HENRY II, King of England. - Son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and Matilda, daughter and heiress of Henry I, b. 25 March 1133, d. 6 July 1189 at Le Mans. After the death of his cousin Stephen, count of Blois, crowned king on 19 Dec. 1154, he approved the rights and liberties which England had enjoyed under his predecessor and strove to repair the damages of the latter's government.
He energetically consolidated the absolute power of the king, aided by his chancellor Thomas Becket, whom, after the death of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, he forced to accept the primatial dignity, believing he would find in him a servile instrument of his aspirations. But Becket set himself up as a willing defender of ecclesiastical rights, especially of the forensic privilege of the clergy, and did not sign the constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which subordinated the freedom of the English Catholic Church to the king's good pleasure. Because of the sovereign's threats, he fled to France to Pope Alexander III, who sought to avoid a rupture with H. After an exile of six years, having returned to his homeland, he was murdered in his cathedral on 29 Dec. 1170 by knights who claimed to be protecting the king's authority. Popular fury turned against the king, who before the pontifical legate made a solemn oath of purgation and promised to renounce the customs that had grown up during his reign against the Church (1172); he also submitted to the humiliation of a pilgrimage to the tomb of the victim. But in fact the conditions of the Church in relation to the State remained unchanged. H., an excellent statesman and warrior and one of the most powerful kings of his time, lost, in large part through his lack of moderation, his authority and his successes.
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Lucchesio Spalding