Henry I of England - Activities As A King

Activities As A King

Henry's need for funds to consolidate his position led to an increase in the activities of centralised government. As king, Henry carried out social and judicial reforms; he issued the Charter of Liberties and restored the laws of Edward the Confessor.

Between 1103 and 1107 Henry was involved in a dispute with Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Paschal II in the investiture controversy, which was settled in the Concordat of London in 1107. It was a compromise. In England, a distinction was made in the king's chancery between the secular and ecclesiastical powers of the prelates. Employing the distinction, Henry gave up his right to invest his bishops and abbots, but reserved the custom of requiring them to come and do homage for the "temporalities" (the landed properties tied to the episcopate), directly from his hand, after the prelate had sworn homage and feudal vassalage in the ceremony called commendatio, the commendation ceremony, like any secular vassal.

Some of Henry's acts are brutal by modern standards. In 1090 he reportedly threw a treacherous burgher named Conan Pilatus from the tower of Rouen; the tower was known from then on as "Conan's Leap." In 1119, Henry's son-in-law, Eustace de Pacy, and Ralph Harnec, the constable of Ivry, exchanged their children as hostages. When Eustace inexplicably blinded Harnec's son, Harnec demanded vengeance. King Henry allowed Harnec to blind and mutilate Eustace's two daughters, who were also Henry's own grandchildren. Eustace and his wife, Juliane, were outraged and threatened to rebel. Henry arranged to meet his daughter at a parley at Breteuil, only Juliane drew a crossbow and attempted to assassinate her father. She was captured and confined to the castle, but escaped by leaping from a window into the moat below. Some years later Henry was reconciled with his daughter and son-in-law.

During his reign, King Henry introduced the tally stick, which started primarily as a form of record keeping but evolved into a monetary system. Since tally sticks could be used to pay the taxes imposed by the king, he created a demand for tally sticks. This demand expanded their role and they began to circulate as a form of money. This practice survived for a little over 700 years, until it was finally retired in 1826. The Bank of England then continued to use wooden tally sticks until 1826 when they were taken out of circulation and stored in the Houses of Parliament until 1834, when the authorities decided that the tallies were no longer required and that they should be burned. As it happened, they were burned rather too enthusiastically and in the resulting conflagration the Houses of Parliament was destroyed.