Human Resource Information Systems Basics
Applications and Future Directions 4th Edition
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Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Chapter 6: Change Management and Implementation
Test Bank
Multiple Choice
1. ______ can be described as a systematic process of applying the knowledge, tools,
and resources needed to effect change in transforming an organization from its current
state to some future desired state as defined by its vision.
a. Logical design
b. Gap analysis
c. Business assessment
d. Change management
Ans: D
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Change Management
Difficulty Level: Medium
2. Unfreezing is specifically mentioned as one of the three stages in ______.
a. the action-research model
b. Lewin’s change model
c. Nadler’s congruence
d. Kotter’s change process
Ans: B
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Lewin’s Change Model
Difficulty Level: Medium
3. In Kotter’s change process,
a. all stages must be worked through in order
b. only relevant stages need to be applied to the change process
c. stages do not overlap
d. stages can be skipped in the interest of completing on time
Ans: A
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Kotter’s Process of Leading Change
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Difficulty Level: Medium
4. Increasingly, the failure to successfully implement information systems has to do with
a. the hardware and software of the system
b. the increasingly complex work flow processes
c. the skills of the change leader and the people and organizational issues related to the
change
d. the conflict between the HR and marketing departments
Ans: C
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Why Do System Failures Occur?
Difficulty Level: Medium
5. Which of the following are three of the five categories of the key factors related to
HRIS implementation failures?
a. leadership, communication, and financial planning
b. leadership, planning, and communication
c. communication, training, and development
d. change management, communication, and finance
Ans: B
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Why Do System Failures Occur?
Difficulty Level: Medium
6. Getting end users involved in the development of a system can help with ______.
a. training
b. user acceptance
c. project planning
d. timely implementation
Ans: B
Learning Objective: Discuss the elements important to successful HRIS implementation
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: User Acceptance
Difficulty Level: Easy
7. Running an old system in parallel with a new system has the disadvantage of
a. being a more costly alternative
b. having a longer implementation timeline
c. allowing employees to use the old system instead of moving to the new system
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
d. being confusing to users
Ans: C
Learning Objective: Discuss the various system conversion approaches
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: System Conversion
Difficulty Level: Easy
8. Forces for change are ______.
a. internal only
b. external only
c. internal and external
d. global
Ans: C
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
9. A person who is responsible for leading an organizational change or someone who is
influential and can communicate and motivate others to accept a change by informal
means is called a ______.
a. change agent
b. change planner
c. change catalyst
d. action agent
Ans: A
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
10. A ______ is a useful technique for looking at the advantages and disadvantages of
a proposed change.
a. gap analysis
b. force-field analysis
c. systems assessment
d. change analysis
Ans: B
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Lewin’s Change Model
Difficulty Level: Medium
11. An organizational performance model built on the view that organizations are
systems and that there needs to be a “fit” between the various organizational
subsystems for optimal performance is ______.
a. Kotter’s change process
b. Lewin’s change model
c. Nadler’s congruence model
d. all change models
Ans: C
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Nadler’s Congruence Model
Difficulty Level: Medium
True/False
1. The change agent is a person who is responsible for leading an organizational
change or someone who is influential and can communicate and motivate others to
accept a change by informal means.
Ans: T
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
2. Process management is a systematic process of applying the knowledge, tools, and
resources needed to effect change in transforming an organization from its current state
to some future desired state as defined by its vision.
Ans: F
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Change Management
Difficulty Level: Medium
3. Organizational climate is an organization’s collective values, beliefs, experiences,
and norms that shape the behavior of the group and the individuals within it.
Ans: F
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Nadler’s Congruence Model
Difficulty Level: Medium
4. A force field analysis is a useful technique for looking at only the advantages of a
proposed change.
Ans: F
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Lewin’s Change Model
Difficulty Level: Medium
5. A needs analysis indicates the differences between the current state of affairs in the
organization and the desired future state.
Ans: F
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
6. Kotter’s model of change is an organizational performance model that is built on the
view that organizations are and there needs to be a “fit” between the various
organizational subsystems for optimal performance.
Ans: F
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Nadler’s Congruence Model
Difficulty Level: Medium
7. Systems resistance is a term to describe a common response to any major change
initiative, where individuals fail to accept the change and strive to maintain the status
quo.
Ans: F
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Answer Location: Introduction to Management of Change
Difficulty Level: Medium
8. Getting end users involved in the development of a system can help with user
acceptance.
Ans: T
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
Essay
1. Why is communication important in managing a technology change?
Ans: • Communication plays a vital role in the success of change programs.
Communication is important to a technological change because it can help to avoid
several roadblocks to change including these:
• Employees failing to use the new technology
• Employees exhibiting resistance to change
• Employees actively avoiding or harming the change efforts and communicating this
negative response to other employees
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
2. What would you suggest an organization do in terms of communication if they were
about to undergo a change in technology?
Ans: An organization about to undergo a change in technology should do the following:
• Communicate a clear, consistent vision
• Provide employees the rationale for the change (e.g., allow them to unfreeze, create a
sense of urgency)
• Communicate short-term wins
• Communicate training availability
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
3. Discuss three reasons why employees might be resistant to change.
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Ans: Resistance to change may happen for several reasons including these: (students
would only need to list three)
• Employees feeling a loss of power as their responsibilities are changed
• Employees feeling a loss in identity as their responsibilities, power, and status are
changed
• Employees feeling a loss of job security as their job roles and responsibilities are
changed
• Employees feeling they don’t understand the reasons for the change and are therefore
not likely to support the change efforts
• Employees feeling a loss of control over their lives and the structure they have created
• Employees feeling comfortable in the status quo and uncomfortable with the
uncertainty associated with the change efforts
• Employees’ fear of lack of ability or performance associated with the change
• Employee cynicism due to repeated failing change initiatives undertaken by the
organization
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
4. What are some of the lessons provided by Kotter’s process of leading change?
Ans: This model provides two key lessons: first, that the change process goes through a
series of phases, each lasting a considerable period of time and, second, that critical
mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact on the momentum of the
change process.
Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of
various change models
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Kotter’s Process of Leading Change
Difficulty Level: Medium
5. What can be done to reduce resistance to change to a new HRIS?
Ans: There are several efforts that can be initiated to help reduce resistance to change,
including these:
• The use of “power users” who adapt to the new technology quickly to provide one-on-
one on-the-job training to those who do not learn the system as rapidly
• Communication that training will be an ongoing process and not just an isolated event
to help manage expectations and acceptance of the new technology
• Parallel Go Live so that users can acclimate to the new system
• Communication to relay the urgency and need for the system
• Generate small wins that are produced by system usage and communicate these wins
• Involve users in the change process
Instructor Resource
Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
6. Discuss the role of the change agent.
Ans: A change agent is a person who is responsible for leading an organizational
change or someone who is influential and can communicate and motivate others to
accept a change by informal means.
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art
Difficulty Level: Medium
7. Why is user acceptance extremely critical in driving the success of an HRIS
implementation?
Ans: • It’s important that people understand, both emotionally and intellectually, why
they need to change.
• Acceptance of the new technology and new processes represents project success.
Although the technical challenges in implementing any system can be great, it is the
people “challenges that cannot be overlooked (although often are) during the
implementation phase” of an HRIS effort. Organizations cannot simply rely on the
strategy of “if you build it, they will come.” Change leaders must use appropriate change
management techniques to create user acceptance; otherwise, they risk failure.
• To help us achieve the successful acceptance of an HRIS, we should understand how
users will develop and experience the information system.
• End users must be involved and feel ownership of the new system. When future users
participate in the planning and acceptance testing of a new HRIS, as well as in the
process of converting to a new system, their commitment to the project increases.
• It may also be a good idea to identify the most resistant users and involve them right
from the beginning to gain their buy-in. Otherwise, they may influence others negatively
toward the change.
Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation
failure
AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: User Acceptance
Difficulty Level: Medium
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there was
not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and the
oars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay young
nobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright
colours to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang.
The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the
honour of The White Ship.
Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was the
cry the people in the distant vessels of the King heard faintly on the
water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock—was filling—going
down!
Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few
Nobles. ‘Push off,’ he whispered; ‘and row to land. It is not far, and
the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die.’
But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Prince
heard the voice of his sister Marie, the Countess of Perche, calling
for help. He never in his life had been so good as he was then. He
cried in an agony, ‘Row back at any risk! I cannot bear to leave her!’
They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch his
sister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset. And in
the same instant The White Ship went down.
Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard of the
ship, which had broken from the mast, and now supported them.
One asked the other who he was? He said, ‘I am a nobleman,
Godfrey by name, the son of Gilbert de l’Aigle. And you?’ said he. ‘I
am Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen,’ was the answer. Then, they
said together, ‘Lord be merciful to us both!’ and tried to encourage
one another, as they drifted in the cold benumbing sea on that
unfortunate November night.
By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom
they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-
Stephen. ‘Where is the Prince?’ said he. ‘Gone! Gone!’ the two cried
together. ‘Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King’s
niece, nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred,
noble or commoner, except we three, has risen above the water!’
Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried, ‘Woe! woe, to me!’ and sunk
to the bottom.
The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the
young noble said faintly, ‘I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold,
and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!’
So, he dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor
Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen
saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their boat—
the sole relater of the dismal tale.
For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King.
