ENRICO II, king of ENGLAND. — Son of Goffredo Plantageneto and Matilde, daughter and heir of Enrico I, born on 25 March 1133, died on 6 July 1189 at Le Mans. After the death of his cousin Stefano, count of Blois, crowned king on 19 December 1154, he approved the rights and liberties that England had enjoyed under his predecessor and undertook to repair the damage caused by his rule.
He energetically consolidated the absolute power of the king, assisted by his chancellor Thomas Becket, whom, after the death of the archbishop Teobaldo of Canterbury, he compelled to accept the primatial dignity, believing that in him he would find a servile instrument of his aspirations. But Becket presented himself as a willing defender of ecclesiastical rights, especially the clergy’s forensic privilege, and did not sign the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which subordinated the freedom of the English Catholic Church to the king’s pleasure. Because of the sovereign’s threats, he fled to France to Pope Alessandro III, who sought to avoid a rupture with E. After six years of exile, having returned to his homeland, he was murdered in his cathedral on 29 December 1170 by knights who claimed to be protecting the king’s authority. Popular fury turned against the king, who, before the papal legate, made a solemn oath of purification and promised to renounce the customs that had become established during his reign against the Church (1172); he also submitted to the humiliation of a pilgrimage to the victim’s tomb. But in fact the condition of the Church vis-à-vis the State remained unchanged. E., an excellent statesman and warrior and one of the most powerful kings of his time, largely lost his authority and his successes through his intemperance.