Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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By these expedients, along with many others, Henry raised the English monarchy, always in the ascendant since the Conquest, to the very zenith of its power, and left to his sons the entire machinery of government in perfect working order, combining high administrative efficiency with great strength. Full of bitter strifes and troubles as his reign of thirty-five years had been, nothing had interfered with the vigour and success of the policy whereby he tightened his hold on England. Neither the long bitter struggle with Becket and the Church, ending as it did in Henry’s personal humiliation, nor the unnatural warfare with his sons, which involved the depths of personal suffering to the King and hastened his death in 1189, was allowed to interfere with his projects of reform in England.

The last twenty years of his life had been darkened for him, and proved troubled and anarchic in the extreme to his continental dominions; but in England profound peace reigned. The last serious revolt of the powers of feudal anarchy had been suppressed in 1173 with characteristic thoroughness and moderation. After that date, the English monarchy retained its supremacy almost without an effort.