At length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping
bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Ship was
lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man,
and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile.
But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and bought
again, in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him, after
all his pains (‘The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now!’ said
the English people), he took a second wife—Adelais or Alice, a
duke’s daughter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more children,
however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that they would
recognise as his successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was
now a widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou,
Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a
sprig of flowering broom (called Genêt in French) in his cap for a
feather. As one false man usually makes many, and as a false King,
in particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, the Barons took
the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children after
her), twice over, without in the least intending to keep it. The King
was now relieved from any remaining fears of William Fitz-Robert, by
his death in the Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six
years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as Matilda gave birth to
three sons, he thought the succession to the throne secure.
He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled by
family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he had
reigned upward of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old,
he died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he
was far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he had
often been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought
over to Reading Abbey to be buried.
You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of King
Henry the First, called ‘policy’ by some people, and ‘diplomacy’ by
others. Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that it was
true; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.
His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning—I
should have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been
strong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet he
once took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered the
poet’s eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him
in his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out
his own brains against his prison wall. King Henry the First was
avaricious, revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never
lived whose word was less to be relied upon.
CHAPTER XI—ENGLAND UNDER
MATILDA AND STEPHEN
The King was no sooner dead than all the plans and schemes he
had laboured at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like a
hollow heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had never mistrusted or
suspected, started up to claim the throne.
Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror’s daughter, married
to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the late
King had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, and
finding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. This
did not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a
servant of the late King, to swear that the King had named him for
his heir upon his death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of
Canterbury crowned him. The new King, so suddenly made, lost not
a moment in seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers
with some of it to protect his throne.
If the dead King had even done as the false witness said, he
would have had small right to will away the English people, like so
many sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he had, in fact,
bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who, supported by Robert,
Earl of Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. Some of the
powerful barons and priests took her side; some took Stephen’s; all
fortified their castles; and again the miserable English people were
involved in war, from which they could never derive advantage
whosoever was victorious, and in which all parties plundered,
tortured, starved, and ruined them.
Five years had passed since the death of Henry the First—and
during those five years there had been two terrible invasions by the
people of Scotland under their King, David, who was at last defeated
with all his army—when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and
a large force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. A battle
was fought between her troops and King Stephen’s at Lincoln; in
which the King himself was taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until
his battle-axe and sword were broken, and was carried into strict
confinement at Gloucester. Matilda then submitted herself to the
Priests, and the Priests crowned her Queen of England.
She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of London had a
great affection for Stephen; many of the Barons considered it
degrading to be ruled by a woman; and the Queen’s temper was so
haughty that she made innumerable enemies. The people of London
revolted; and, in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged her at
Winchester, where they took her brother Robert prisoner, whom, as
her best soldier and chief general, she was glad to exchange for
Stephen himself, who thus regained his liberty. Then, the long war
went on afresh. Once, she was pressed so hard in the Castle of
Oxford, in the winter weather when the snow lay thick upon the
ground, that her only chance of escape was to dress herself all in
white, and, accompanied by no more than three faithful Knights,
dressed in like manner that their figures might not be seen from
Stephen’s camp as they passed over the snow, to steal away on foot,
cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, and at last gallop
away on horseback. All this she did, but to no great purpose then;
for her brother dying while the struggle was yet going on, she at last
withdrew to Normandy.
In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause appeared in
England, afresh, in the person of her son Henry, young Plantagenet,
who, at only eighteen years of age, was very powerful: not only on
account of his mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but also
from his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of the French
King, a bad woman, who had great possessions in France. Louis,
the French King, not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace,
King Stephen’s son, to invade Normandy: but Henry drove their
united forces out of that country, and then returned here, to assist
his partisans, whom the King was then besieging at Wallingford
upon the Thames. Here, for two days, divided only by the river, the
two armies lay encamped opposite to one another—on the eve, as it
seemed to all men, of another desperate fight, when the Earl of
Arundel took heart and said ‘that it was not reasonable to prolong
the unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms to minister to the
ambition of two princes.’
Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this when it was
once uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet went down, each to
his own bank of the river, and held a conversation across it, in which
they arranged a truce; very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace,
who swaggered away with some followers, and laid violent hands on
the Abbey of St. Edmund’s-Bury, where he presently died mad. The
truce led to a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed
that Stephen should retain the crown, on condition of his declaring
Henry his successor; that William, another son of the King’s, should
inherit his father’s rightful possessions; and that all the Crown lands
which Stephen had given away should be recalled, and all the
Castles he had permitted to be built demolished. Thus terminated
the bitter war, which had now lasted fifteen years, and had again
laid England waste. In the next year Stephen died, after a troubled
reign of nineteen years.
Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he lived, a
humane and moderate man, with many excellent qualities; and
although nothing worse is known of him than his usurpation of the
Crown, which he probably excused to himself by the consideration
that King Henry the First was a usurper too—which was no excuse at
all; the people of England suffered more in these dread nineteen
years, than at any former period even of their suffering history. In
the division of the nobility between the two rival claimants of the
Crown, and in the growth of what is called the Feudal System (which
made the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons),
every Noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned the cruel king
of all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated
whatever cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties
committed upon earth than in wretched England in those nineteen
years.
The writers who were living then describe them fearfully. They
say that the castles were filled with devils rather than with men; that
the peasants, men and women, were put into dungeons for their
gold and silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up by
the thumbs, were hung up by the heels with great weights to their
heads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken to
death in narrow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in
countless fiendish ways. In England there was no corn, no meat, no
cheese, no butter, there were no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of
burnt towns, and dreary wastes, were all that the traveller, fearful of
the robbers who prowled abroad at all hours, would see in a long
day’s journey; and from sunrise until night, he would not come upon
a home.
The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from pillage, but
many of them had castles of their own, and fought in helmet and
armour like the barons, and drew lots with other fighting men for
their share of booty. The Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on King
Stephen’s resisting his ambition, laid England under an Interdict at
one period of this reign; which means that he allowed no service to
be performed in the churches, no couples to be married, no bells to
be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. Any man having the power to
refuse these things, no matter whether he were called a Pope or a
Poulterer, would, of course, have the power of afflicting numbers of
innocent people. That nothing might be wanting to the miseries of
King Stephen’s time, the Pope threw in this contribution to the public
store—not very like the widow’s contribution, as I think, when Our
Saviour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury, ‘and she threw in
two mites, which make a farthing.’
CHAPTER XII—ENGLAND UNDER
HENRY THE SECOND
PART THE FIRST
Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one years old, quietly
succeeded to the throne of England, according to his agreement
made with the late King at Winchester. Six weeks after Stephen’s
death, he and his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city; into
which they rode on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst
much shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of music, and strewing of
flowers.
The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The King had
great possessions, and (what with his own rights, and what with
those of his wife) was lord of one-third part of France. He was a
young man of vigour, ability, and resolution, and immediately applied
himself to remove some of the evils which had arisen in the last
unhappy reign. He revoked all the grants of land that had been
hastily made, on either side, during the late struggles; he obliged
numbers of disorderly soldiers to depart from England; he reclaimed
all the castles belonging to the Crown; and he forced the wicked
nobles to pull down their own castles, to the number of eleven
hundred, in which such dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the
people. The King’s brother, Geoffrey, rose against him in France,
while he was so well employed, and rendered it necessary for him to
repair to that country; where, after he had subdued and made a
friendly arrangement with his brother (who did not live long), his
ambition to increase his possessions involved him in a war with the
French King, Louis, with whom he had been on such friendly terms
just before, that to the French King’s infant daughter, then a baby in
the cradle, he had promised one of his little sons in marriage, who
was a child of five years old. However, the war came to nothing at
last, and the Pope made the two Kings friends again.
Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had gone on very
ill indeed. There were all kinds of criminals among them—
murderers, thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst of the matter
was, that the good priests would not give up the bad priests to
justice, when they committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering and
defending them. The King, well knowing that there could be no
peace or rest in England while such things lasted, resolved to reduce
the power of the clergy; and, when he had reigned seven years,
found (as he considered) a good opportunity for doing so, in the
death of the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘I will have for the new
Archbishop,’ thought the King, ‘a friend in whom I can trust, who will
help me to humble these rebellious priests, and to have them dealt
with, when they do wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt
with.’ So, he resolved to make his favourite, the new Archbishop;
and this favourite was so extraordinary a man, and his story is so
curious, that I must tell you all about him.
Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, named Gilbert à
Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner
by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a
slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and
who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, and was willing
to marry him if they could fly to a Christian country. The merchant
returned her love, until he found an opportunity to escape, when he
did not trouble himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his
servant Richard, who had been taken prisoner along with him, and
arrived in England and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more
loving than the merchant, left her father’s house in disguise to follow
him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the sea-shore.
The merchant had taught her only two English words (for I suppose
he must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself, and made love in
that language), of which London was one, and his own name,
Gilbert, the other. She went among the ships, saying, ‘London!
London!’ over and over again, until the sailors understood that she
wanted to find an English vessel that would carry her there; so they
showed her such a ship, and she paid for her passage with some of
her jewels, and sailed away. Well! The merchant was sitting in his
counting-house in London one day, when he heard a great noise in
the street; and presently Richard came running in from the
warehouse, with his eyes wide open and his breath almost gone,
saying, ‘Master, master, here is the Saracen lady!’ The merchant
thought Richard was mad; but Richard said, ‘No, master! As I live,
the Saracen lady is going up and down the city, calling Gilbert!
