comfort in the love of those
who remained." His pitiful temper was early shown in his

determination to put down the barbarous treatment of shipwrecked
sailors. He abolished the traditions of the civil war by forbidding
plunder, and by a resolute fidelity to his plighted word. In political craft
he was matchless; in great perils none was gentler than he, but when
the danger was past none was harsher; and common talk hinted that he
was a willing breaker of his word, deeming that in the pressure of
difficulty it was easier to repent of word than deed, and to render vain a
saying than a fact. "His mother's teaching, as we have heard, was this:
That he should delay all the business of all men; that whatever fell into
his hands he should retain along while and enjoy the fruit of it, and
keep suspended in hope those who aspired to it; confirming her
sentences with this cruel parable, 'Glut a hawk with his quarry and he
will hunt no more; show it him and then draw it back and you will ever
keep him tractable and obedient.' She taught him also that he should be
frequently in his chamber, rarely in public; that he should give nothing
to any one upon any testimony but what he had seen and known; and
many other evil things of the same kind. We, indeed," adds this good
hater of Matilda, "confidently attributed to her teaching everything in
which he displeased us."
A king of those days, indeed, was not shielded from criticism. He lived
altogether in public, with scarcely a trace of etiquette or ceremony.
When a bishop of Lincoln kept Henry waiting for dinner while he
performed a service, the king's only remedy was to send messenger
after messenger to urge him to hurry in pity to the royal hunger. The
first-comer seems to have been able to go straight to his presence at any
hour, whether in hall or chapel or sleeping-chamber; and the king was
soundly rated by every one who had seen a vision, or desired a favour,
or felt himself aggrieved in any way, with a rude plainness of speech
which made sorely necessary his proverbial patience under such
harangues. "Our king," says Walter Map, "whose power all the world
fears, ... does not presume to be haughty, nor speak with a proud tongue,
nor exalt himself over any man." The feudal barons of medieval times
had, indeed, few of the qualities that made the courtiers of later days,
and Henry, violent as he was, could bear much rough counsel and plain
reproof. No flatterer found favour at his court. His special friends were
men of learning or of saintly life. Eager and eloquent in talk, his

curiosity was boundless. He is said to have known all languages from
Gaul to the Jordan, though he only spoke French and Latin. Very
discreet in all business of the kingdom, and a subtle finder out of legal
puzzles, he had "knowledge of almost all histories, and experience of
all things ready to his hand." Henry was, in fact, learned far beyond the
learning of his day. "The king," wrote Peter of Blois to the Archbishop
of Palermo, "has always in his hands bows and arrows, swords and
hunting-spears, save when he is busy in council or over his books. For
as often as he can get breathing-time amid his business cares, he
occupies himself with private reading, or takes pains in working out
some knotty question among his clerks. Your king is a good scholar,
but ours is far better. I know the abilities and accomplishments of both.