Henry II 1133-89
King of England

He was born in Le Mans, France, the son of Matilda, Henry I's daughter, and her second husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. He was invested with the duchy of Normandy, his mother's heritage (1150), and became Count of Anjou on the death of his father (1151). His marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the divorced wife of Louis VII, added Poitou and Guienne to his dominions. In January 1153 he landed in England, and in November was declared the successor of Stephen, founding the Angevin or Plantagenet dynasty of English kings, and ruling England as part of a wider Angevin empire. He was crowned in 1154. He repaired the chaos and disorder which had arisen during Stephen's reign, recovered the royal estates and spent much time dealing with problems arising from his Continental possessions. To help him in restricting the authority of the church in England he appointed his Chancellor, Thomas � Becket, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and compelled Becket and the other prelates to agree to the 'Constitutions of Clarendon', but Becket resisted, and the struggle between them ended only with Becket's murder (1170). In 1174 Henry did penance at Becket's tomb, but in many respects he managed to subordinate the Church in civil matters. Meanwhile he organized an expedition to Ireland (1171-72). Pope Adrian IV had given Henry authority over the entire island (1155), and a number of Norman-Welsh knights had gained a footing in the country - among them Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, nicknamed Strongbow. Henry was jealous at the rise of a powerful feudal baronage in Ireland, and during his stay there he broke the power of Strongbow and the other nobles. By 1185 Prince John (the future King John) had been given some responsibility for Ireland, but in 1186 he was driven from the country, and all was left in confusion. The eldest of Henry's sons had died in childhood, and the second, Henry (b.1155), was crowned as his father's associate and successor in 1170. In 1173, encouraged by Queen Eleanor, John and his brother Richard I, C?ur de Lion rebelled - ultimately unsuccessfully - against their father, backed by the kings of France and Scotland. During a second, more limited, rebellion Henry the Younger died (1183), and in 1185 Geoffrey, the next son, was killed in a tournament at Paris. In 1188, while Henry was engaged in a war with Philip II of France, Richard joined the French king, and in 1189, Henry, having lost Le Mans and the chief castles of Maine, agreed a peace recognizing Richard as his sole heir for the Angevin empire, and granting an indemnity to his followers. Soon afterwards Henry died, and was succeeded by Richard. On the whole, Henry was an able and enlightened sovereign, a clear-headed, unprincipled politician, and an able general. His reign was one of great legal and financial reforms. His success can be judged by the fact that he kept intact an empire, stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees, until the very last month of his life.

Bibliography: W L Warren, Henry II (1973)