Gilbert!’ Then, he took the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out
of window; and there they saw her among the gables and water-
spouts of the dark, dirty street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn,
surrounded by a wondering crowd, and passing slowly along, calling
Gilbert, Gilbert! When the merchant saw her, and thought of the
tenderness she had shown him in his captivity, and of her constancy,
his heart was moved, and he ran down into the street; and she saw
him coming, and with a great cry fainted in his arms. They were
married without loss of time, and Richard (who was an excellent
man) danced with joy the whole day of the wedding; and they all
lived happy ever afterwards.
This merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, Thomas à
Becket. He it was who became the Favourite of King Henry the
Second.
He had become Chancellor, when the King thought of making him
Archbishop. He was clever, gay, well educated, brave; had fought in
several battles in France; had defeated a French knight in single
combat, and brought his horse away as a token of the victory. He
lived in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince Henry,
he was served by one hundred and forty knights, his riches were
immense. The King once sent him as his ambassador to France; and
the French people, beholding in what state he travelled, cried out in
the streets, ‘How splendid must the King of England be, when this is
only the Chancellor!’ They had good reason to wonder at the
magnificence of Thomas à Becket, for, when he entered a French
town, his procession was headed by two hundred and fifty singing
boys; then, came his hounds in couples; then, eight waggons, each
drawn by five horses driven by five drivers: two of the waggons filled
with strong ale to be given away to the people; four, with his gold
and silver plate and stately clothes; two, with the dresses of his
numerous servants. Then, came twelve horses, each with a monkey
on his back; then, a train of people bearing shields and leading fine
war-horses splendidly equipped; then, falconers with hawks upon
their wrists; then, a host of knights, and gentlemen and priests;
then, the Chancellor with his brilliant garments flashing in the sun,
and all the people capering and shouting with delight.
The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that it only made
himself the more magnificent to have so magnificent a favourite; but
he sometimes jested with the Chancellor upon his splendour too.
Once, when they were riding together through the streets of London
in hard winter weather, they saw a shivering old man in rags. ‘Look
at the poor object!’ said the King. ‘Would it not be a charitable act
to give that aged man a comfortable warm cloak?’ ‘Undoubtedly it
would,’ said Thomas à Becket, ‘and you do well, Sir, to think of such
Christian duties.’ ‘Come!’ cried the King, ‘then give him your cloak!’
It was made of rich crimson trimmed with ermine. The King tried to
pull it off, the Chancellor tried to keep it on, both were near rolling
from their saddles in the mud, when the Chancellor submitted, and
the King gave the cloak to the old beggar: much to the beggar’s
astonishment, and much to the merriment of all the courtiers in
attendance. For, courtiers are not only eager to laugh when the King
laughs, but they really do enjoy a laugh against a Favourite.
‘I will make,’ thought King Henry the second, ‘this Chancellor of
mine, Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. He will then be
the head of the Church, and, being devoted to me, will help me to
correct the Church. He has always upheld my power against the
power of the clergy, and once publicly told some bishops (I
remember), that men of the Church were equally bound to me, with
men of the sword. Thomas à Becket is the man, of all other men in
England, to help me in my great design.’ So the King, regardless of
all objection, either that he was a fighting man, or a lavish man, or a
courtly man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a likely man for
the office, made him Archbishop accordingly.
Now, Thomas à Becket was proud and loved to be famous. He
was already famous for the pomp of his life, for his riches, his gold
and silver plate, his waggons, horses, and attendants. He could do
no more in that way than he had done; and being tired of that kind
of fame (which is a very poor one), he longed to have his name
celebrated for something else. Nothing, he knew, would render him
so famous in the world, as the setting of his utmost power and
ability against the utmost power and ability of the King. He resolved
with the whole strength of his mind to do it.
He may have had some secret grudge against the King besides.
The King may have offended his proud humour at some time or
other, for anything I know. I think it likely, because it is a common
thing for Kings, Princes, and other great people, to try the tempers
of their favourites rather severely. Even the little affair of the
crimson cloak must have been anything but a pleasant one to a
haughty man. Thomas à Becket knew better than any one in
England what the King expected of him. In all his sumptuous life, he
had never yet been in a position to disappoint the King. He could
take up that proud stand now, as head of the Church; and he
determined that it should be written in history, either that he
subdued the King, or that the King subdued him.
So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole manner of his
life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank
bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and
vermin (for it was then thought very religious to be very dirty),
flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell,
washed the feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as
miserable as he possibly could. If he had put twelve hundred
monkeys on horseback instead of twelve, and had gone in
procession with eight thousand waggons instead of eight, he could
not have half astonished the people so much as by this great
change. It soon caused him to be more talked about as an
Archbishop than he had been as a Chancellor.
The King was very angry; and was made still more so, when the
new Archbishop, claiming various estates from the nobles as being
rightfully Church property, required the King himself, for the same
reason, to give up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not
satisfied with this, he declared that no power but himself should
appoint a priest to any Church in the part of England over which he
was Archbishop; and when a certain gentleman of Kent made such
an appointment, as he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas à
Becket excommunicated him.
Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you of at the
close of the last chapter, the great weapon of the clergy. It
consisted in declaring the person who was excommunicated, an
outcast from the Church and from all religious offices; and in cursing
him all over, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether
he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running,
hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he
was doing. This unchristian nonsense would of course have made
no sort of difference to the person cursed—who could say his
prayers at home if he were shut out of church, and whom none but
God could judge—but for the fears and superstitions of the people,
who avoided excommunicated persons, and made their lives
unhappy. So, the King said to the New Archbishop, ‘Take off this
Excommunication from this gentleman of Kent.’ To which the
Archbishop replied, ‘I shall do no such thing.’
The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire committed a most
dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of the whole nation. The
King demanded to have this wretch delivered up, to be tried in the
same court and in the same way as any other murderer. The
Archbishop refused, and kept him in the Bishop’s prison. The King,
holding a solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded that in
future all priests found guilty before their Bishops of crimes against
the law of the land should be considered priests no longer, and
should be delivered over to the law of the land for punishment. The
Archbishop again refused. The King required to know whether the
clergy would obey the ancient customs of the country? Every priest
there, but one, said, after Thomas à Becket, ‘Saving my order.’ This
really meant that they would only obey those customs when they did
not interfere with their own claims; and the King went out of the
Hall in great wrath.
Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they were going
too far. Though Thomas à Becket was otherwise as unmoved as
Westminster Hall, they prevailed upon him, for the sake of their
fears, to go to the King at Woodstock, and promise to observe the
ancient customs of the country, without saying anything about his
order. The King received this submission favourably, and summoned
a great council of the clergy to meet at the Castle of Clarendon, by
Salisbury. But when the council met, the Archbishop again insisted
on the words ‘saying my order;’ and he still insisted, though lords
entreated him, and priests wept before him and knelt to him, and an
adjoining room was thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of the
King, to threaten him. At length he gave way, for that time, and the
ancient customs (which included what the King had demanded in
vain) were stated in writing, and were signed and sealed by the
chief of the clergy, and were called the Constitutions of Clarendon.
The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop tried to see the
King. The King would not see him. The Archbishop tried to escape
from England. The sailors on the coast would launch no boat to
take him away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst in
opposition to the King, and began openly to set the ancient customs
at defiance.
The King summoned him before a great council at Northampton,
where he accused him of high treason, and made a claim against
him, which was not a just one, for an enormous sum of money.
Thomas à Becket was alone against the whole assembly, and the
very Bishops advised him to resign his office and abandon his
contest with the King. His great anxiety and agitation stretched him
on a sick-bed for two days, but he was still undaunted. He went to
the adjourned council, carrying a great cross in his right hand, and
sat down holding it erect before him. The King angrily retired into
an inner room. The whole assembly angrily retired and left him
there. But there he sat. The Bishops came out again in a body, and
renounced him as a traitor. He only said, ‘I hear!’ and sat there still.
They retired again into the inner room, and his trial proceeded
without him. By-and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading the barons,
came out to read his sentence. He refused to hear it, denied the
power of the court, and said he would refer his cause to the Pope.
As he walked out of the hall, with the cross in his hand, some of
those present picked up rushes—rushes were strewn upon the floors
in those days by way of carpet—and threw them at him. He proudly
turned his head, and said that were he not Archbishop, he would
chastise those cowards with the sword he had known how to use in
bygone days. He then mounted his horse, and rode away, cheered
and surrounded by the common people, to whom he threw open his
house that night and gave a supper, supping with them himself.
That same night he secretly departed from the town; and so,
travelling by night and hiding by day, and calling himself ‘Brother
Dearman,’ got away, not without difficulty, to Flanders.
The struggle still went on. The angry King took possession of the
revenues of the archbishopric, and banished all the relations and
servants of Thomas à Becket, to the number of four hundred. The
Pope and the French King both protected him, and an abbey was
assigned for his residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas à
Becket, on a great festival day, formally proceeded to a great church
crowded with people, and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed
and excommunicated all who had supported the Constitutions of
Clarendon: mentioning many English noblemen by name, and not
distantly hinting at the King of England himself.
