Reinado de enrique ii de inglaterra

Assess the Reign of Henry II

Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), son of Matilda –Henry I’s daughter‒ and Geoffrey of Anjou, was the first of the Angevin kings. He ruled England from 1154 to his death, and most historians enhance him as the most efficacious of all the English monarchs. Raised in France, Henry II was fond of cultural and intellectual matters, which, in addition to hisenthusiasm and intelligence, made possible for him to “understand and adopt the new theoretical and practical foundations of kingship that were being established in Europe in the twelfth century”. This fact enabled Henry to make reforms and set innovations of any kind, which established the basis for the English Common Law. Besides, “his intervention in Brittany, Wales and Scotland shaped the developmentof their societies and governmental systems.” Moreover, although he was a good knight, he tried to seek to find peaceful solutions to international problems. Furthermore, Henry tried to get back the lands and privileges of Henry I. On the other side, the ruthlessness towards criminals and, above all, the murder of Thomas Becket spread a dark shadow over Henry II’s reign.
Owing to his father’sdeath, in September of 1151, Henry acquired Normandy and Anjou. In order to ensure his continental possessions, Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine (who had got divorced from Louis IV), Duchess of Aquitaine ‒a duchy situated in the South of France. By this contrivance, Henry could double the number of possessions he held in the continent.
The first measure Henry, crowned in 1154, took was tobring peace and impose discipline instead of the anarchy in which the country was sunk. To do this, the King drove the mercenary groups of Stephen and Matilda off the country. Henry also carried on the castles Stephen had conceded and put away the earldoms created by his predecessor. These two last stratagems helped him to gain the cooperation of most of the barons, while the majority Stephen’ssupporters fled.
Henry II resumed the royal finances established by Henry I: “a central royal treasury in London, [which was] supported by treasuries in key castles; the Exchequer that accounted for payments to the treasuries; and a team of royal officials called the chamber that followed the king's travels, spending money as necessary and collecting revenues along the way.”
In 1166, Henrycarried out an investigation by which his tenants had to state the number of knights they had promised to supply to him. By this inquiry ‒later called Cartae Baronum‒ Henry could decree that the tenants who could not supply the number of knights they were bound to, had to pay their ancient fee; whereas the tenants who owed more knights than needed must supply all the knights they had registered.Furthermore, the King gave the Exchequer a spate of new force to administer record keeping and tax collection. In 1170 Henry carried out the Inquest of Sheriff, by which the incompetent and corrupt sheriffs were removed from their posts. The vacant positions were filled by royal official, who were responsible to the King. Gradually, they were given new administrative obligations.
These measurementshelped Henry, not only to re-establish the financial aspects of Henry I’s reign, but also to improve the royal accounting. This last item was also achieved by changing the coin and controlling the number of moneyers who could make coins. Moreover
Henry II made many legal innovations. In order to face the criminal problems inherited from Stephen’s reign, Henry II gave the administrators of theExchequer the responsibility of being judges, too. The Exchequer “was at once a financial bureau, a chancery with a busy staff of clerks, a place where decisions could be quickly made, and, above all, a court of law.”
Borrowing parts of the Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Norman law and the law of the church, Henry and his justices planed a new law and ideated a body of decisions which was based in the...