Henry II

The first king of England's Plantagenet line, Henry II was the son of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England. His mother's long civil war with King Stephen ended in a settlement that recognised Henry as Stephen's heir, and he came to the throne in 1154 at the age of twenty-one.

By that date Henry already controlled an exceptional collection of territories. He had inherited Anjou and Normandy from his parents, and his marriage in 1152 to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the recently divorced wife of Louis VII of France, brought him her vast duchy in south-western France. As king he thus ruled lands stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees, all held in uneasy combination with his position as a vassal of the French crown. Much of his reign was spent travelling between these dominions and defending them against Louis VII and, later, Philip II.

Within England, Henry restored royal authority after the disorder of Stephen's reign, demolishing unlicensed castles and reorganising justice and finance. The Assize of Clarendon of 1166 and the expanded use of royal courts, itinerant justices, and juries laid foundations for the English common law. His attempt to assert royal jurisdiction over the clergy, set out in the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164, produced a prolonged quarrel with Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 by four of Henry's knights damaged the king's reputation, and he later performed public penance at Becket's tomb.

Henry's children connected the dynasty to courts across Europe: his daughter Matilda married Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony; Eleanor married Alfonso VIII of Castile; and Joan married William II of Sicily. His sons proved harder to manage. In 1173-74 his wife and elder sons rebelled with support from Louis VII of France and William the Lion of Scotland, and although Henry prevailed, family conflict recurred for the rest of his life. He died at Chinon in July 1189, shortly after a final defeat by Philip II of France and his son Richard, who succeeded him as Richard I.