When intelligence of this new affront was carried to the King in his
chamber, his passion was so furious that he tore his clothes, and
rolled like a madman on his bed of straw and rushes. But he was
soon up and doing. He ordered all the ports and coasts of England
to be narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict might be brought
into the kingdom; and sent messengers and bribes to the Pope’s
palace at Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas à Becket, for his part, was not
idle at Rome, but constantly employed his utmost arts in his own
behalf. Thus the contest stood, until there was peace between
France and England (which had been for some time at war), and
until the two children of the two Kings were married in celebration of
it. Then, the French King brought about a meeting between Henry
and his old favourite, so long his enemy.
Even then, though Thomas à Becket knelt before the King, he was
obstinate and immovable as to those words about his order. King
Louis of France was weak enough in his veneration for Thomas à
Becket and such men, but this was a little too much for him. He
said that à Becket ‘wanted to be greater than the saints and better
than St. Peter,’ and rode away from him with the King of England.
His poor French Majesty asked à Becket’s pardon for so doing,
however, soon afterwards, and cut a very pitiful figure.
At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. There was
another meeting on French ground between King Henry and Thomas
à Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas à Becket should be
Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the customs of former
Archbishops, and that the King should put him in possession of the
revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you might suppose the
struggle at an end, and Thomas à Becket at rest. No, not even yet.
For Thomas à Becket hearing, by some means, that King Henry,
when he was in dread of his kingdom being placed under an
interdict, had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not
only persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York who had
performed that ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who
had assisted at it, but sent a messenger of his own into England, in
spite of all the King’s precautions along the coast, who delivered the
letters of excommunication into the Bishops’ own hands. Thomas à
Becket then came over to England himself, after an absence of
seven years. He was privately warned that it was dangerous to
come, and that an ireful knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had
threatened that he should not live to eat a loaf of bread in England;
but he came.
The common people received him well, and marched about with
him in a soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could
get. He tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil,
but was prevented. He hoped for some little support among the
nobles and priests, but found none. He made the most of the
peasants who attended him, and feasted them, and went from
Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back
to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day preached in the Cathedral
there, and told the people in his sermon that he had come to die
among them, and that it was likely he would be murdered. He had
no fear, however—or, if he had any, he had much more obstinacy—
for he, then and there, excommunicated three of his enemies, of
whom Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was one.
As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting
and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was
very natural in the persons so freely excommunicated to complain to
the King. It was equally natural in the King, who had hoped that
this troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a mighty
rage when he heard of these new affronts; and, on the Archbishop
of York telling him that he never could hope for rest while Thomas à
Becket lived, to cry out hastily before his court, ‘Have I no one here
who will deliver me from this man?’ There were four knights
present, who, hearing the King’s words, looked at one another, and
went out.
The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, William Tracy,
Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito; three of whom had been in the
train of Thomas à Becket in the old days of his splendour. They rode
away on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the third day
after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from
Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They
quietly collected some followers here, in case they should need any;
and proceeding to Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four knights
and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his own house, at two
o’clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, but sat
down on the floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop.
Thomas à Becket said, at length, ‘What do you want?’
‘We want,’ said Reginald Fitzurse, ‘the excommunication taken
from the Bishops, and you to answer for your offences to the King.’
Thomas à Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the clergy was
above the power of the King. That it was not for such men as they
were, to threaten him. That if he were threatened by all the swords
in England, he would never yield.
‘Then we will do more than threaten!’ said the knights. And they
went out with the twelve men, and put on their armour, and drew
their shining swords, and came back.
His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great
gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with their
battle-axes; but, being shown a window by which they could enter,
they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While they were
battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas à Becket had
implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a
sanctuary or sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to
do no violent deed. He told them, again and again, that he would
not stir. Hearing the distant voices of the monks singing the evening
service, however, he said it was now his duty to attend, and
therefore, and for no other reason, he would go.
There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral, by
some beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He went into
the Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the Cross carried
before him as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would
have fastened the door, but he said No! it was the house of God and
not a fortress.
As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in the
Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there was outside, on
the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a strong voice, ‘Follow
me, loyal servants of the King!’ The rattle of the armour of the other
knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they came clashing in.
It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars of
the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the crypt below
and in the narrow passages above, that Thomas à Becket might
even at that pass have saved himself if he would. But he would
not. He told the monks resolutely that he would not. And though
they all dispersed and left him there with no other follower than
Edward Gryme, his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever
he had been in his life.
The knights came on, through the darkness, making a terrible
noise with their armed tread upon the stone pavement of the
church. ‘Where is the traitor?’ they cried out. He made no answer.
But when they cried, ‘Where is the Archbishop?’ he said proudly, ‘I
am here!’ and came out of the shade and stood before them.
The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the King and
themselves of him by any other means. They told him he must
either fly or go with them. He said he would do neither; and he
threw William Tracy off with such force when he took hold of his
sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his
steadiness, he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce
humour, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name, said,
‘Then die!’ and struck at his head. But the faithful Edward Gryme
put out his arm, and there received the main force of the blow, so
that it only made his master bleed. Another voice from among the
knights again called to Thomas à Becket to fly; but, with his blood
running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent, he
commanded himself to God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly killed
him close to the altar of St. Bennet; and his body fell upon the
pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and brains.
It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, who had so
showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church, where
a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of
darkness; and to think of the guilty knights riding away on
horseback, looking over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and
remembering what they had left inside.
PART THE SECOND
When the King heard how Thomas à Becket had lost his life in
Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of the four Knights, he
was filled with dismay. Some have supposed that when the King
spoke those hasty words, ‘Have I no one here who will deliver me
from this man?’ he wished, and meant à Becket to be slain. But few
things are more unlikely; for, besides that the King was not naturally
cruel (though very passionate), he was wise, and must have known
full well what any stupid man in his dominions must have known,
namely, that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the whole
Church against him.
He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent his
innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words); and he swore
solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time to
make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights, who fled into
Yorkshire, and never again dared to show themselves at Court, the
Pope excommunicated them; and they lived miserably for some
time, shunned by all their countrymen. At last, they went humbly to
Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and were buried.
It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an
opportunity arose very soon after the murder of à Becket, for the
King to declare his power in Ireland—which was an acceptable
undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, who had been converted to
Christianity by one Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago,
before any Pope existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at all
to do with them, or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused to
pay him Peter’s Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I have
elsewhere mentioned. The King’s opportunity arose in this way.
The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you can
well imagine. They were continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting
one another’s throats, slicing one another’s noses, burning one
another’s houses, carrying away one another’s wives, and
committing all sorts of violence. The country was divided into five
kingdoms—Desmond, Thomond, Connaught, Ulster, and Leinster—
each governed by a separate King, of whom one claimed to be the
chief of the rest. Now, one of these Kings, named Dermond Mac
Murrough (a wild kind of name, spelt in more than one wild kind of
way), had carried off the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her
on an island in a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite
the custom of the country), complained to the chief King, and, with
the chief King’s help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his
dominions. Dermond came over to England for revenge; and offered
to hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help
him to regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only
assisted him, then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising
any English subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service,
and aid his cause.
There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Richard de Clare, called
Strongbow; of no very good character; needy and desperate, and
ready for anything that offered him a chance of improving his
fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of
the same good-for-nothing sort, called Robert Fitz-Stephen, and
Maurice Fitz-Gerald. These three, each with a small band of
followers, took up Dermond’s cause; and it was agreed that if it
proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond’s daughter
Eva, and be declared his heir.
The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in
all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them against
immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the war, they
cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac Murrough;
who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and,
coming to one which was the head of a man whom he had much
disliked, grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose and
lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, what kind of a
gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The captives, all
through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious party making
nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the sea from
the tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the miseries and
cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where the dead lay
piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood, that
Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage-company those
mounds of corpse’s must have made, I think, and one quite worthy
of the young lady’s father.
He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various
successes achieved; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now
came King Henry’s opportunity. To restrain the growing power of
Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow’s Royal
Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the
enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in
Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs,
and so came home again with a great addition to his reputation as
Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favour of the Pope.
And now, their reconciliation was completed—more easily and mildly
by the Pope, than the King might have expected, I think.
At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few and
his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which
gradually made the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his
great spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart.
He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen—his secret crowning
of whom had given such offence to Thomas à Becket. Richard, aged
sixteen; Geoffrey, fifteen; and John, his favourite, a young boy
whom the courtiers named Lackland, because he had no inheritance,
but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All
these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and
unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the
French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the
undutiful history,
First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the French
King’s daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the
King, consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he
demanded to have a part of his father’s dominions, during his
father’s life. This being refused, he made off from his father in the
night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the
French King’s Court. Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and
Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them—escaping in
man’s clothes—but she was seized by King Henry’s men, and
immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years.
Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom the
King’s protection of his people from their avarice and oppression had
given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day he
heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying armies against
him; of Prince Henry’s wearing a crown before his own ambassadors
at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England; of
all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their father,
without the consent and approval of the Barons of France. But, with
his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of
these disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon all
Royal fathers who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs; he
hired, out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false
French King, who stirred his own blood against him; and he carried
on the war with such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference
to treat for peace.
