accused of any matter shall, when summoned by the king’s justice, come before the
king’s court to answer there.”^5 But Becket soon thereafter clashed with Henry over
the rights of the church of Canterbury—Becket’s church—to recover or alienate its
own property. The conflict mushroomed to include control over the English church,
its property, and its clergy. Soon the papacy joined, with Becket its champion. King
and archbishop remained at loggerheads for six years, until Henry’s henchmen
murdered Thomas, unintentionally turning him into a martyr. Although Henry’s role
in the murder remained ambiguous, public outcry forced him to do public penance
for the deed. In the end, the struggle made both institutions stronger. In particular,
both church and royal courts expanded to address the concerns of an increasingly
litigious society.
Defining the Role of the English King
Henry II and his sons Richard I the Lion-Heart (r.1189–1199) and John (r.1199–
1216) were English kings with an imperial reach. Richard was rarely in England,
since half of France was his to subdue (see Map 6.4, paying attention to the areas in
various shades of peach). Responding to Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, Richard
went on the abortive Third Crusade (1189–1192), capturing Cyprus on the way and
arranging a three-year truce with Saladin before rushing home to reclaim his territory
from his brother, John, and the French king, Philip II (r.1180–1223). (His haste did
him no good; he was captured by the duke of Austria and released only upon
payment of a huge ransom, painfully squeezed out of the English people.)
When Richard died in battle in 1199, John took over. But if he began with an
imperial reach, John must have felt a bit like the Byzantine emperor in 1204, for in
that very year the king of France, Philip II, said that John had defied his overlordship
—and promptly confiscated John’s northern French territories. It was a purely
military victory, and John set out to win the territories back by gathering money
wherever and however he could in order to pay for an abler military force. He forced
his barons and many members of the gentry to pay him “scutage”—a tax—in lieu of
army service. He extorted money in the form of “aids”—the fees that his barons and
other vassals ordinarily paid on rare occasions, such as the knighting of the king’s
eldest son. He compelled the widows of his barons and other vassals to marry men of
his choosing or pay him a hefty fee to remain single. With the wealth pouring in from
these effective but unpopular measures, John was able to pay for a navy and hire
mercenary troops.
But all was to no avail. A broad coalition of German and Flemish armies led by
