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Portrait of Henry II

Monarchs · Plantagenet

Henry II

1133–1189

House of Plantagenet — the Angevin Empire

In office: 1154–1189

Son of Geoffrey of Anjou and the Empress Matilda, Henry II ruled from the Cheviots to the Pyrenees, a dominion usually called the Angevin Empire. He restored order after the Anarchy and laid the foundations of the English common law with itinerant justices and the possessory assizes. His attempt to bring criminous clerks under royal courts brought him into collision with Thomas Becket, whose murder at Canterbury in 1170 forced him into public penance. His last years were consumed by rebellions raised by his own sons.

How to spot them

  • ▸Curtmantle; first of the Plantagenets or Angevins; the empire from Scotland to the Pyrenees
  • ▸Thomas Becket — chancellor, then archbishop, then martyr; the Constitutions of Clarendon
  • ▸Assize of Clarendon and itinerant justices — the beginning of the English common law
  • ▸Eleanor of Aquitaine; sons Henry the Young King, Richard, Geoffrey and John; buried at Fontevraud

In the reign

The murder of an archbishop in his own cathedral by four knights who had taken a king's angry words as a command (1170)

Thomas Becket, killed at Canterbury on 29 December 1170 and canonised in 1173.

A public penance: a king walking barefoot through the streets to a tomb and scourged there by the monks (1174)

At Canterbury in July 1174; William the Lion of Scotland was captured at Alnwick the same week.

Marriage to a duchess eight weeks after her marriage to the king of France had been annulled, bringing a vast south-western duchy with her (1152)

Eleanor of Aquitaine, previously queen of Louis VII.

Sixteen articles issued at a Wiltshire hunting lodge, sending justices on circuit and requiring local juries to present suspects (1166)

The Assize of Clarendon, the foundation of the common law and of the grand jury.

Sixteen clauses asserting royal custom over the Church, including trial of clerks in lay courts, which the archbishop signed and then repudiated (1164)

The Constitutions of Clarendon.

An expedition to Ireland that made an English king its lord, following the adventures of Strongbow (1171)

Confirmed by the Treaty of Windsor with Rory O'Connor in 1175.

A great rebellion raised by his queen and three of his sons, backed by the kings of France and Scotland (1173–1174)

His queen was kept in confinement for the next fifteen years.

Death at Chinon after learning that his youngest and favourite son had joined the enemy (1189)

6 July 1189; he was buried at Fontevraud Abbey, where his effigy lies beside Eleanor's.

Quick-fire facts

  • •'Plantagenet' was applied to the dynasty only much later; it derives from his father Geoffrey's sprig of broom, planta genista
  • •Nicknamed Curtmantle, from the short Angevin cloak he wore
  • •He made Thomas Becket chancellor in 1155 and archbishop of Canterbury in 1162
  • •The Compromise of Avranches in 1172 reconciled him with the papacy after Becket's murder
  • •The Assize of Northampton (1176) extended the reforms and divided England into six judicial circuits
  • •Ranulf de Glanvill, his justiciar, is credited with the earliest treatise on English law
  • •His eldest surviving son, Henry the Young King, was crowned in his father's lifetime in 1170 and died in 1183
  • •He was succeeded by Richard I; his effigy, Eleanor's, Richard's and Isabella of Angoulême's are all at Fontevraud

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