The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green
elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war
recommenced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by leading
an army against his father; but his father beat him and his army
back; and thousands of his men would have rued the day in which
they fought in such a wicked cause, had not the King received news
of an invasion of England by the Scots, and promptly come home
through a great storm to repress it. And whether he really began to
fear that he suffered these troubles because à Becket had been
murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope,
who had now declared à Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his
own people, of whom many believed that even à Becket’s senseless
tomb could work miracles, I don’t know: but the King no sooner
landed in England than he went straight to Canterbury; and when he
came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his
horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding feet to
à Becket’s grave. There, he lay down on the ground, lamenting, in
the presence of many people; and by-and-by he went into the
Chapter House, and, removing his clothes from his back and
shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten with knotted cords (not
beaten very hard, I dare say though) by eighty Priests, one after
another. It chanced that on the very day when the King made this
curious exhibition of himself, a complete victory was obtained over
the Scots; which very much delighted the Priests, who said that it
was won because of his great example of repentance. For the
Priests in general had found out, since à Becket’s death, that they
admired him of all things—though they had hated him very cordially
when he was alive.
The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base conspiracy
of the King’s undutiful sons and their foreign friends, took the
opportunity of the King being thus employed at home, to lay siege to
Rouen, the capital of Normandy. But the King, who was
extraordinarily quick and active in all his movements, was at Rouen,
too, before it was supposed possible that he could have left England;
and there he so defeated the said Earl of Flanders, that the
conspirators proposed peace, and his bad sons Henry and Geoffrey
submitted. Richard resisted for six weeks; but, being beaten out of
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Human Resource Information Systems Basics Applications and Future Directions 4th Edition Kavanagh Test Bank

  • 1. Human Resource Information Systems Basics Applications and Future Directions 4th Edition Kavanagh Test Bank download pdf https://testbankdeal.com/product/human-resource-information-systems- basics-applications-and-future-directions-4th-edition-kavanagh-test- bank/ Visit testbankdeal.com to explore and download the complete collection of test banks or solution manuals!
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  • 5. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Chapter 6: Change Management and Implementation Test Bank Multiple Choice 1. ______ can be described as a systematic process of applying the knowledge, tools, and resources needed to effect change in transforming an organization from its current state to some future desired state as defined by its vision. a. Logical design b. Gap analysis c. Business assessment d. Change management Ans: D Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Change Management Difficulty Level: Medium 2. Unfreezing is specifically mentioned as one of the three stages in ______. a. the action-research model b. Lewin’s change model c. Nadler’s congruence d. Kotter’s change process Ans: B Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Lewin’s Change Model Difficulty Level: Medium 3. In Kotter’s change process, a. all stages must be worked through in order b. only relevant stages need to be applied to the change process c. stages do not overlap d. stages can be skipped in the interest of completing on time Ans: A Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Kotter’s Process of Leading Change
  • 6. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Difficulty Level: Medium 4. Increasingly, the failure to successfully implement information systems has to do with a. the hardware and software of the system b. the increasingly complex work flow processes c. the skills of the change leader and the people and organizational issues related to the change d. the conflict between the HR and marketing departments Ans: C Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Why Do System Failures Occur? Difficulty Level: Medium 5. Which of the following are three of the five categories of the key factors related to HRIS implementation failures? a. leadership, communication, and financial planning b. leadership, planning, and communication c. communication, training, and development d. change management, communication, and finance Ans: B Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Why Do System Failures Occur? Difficulty Level: Medium 6. Getting end users involved in the development of a system can help with ______. a. training b. user acceptance c. project planning d. timely implementation Ans: B Learning Objective: Discuss the elements important to successful HRIS implementation AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Knowledge Answer Location: User Acceptance Difficulty Level: Easy 7. Running an old system in parallel with a new system has the disadvantage of a. being a more costly alternative b. having a longer implementation timeline c. allowing employees to use the old system instead of moving to the new system
  • 7. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 d. being confusing to users Ans: C Learning Objective: Discuss the various system conversion approaches AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Knowledge Answer Location: System Conversion Difficulty Level: Easy 8. Forces for change are ______. a. internal only b. external only c. internal and external d. global Ans: C Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 9. A person who is responsible for leading an organizational change or someone who is influential and can communicate and motivate others to accept a change by informal means is called a ______. a. change agent b. change planner c. change catalyst d. action agent Ans: A Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 10. A ______ is a useful technique for looking at the advantages and disadvantages of a proposed change. a. gap analysis b. force-field analysis c. systems assessment d. change analysis Ans: B Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge
  • 8. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Lewin’s Change Model Difficulty Level: Medium 11. An organizational performance model built on the view that organizations are systems and that there needs to be a “fit” between the various organizational subsystems for optimal performance is ______. a. Kotter’s change process b. Lewin’s change model c. Nadler’s congruence model d. all change models Ans: C Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Nadler’s Congruence Model Difficulty Level: Medium True/False 1. The change agent is a person who is responsible for leading an organizational change or someone who is influential and can communicate and motivate others to accept a change by informal means. Ans: T Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 2. Process management is a systematic process of applying the knowledge, tools, and resources needed to effect change in transforming an organization from its current state to some future desired state as defined by its vision. Ans: F Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Change Management Difficulty Level: Medium 3. Organizational climate is an organization’s collective values, beliefs, experiences, and norms that shape the behavior of the group and the individuals within it. Ans: F
  • 9. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Nadler’s Congruence Model Difficulty Level: Medium 4. A force field analysis is a useful technique for looking at only the advantages of a proposed change. Ans: F Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Lewin’s Change Model Difficulty Level: Medium 5. A needs analysis indicates the differences between the current state of affairs in the organization and the desired future state. Ans: F Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 6. Kotter’s model of change is an organizational performance model that is built on the view that organizations are and there needs to be a “fit” between the various organizational subsystems for optimal performance. Ans: F Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Nadler’s Congruence Model Difficulty Level: Medium 7. Systems resistance is a term to describe a common response to any major change initiative, where individuals fail to accept the change and strive to maintain the status quo. Ans: F Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
  • 10. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Answer Location: Introduction to Management of Change Difficulty Level: Medium 8. Getting end users involved in the development of a system can help with user acceptance. Ans: T Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium Essay 1. Why is communication important in managing a technology change? Ans: • Communication plays a vital role in the success of change programs. Communication is important to a technological change because it can help to avoid several roadblocks to change including these: • Employees failing to use the new technology • Employees exhibiting resistance to change • Employees actively avoiding or harming the change efforts and communicating this negative response to other employees Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Communication Difficulty Level: Medium 2. What would you suggest an organization do in terms of communication if they were about to undergo a change in technology? Ans: An organization about to undergo a change in technology should do the following: • Communicate a clear, consistent vision • Provide employees the rationale for the change (e.g., allow them to unfreeze, create a sense of urgency) • Communicate short-term wins • Communicate training availability Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Communication Difficulty Level: Medium 3. Discuss three reasons why employees might be resistant to change.
  • 11. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Ans: Resistance to change may happen for several reasons including these: (students would only need to list three) • Employees feeling a loss of power as their responsibilities are changed • Employees feeling a loss in identity as their responsibilities, power, and status are changed • Employees feeling a loss of job security as their job roles and responsibilities are changed • Employees feeling they don’t understand the reasons for the change and are therefore not likely to support the change efforts • Employees feeling a loss of control over their lives and the structure they have created • Employees feeling comfortable in the status quo and uncomfortable with the uncertainty associated with the change efforts • Employees’ fear of lack of ability or performance associated with the change • Employee cynicism due to repeated failing change initiatives undertaken by the organization Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 4. What are some of the lessons provided by Kotter’s process of leading change? Ans: This model provides two key lessons: first, that the change process goes through a series of phases, each lasting a considerable period of time and, second, that critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact on the momentum of the change process. Learning Objective: Understand the management of change through the perspectives of various change models AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: Kotter’s Process of Leading Change Difficulty Level: Medium 5. What can be done to reduce resistance to change to a new HRIS? Ans: There are several efforts that can be initiated to help reduce resistance to change, including these: • The use of “power users” who adapt to the new technology quickly to provide one-on- one on-the-job training to those who do not learn the system as rapidly • Communication that training will be an ongoing process and not just an isolated event to help manage expectations and acceptance of the new technology • Parallel Go Live so that users can acclimate to the new system • Communication to relay the urgency and need for the system • Generate small wins that are produced by system usage and communicate these wins • Involve users in the change process
  • 12. Instructor Resource Kavanagh and Johnson, Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions, 4e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 6. Discuss the role of the change agent. Ans: A change agent is a person who is responsible for leading an organizational change or someone who is influential and can communicate and motivate others to accept a change by informal means. Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: The Change Management Process: Science and Art Difficulty Level: Medium 7. Why is user acceptance extremely critical in driving the success of an HRIS implementation? Ans: • It’s important that people understand, both emotionally and intellectually, why they need to change. • Acceptance of the new technology and new processes represents project success. Although the technical challenges in implementing any system can be great, it is the people “challenges that cannot be overlooked (although often are) during the implementation phase” of an HRIS effort. Organizations cannot simply rely on the strategy of “if you build it, they will come.” Change leaders must use appropriate change management techniques to create user acceptance; otherwise, they risk failure. • To help us achieve the successful acceptance of an HRIS, we should understand how users will develop and experience the information system. • End users must be involved and feel ownership of the new system. When future users participate in the planning and acceptance testing of a new HRIS, as well as in the process of converting to a new system, their commitment to the project increases. • It may also be a good idea to identify the most resistant users and involve them right from the beginning to gain their buy-in. Otherwise, they may influence others negatively toward the change. Learning Objective: Understand the factors that contribute to HRIS implementation failure AACSB Standard: Application of knowledge Cognitive Domain: Comprehension Answer Location: User Acceptance Difficulty Level: Medium
  • 13. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
  • 14. When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and the oars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay young nobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright colours to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the honour of The White Ship. Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was the cry the people in the distant vessels of the King heard faintly on the water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock—was filling—going down! Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few Nobles. ‘Push off,’ he whispered; ‘and row to land. It is not far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die.’ But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Prince heard the voice of his sister Marie, the Countess of Perche, calling for help. He never in his life had been so good as he was then. He cried in an agony, ‘Row back at any risk! I cannot bear to leave her!’ They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch his sister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset. And in the same instant The White Ship went down. Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard of the ship, which had broken from the mast, and now supported them. One asked the other who he was? He said, ‘I am a nobleman, Godfrey by name, the son of Gilbert de l’Aigle. And you?’ said he. ‘I am Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen,’ was the answer. Then, they said together, ‘Lord be merciful to us both!’ and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night. By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz- Stephen. ‘Where is the Prince?’ said he. ‘Gone! Gone!’ the two cried
  • 15. together. ‘Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King’s niece, nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred, noble or commoner, except we three, has risen above the water!’ Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried, ‘Woe! woe, to me!’ and sunk to the bottom. The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the young noble said faintly, ‘I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!’ So, he dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their boat— the sole relater of the dismal tale. For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King. At length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile. But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him, after all his pains (‘The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now!’ said the English people), he took a second wife—Adelais or Alice, a duke’s daughter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more children, however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognise as his successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom (called Genêt in French) in his cap for a feather. As one false man usually makes many, and as a false King, in particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, the Barons took the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice over, without in the least intending to keep it. The King was now relieved from any remaining fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six
  • 16. years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the succession to the throne secure. He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled by family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he had reigned upward of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old, he died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he had often been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought over to Reading Abbey to be buried. You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of King Henry the First, called ‘policy’ by some people, and ‘diplomacy’ by others. Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that it was true; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good. His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning—I should have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been strong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered the poet’s eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him in his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his own brains against his prison wall. King Henry the First was avaricious, revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word was less to be relied upon.
  • 17. CHAPTER XI—ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN The King was no sooner dead than all the plans and schemes he had laboured at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had never mistrusted or suspected, started up to claim the throne. Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror’s daughter, married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the late King had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. This did not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a servant of the late King, to swear that the King had named him for his heir upon his death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him. The new King, so suddenly made, lost not a moment in seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with some of it to protect his throne. If the dead King had even done as the false witness said, he would have had small right to will away the English people, like so many sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who, supported by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. Some of the powerful barons and priests took her side; some took Stephen’s; all fortified their castles; and again the miserable English people were involved in war, from which they could never derive advantage whosoever was victorious, and in which all parties plundered, tortured, starved, and ruined them. Five years had passed since the death of Henry the First—and during those five years there had been two terrible invasions by the people of Scotland under their King, David, who was at last defeated
  • 18. with all his army—when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and a large force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. A battle was fought between her troops and King Stephen’s at Lincoln; in which the King himself was taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until his battle-axe and sword were broken, and was carried into strict confinement at Gloucester. Matilda then submitted herself to the Priests, and the Priests crowned her Queen of England. She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of London had a great affection for Stephen; many of the Barons considered it degrading to be ruled by a woman; and the Queen’s temper was so haughty that she made innumerable enemies. The people of London revolted; and, in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged her at Winchester, where they took her brother Robert prisoner, whom, as her best soldier and chief general, she was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, who thus regained his liberty. Then, the long war went on afresh. Once, she was pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in the winter weather when the snow lay thick upon the ground, that her only chance of escape was to dress herself all in white, and, accompanied by no more than three faithful Knights, dressed in like manner that their figures might not be seen from Stephen’s camp as they passed over the snow, to steal away on foot, cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, and at last gallop away on horseback. All this she did, but to no great purpose then; for her brother dying while the struggle was yet going on, she at last withdrew to Normandy. In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause appeared in England, afresh, in the person of her son Henry, young Plantagenet, who, at only eighteen years of age, was very powerful: not only on account of his mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but also from his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of the French King, a bad woman, who had great possessions in France. Louis, the French King, not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace, King Stephen’s son, to invade Normandy: but Henry drove their united forces out of that country, and then returned here, to assist
  • 19. his partisans, whom the King was then besieging at Wallingford upon the Thames. Here, for two days, divided only by the river, the two armies lay encamped opposite to one another—on the eve, as it seemed to all men, of another desperate fight, when the Earl of Arundel took heart and said ‘that it was not reasonable to prolong the unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms to minister to the ambition of two princes.’ Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this when it was once uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet went down, each to his own bank of the river, and held a conversation across it, in which they arranged a truce; very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered away with some followers, and laid violent hands on the Abbey of St. Edmund’s-Bury, where he presently died mad. The truce led to a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed that Stephen should retain the crown, on condition of his declaring Henry his successor; that William, another son of the King’s, should inherit his father’s rightful possessions; and that all the Crown lands which Stephen had given away should be recalled, and all the Castles he had permitted to be built demolished. Thus terminated the bitter war, which had now lasted fifteen years, and had again laid England waste. In the next year Stephen died, after a troubled reign of nineteen years. Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he lived, a humane and moderate man, with many excellent qualities; and although nothing worse is known of him than his usurpation of the Crown, which he probably excused to himself by the consideration that King Henry the First was a usurper too—which was no excuse at all; the people of England suffered more in these dread nineteen years, than at any former period even of their suffering history. In the division of the nobility between the two rival claimants of the Crown, and in the growth of what is called the Feudal System (which made the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons), every Noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned the cruel king of all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated
  • 20. whatever cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties committed upon earth than in wretched England in those nineteen years. The writers who were living then describe them fearfully. They say that the castles were filled with devils rather than with men; that the peasants, men and women, were put into dungeons for their gold and silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up by the thumbs, were hung up by the heels with great weights to their heads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken to death in narrow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in countless fiendish ways. In England there was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, there were no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt towns, and dreary wastes, were all that the traveller, fearful of the robbers who prowled abroad at all hours, would see in a long day’s journey; and from sunrise until night, he would not come upon a home. The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from pillage, but many of them had castles of their own, and fought in helmet and armour like the barons, and drew lots with other fighting men for their share of booty. The Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on King Stephen’s resisting his ambition, laid England under an Interdict at one period of this reign; which means that he allowed no service to be performed in the churches, no couples to be married, no bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. Any man having the power to refuse these things, no matter whether he were called a Pope or a Poulterer, would, of course, have the power of afflicting numbers of innocent people. That nothing might be wanting to the miseries of King Stephen’s time, the Pope threw in this contribution to the public store—not very like the widow’s contribution, as I think, when Our Saviour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury, ‘and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.’
  • 21. CHAPTER XII—ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND PART THE FIRST Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one years old, quietly succeeded to the throne of England, according to his agreement made with the late King at Winchester. Six weeks after Stephen’s death, he and his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city; into which they rode on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst much shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of music, and strewing of flowers. The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The King had great possessions, and (what with his own rights, and what with those of his wife) was lord of one-third part of France. He was a young man of vigour, ability, and resolution, and immediately applied himself to remove some of the evils which had arisen in the last unhappy reign. He revoked all the grants of land that had been hastily made, on either side, during the late struggles; he obliged numbers of disorderly soldiers to depart from England; he reclaimed all the castles belonging to the Crown; and he forced the wicked nobles to pull down their own castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in which such dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the people. The King’s brother, Geoffrey, rose against him in France, while he was so well employed, and rendered it necessary for him to repair to that country; where, after he had subdued and made a friendly arrangement with his brother (who did not live long), his ambition to increase his possessions involved him in a war with the French King, Louis, with whom he had been on such friendly terms just before, that to the French King’s infant daughter, then a baby in
  • 22. the cradle, he had promised one of his little sons in marriage, who was a child of five years old. However, the war came to nothing at last, and the Pope made the two Kings friends again. Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had gone on very ill indeed. There were all kinds of criminals among them— murderers, thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst of the matter was, that the good priests would not give up the bad priests to justice, when they committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering and defending them. The King, well knowing that there could be no peace or rest in England while such things lasted, resolved to reduce the power of the clergy; and, when he had reigned seven years, found (as he considered) a good opportunity for doing so, in the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘I will have for the new Archbishop,’ thought the King, ‘a friend in whom I can trust, who will help me to humble these rebellious priests, and to have them dealt with, when they do wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt with.’ So, he resolved to make his favourite, the new Archbishop; and this favourite was so extraordinary a man, and his story is so curious, that I must tell you all about him. Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, named Gilbert à Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, and was willing to marry him if they could fly to a Christian country. The merchant returned her love, until he found an opportunity to escape, when he did not trouble himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant Richard, who had been taken prisoner along with him, and arrived in England and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more loving than the merchant, left her father’s house in disguise to follow him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the sea-shore. The merchant had taught her only two English words (for I suppose he must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself, and made love in that language), of which London was one, and his own name,
  • 23. Gilbert, the other. She went among the ships, saying, ‘London! London!’ over and over again, until the sailors understood that she wanted to find an English vessel that would carry her there; so they showed her such a ship, and she paid for her passage with some of her jewels, and sailed away. Well! The merchant was sitting in his counting-house in London one day, when he heard a great noise in the street; and presently Richard came running in from the warehouse, with his eyes wide open and his breath almost gone, saying, ‘Master, master, here is the Saracen lady!’ The merchant thought Richard was mad; but Richard said, ‘No, master! As I live, the Saracen lady is going up and down the city, calling Gilbert! Gilbert!’ Then, he took the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out of window; and there they saw her among the gables and water- spouts of the dark, dirty street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering crowd, and passing slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert! When the merchant saw her, and thought of the tenderness she had shown him in his captivity, and of her constancy, his heart was moved, and he ran down into the street; and she saw him coming, and with a great cry fainted in his arms. They were married without loss of time, and Richard (who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole day of the wedding; and they all lived happy ever afterwards. This merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, Thomas à Becket. He it was who became the Favourite of King Henry the Second. He had become Chancellor, when the King thought of making him Archbishop. He was clever, gay, well educated, brave; had fought in several battles in France; had defeated a French knight in single combat, and brought his horse away as a token of the victory. He lived in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince Henry, he was served by one hundred and forty knights, his riches were immense. The King once sent him as his ambassador to France; and the French people, beholding in what state he travelled, cried out in the streets, ‘How splendid must the King of England be, when this is
  • 24. only the Chancellor!’ They had good reason to wonder at the magnificence of Thomas à Becket, for, when he entered a French town, his procession was headed by two hundred and fifty singing boys; then, came his hounds in couples; then, eight waggons, each drawn by five horses driven by five drivers: two of the waggons filled with strong ale to be given away to the people; four, with his gold and silver plate and stately clothes; two, with the dresses of his numerous servants. Then, came twelve horses, each with a monkey on his back; then, a train of people bearing shields and leading fine war-horses splendidly equipped; then, falconers with hawks upon their wrists; then, a host of knights, and gentlemen and priests; then, the Chancellor with his brilliant garments flashing in the sun, and all the people capering and shouting with delight. The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that it only made himself the more magnificent to have so magnificent a favourite; but he sometimes jested with the Chancellor upon his splendour too. Once, when they were riding together through the streets of London in hard winter weather, they saw a shivering old man in rags. ‘Look at the poor object!’ said the King. ‘Would it not be a charitable act to give that aged man a comfortable warm cloak?’ ‘Undoubtedly it would,’ said Thomas à Becket, ‘and you do well, Sir, to think of such Christian duties.’ ‘Come!’ cried the King, ‘then give him your cloak!’ It was made of rich crimson trimmed with ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the Chancellor tried to keep it on, both were near rolling from their saddles in the mud, when the Chancellor submitted, and the King gave the cloak to the old beggar: much to the beggar’s astonishment, and much to the merriment of all the courtiers in attendance. For, courtiers are not only eager to laugh when the King laughs, but they really do enjoy a laugh against a Favourite. ‘I will make,’ thought King Henry the second, ‘this Chancellor of mine, Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. He will then be the head of the Church, and, being devoted to me, will help me to correct the Church. He has always upheld my power against the power of the clergy, and once publicly told some bishops (I
  • 25. remember), that men of the Church were equally bound to me, with men of the sword. Thomas à Becket is the man, of all other men in England, to help me in my great design.’ So the King, regardless of all objection, either that he was a fighting man, or a lavish man, or a courtly man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a likely man for the office, made him Archbishop accordingly. Now, Thomas à Becket was proud and loved to be famous. He was already famous for the pomp of his life, for his riches, his gold and silver plate, his waggons, horses, and attendants. He could do no more in that way than he had done; and being tired of that kind of fame (which is a very poor one), he longed to have his name celebrated for something else. Nothing, he knew, would render him so famous in the world, as the setting of his utmost power and ability against the utmost power and ability of the King. He resolved with the whole strength of his mind to do it. He may have had some secret grudge against the King besides. The King may have offended his proud humour at some time or other, for anything I know. I think it likely, because it is a common thing for Kings, Princes, and other great people, to try the tempers of their favourites rather severely. Even the little affair of the crimson cloak must have been anything but a pleasant one to a haughty man. Thomas à Becket knew better than any one in England what the King expected of him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet been in a position to disappoint the King. He could take up that proud stand now, as head of the Church; and he determined that it should be written in history, either that he subdued the King, or that the King subdued him. So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole manner of his life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought very religious to be very dirty), flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, washed the feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as miserable as he possibly could. If he had put twelve hundred
  • 26. monkeys on horseback instead of twelve, and had gone in procession with eight thousand waggons instead of eight, he could not have half astonished the people so much as by this great change. It soon caused him to be more talked about as an Archbishop than he had been as a Chancellor. The King was very angry; and was made still more so, when the new Archbishop, claiming various estates from the nobles as being rightfully Church property, required the King himself, for the same reason, to give up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not satisfied with this, he declared that no power but himself should appoint a priest to any Church in the part of England over which he was Archbishop; and when a certain gentleman of Kent made such an appointment, as he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas à Becket excommunicated him. Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you of at the close of the last chapter, the great weapon of the clergy. It consisted in declaring the person who was excommunicated, an outcast from the Church and from all religious offices; and in cursing him all over, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. This unchristian nonsense would of course have made no sort of difference to the person cursed—who could say his prayers at home if he were shut out of church, and whom none but God could judge—but for the fears and superstitions of the people, who avoided excommunicated persons, and made their lives unhappy. So, the King said to the New Archbishop, ‘Take off this Excommunication from this gentleman of Kent.’ To which the Archbishop replied, ‘I shall do no such thing.’ The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire committed a most dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of the whole nation. The King demanded to have this wretch delivered up, to be tried in the same court and in the same way as any other murderer. The Archbishop refused, and kept him in the Bishop’s prison. The King,
  • 27. holding a solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded that in future all priests found guilty before their Bishops of crimes against the law of the land should be considered priests no longer, and should be delivered over to the law of the land for punishment. The Archbishop again refused. The King required to know whether the clergy would obey the ancient customs of the country? Every priest there, but one, said, after Thomas à Becket, ‘Saving my order.’ This really meant that they would only obey those customs when they did not interfere with their own claims; and the King went out of the Hall in great wrath. Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they were going too far. Though Thomas à Becket was otherwise as unmoved as Westminster Hall, they prevailed upon him, for the sake of their fears, to go to the King at Woodstock, and promise to observe the ancient customs of the country, without saying anything about his order. The King received this submission favourably, and summoned a great council of the clergy to meet at the Castle of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when the council met, the Archbishop again insisted on the words ‘saying my order;’ and he still insisted, though lords entreated him, and priests wept before him and knelt to him, and an adjoining room was thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of the King, to threaten him. At length he gave way, for that time, and the ancient customs (which included what the King had demanded in vain) were stated in writing, and were signed and sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were called the Constitutions of Clarendon. The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop tried to see the King. The King would not see him. The Archbishop tried to escape from England. The sailors on the coast would launch no boat to take him away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst in opposition to the King, and began openly to set the ancient customs at defiance. The King summoned him before a great council at Northampton, where he accused him of high treason, and made a claim against him, which was not a just one, for an enormous sum of money.
  • 28. Thomas à Becket was alone against the whole assembly, and the very Bishops advised him to resign his office and abandon his contest with the King. His great anxiety and agitation stretched him on a sick-bed for two days, but he was still undaunted. He went to the adjourned council, carrying a great cross in his right hand, and sat down holding it erect before him. The King angrily retired into an inner room. The whole assembly angrily retired and left him there. But there he sat. The Bishops came out again in a body, and renounced him as a traitor. He only said, ‘I hear!’ and sat there still. They retired again into the inner room, and his trial proceeded without him. By-and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading the barons, came out to read his sentence. He refused to hear it, denied the power of the court, and said he would refer his cause to the Pope. As he walked out of the hall, with the cross in his hand, some of those present picked up rushes—rushes were strewn upon the floors in those days by way of carpet—and threw them at him. He proudly turned his head, and said that were he not Archbishop, he would chastise those cowards with the sword he had known how to use in bygone days. He then mounted his horse, and rode away, cheered and surrounded by the common people, to whom he threw open his house that night and gave a supper, supping with them himself. That same night he secretly departed from the town; and so, travelling by night and hiding by day, and calling himself ‘Brother Dearman,’ got away, not without difficulty, to Flanders. The struggle still went on. The angry King took possession of the revenues of the archbishopric, and banished all the relations and servants of Thomas à Becket, to the number of four hundred. The Pope and the French King both protected him, and an abbey was assigned for his residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas à Becket, on a great festival day, formally proceeded to a great church crowded with people, and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed and excommunicated all who had supported the Constitutions of Clarendon: mentioning many English noblemen by name, and not distantly hinting at the King of England himself.
  • 29. When intelligence of this new affront was carried to the King in his chamber, his passion was so furious that he tore his clothes, and rolled like a madman on his bed of straw and rushes. But he was soon up and doing. He ordered all the ports and coasts of England to be narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict might be brought into the kingdom; and sent messengers and bribes to the Pope’s palace at Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas à Becket, for his part, was not idle at Rome, but constantly employed his utmost arts in his own behalf. Thus the contest stood, until there was peace between France and England (which had been for some time at war), and until the two children of the two Kings were married in celebration of it. Then, the French King brought about a meeting between Henry and his old favourite, so long his enemy. Even then, though Thomas à Becket knelt before the King, he was obstinate and immovable as to those words about his order. King Louis of France was weak enough in his veneration for Thomas à Becket and such men, but this was a little too much for him. He said that à Becket ‘wanted to be greater than the saints and better than St. Peter,’ and rode away from him with the King of England. His poor French Majesty asked à Becket’s pardon for so doing, however, soon afterwards, and cut a very pitiful figure. At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. There was another meeting on French ground between King Henry and Thomas à Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas à Becket should be Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the customs of former Archbishops, and that the King should put him in possession of the revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you might suppose the struggle at an end, and Thomas à Becket at rest. No, not even yet. For Thomas à Becket hearing, by some means, that King Henry, when he was in dread of his kingdom being placed under an interdict, had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not only persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York who had performed that ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who had assisted at it, but sent a messenger of his own into England, in
  • 30. spite of all the King’s precautions along the coast, who delivered the letters of excommunication into the Bishops’ own hands. Thomas à Becket then came over to England himself, after an absence of seven years. He was privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had threatened that he should not live to eat a loaf of bread in England; but he came. The common people received him well, and marched about with him in a soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could get. He tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil, but was prevented. He hoped for some little support among the nobles and priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants who attended him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day preached in the Cathedral there, and told the people in his sermon that he had come to die among them, and that it was likely he would be murdered. He had no fear, however—or, if he had any, he had much more obstinacy— for he, then and there, excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was one. As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was very natural in the persons so freely excommunicated to complain to the King. It was equally natural in the King, who had hoped that this troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a mighty rage when he heard of these new affronts; and, on the Archbishop of York telling him that he never could hope for rest while Thomas à Becket lived, to cry out hastily before his court, ‘Have I no one here who will deliver me from this man?’ There were four knights present, who, hearing the King’s words, looked at one another, and went out. The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito; three of whom had been in the train of Thomas à Becket in the old days of his splendour. They rode
  • 31. away on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the third day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They quietly collected some followers here, in case they should need any; and proceeding to Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four knights and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his own house, at two o’clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, but sat down on the floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop. Thomas à Becket said, at length, ‘What do you want?’ ‘We want,’ said Reginald Fitzurse, ‘the excommunication taken from the Bishops, and you to answer for your offences to the King.’ Thomas à Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the clergy was above the power of the King. That it was not for such men as they were, to threaten him. That if he were threatened by all the swords in England, he would never yield. ‘Then we will do more than threaten!’ said the knights. And they went out with the twelve men, and put on their armour, and drew their shining swords, and came back. His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with their battle-axes; but, being shown a window by which they could enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While they were battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas à Becket had implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a sanctuary or sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to do no violent deed. He told them, again and again, that he would not stir. Hearing the distant voices of the monks singing the evening service, however, he said it was now his duty to attend, and therefore, and for no other reason, he would go. There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral, by some beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He went into the Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the Cross carried
  • 32. before him as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would have fastened the door, but he said No! it was the house of God and not a fortress. As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in the Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there was outside, on the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a strong voice, ‘Follow me, loyal servants of the King!’ The rattle of the armour of the other knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they came clashing in. It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars of the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the crypt below and in the narrow passages above, that Thomas à Becket might even at that pass have saved himself if he would. But he would not. He told the monks resolutely that he would not. And though they all dispersed and left him there with no other follower than Edward Gryme, his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever he had been in his life. The knights came on, through the darkness, making a terrible noise with their armed tread upon the stone pavement of the church. ‘Where is the traitor?’ they cried out. He made no answer. But when they cried, ‘Where is the Archbishop?’ he said proudly, ‘I am here!’ and came out of the shade and stood before them. The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the King and themselves of him by any other means. They told him he must either fly or go with them. He said he would do neither; and he threw William Tracy off with such force when he took hold of his sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadiness, he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce humour, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name, said, ‘Then die!’ and struck at his head. But the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main force of the blow, so that it only made his master bleed. Another voice from among the knights again called to Thomas à Becket to fly; but, with his blood running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent, he
  • 33. commanded himself to God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly killed him close to the altar of St. Bennet; and his body fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and brains. It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, who had so showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church, where a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of darkness; and to think of the guilty knights riding away on horseback, looking over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remembering what they had left inside. PART THE SECOND When the King heard how Thomas à Becket had lost his life in Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of the four Knights, he was filled with dismay. Some have supposed that when the King spoke those hasty words, ‘Have I no one here who will deliver me from this man?’ he wished, and meant à Becket to be slain. But few things are more unlikely; for, besides that the King was not naturally cruel (though very passionate), he was wise, and must have known full well what any stupid man in his dominions must have known, namely, that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the whole Church against him. He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent his innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words); and he swore solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time to make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and never again dared to show themselves at Court, the Pope excommunicated them; and they lived miserably for some time, shunned by all their countrymen. At last, they went humbly to Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and were buried. It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an opportunity arose very soon after the murder of à Becket, for the King to declare his power in Ireland—which was an acceptable
  • 34. undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, who had been converted to Christianity by one Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago, before any Pope existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at all to do with them, or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay him Peter’s Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I have elsewhere mentioned. The King’s opportunity arose in this way. The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you can well imagine. They were continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting one another’s throats, slicing one another’s noses, burning one another’s houses, carrying away one another’s wives, and committing all sorts of violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms—Desmond, Thomond, Connaught, Ulster, and Leinster— each governed by a separate King, of whom one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one of these Kings, named Dermond Mac Murrough (a wild kind of name, spelt in more than one wild kind of way), had carried off the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an island in a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite the custom of the country), complained to the chief King, and, with the chief King’s help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his dominions. Dermond came over to England for revenge; and offered to hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help him to regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only assisted him, then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising any English subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service, and aid his cause. There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Richard de Clare, called Strongbow; of no very good character; needy and desperate, and ready for anything that offered him a chance of improving his fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of the same good-for-nothing sort, called Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice Fitz-Gerald. These three, each with a small band of followers, took up Dermond’s cause; and it was agreed that if it proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond’s daughter Eva, and be declared his heir.
  • 35. The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them against immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the war, they cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac Murrough; who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and, coming to one which was the head of a man whom he had much disliked, grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The captives, all through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious party making nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the sea from the tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the miseries and cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage-company those mounds of corpse’s must have made, I think, and one quite worthy of the young lady’s father. He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various successes achieved; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now came King Henry’s opportunity. To restrain the growing power of Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow’s Royal Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, and so came home again with a great addition to his reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favour of the Pope. And now, their reconciliation was completed—more easily and mildly by the Pope, than the King might have expected, I think. At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few and his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which gradually made the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart. He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen—his secret crowning of whom had given such offence to Thomas à Becket. Richard, aged
  • 36. sixteen; Geoffrey, fifteen; and John, his favourite, a young boy whom the courtiers named Lackland, because he had no inheritance, but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history, First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the French King’s daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King, consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he demanded to have a part of his father’s dominions, during his father’s life. This being refused, he made off from his father in the night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French King’s Court. Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them—escaping in man’s clothes—but she was seized by King Henry’s men, and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom the King’s protection of his people from their avarice and oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying armies against him; of Prince Henry’s wearing a crown before his own ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their father, without the consent and approval of the Barons of France. But, with his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of these disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon all Royal fathers who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, who stirred his own blood against him; and he carried on the war with such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for peace. The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war
  • 37. recommenced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by leading an army against his father; but his father beat him and his army back; and thousands of his men would have rued the day in which they fought in such a wicked cause, had not the King received news of an invasion of England by the Scots, and promptly come home through a great storm to repress it. And whether he really began to fear that he suffered these troubles because à Becket had been murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope, who had now declared à Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his own people, of whom many believed that even à Becket’s senseless tomb could work miracles, I don’t know: but the King no sooner landed in England than he went straight to Canterbury; and when he came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding feet to à Becket’s grave. There, he lay down on the ground, lamenting, in the presence of many people; and by-and-by he went into the Chapter House, and, removing his clothes from his back and shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare say though) by eighty Priests, one after another. It chanced that on the very day when the King made this curious exhibition of himself, a complete victory was obtained over the Scots; which very much delighted the Priests, who said that it was won because of his great example of repentance. For the Priests in general had found out, since à Becket’s death, that they admired him of all things—though they had hated him very cordially when he was alive. The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base conspiracy of the King’s undutiful sons and their foreign friends, took the opportunity of the King being thus employed at home, to lay siege to Rouen, the capital of Normandy. But the King, who was extraordinarily quick and active in all his movements, was at Rouen, too, before it was supposed possible that he could have left England; and there he so defeated the said Earl of Flanders, that the conspirators proposed peace, and his bad sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted. Richard resisted for six weeks; but, being beaten out of
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