Henry II of England - Legacy

Legacy

In the immediate aftermath of Henry's death, Richard successfully claimed his father's lands; he later left on the Third Crusade, but never married Alice as he had agreed with Philip Augustus. Eleanor was released from house arrest and regained control of Aquitaine, where she ruled on Richard's behalf. Henry's empire, however, did not survive long and collapsed during the reign of his youngest son John, when Philip captured all of the Angevin possessions in France except Gascony. This collapse had various causes, including long-term changes in economic power, growing cultural differences between England and Normandy but, in particular, the fragile, familial nature of Henry's empire.

Henry was not a popular king and few expressed much grief on news of his death. Writing in the 1190s, William of Newburgh commented that "in his own time he was hated by almost everyone"; he was widely criticised by his own contemporaries, even within his own court. Many of the changes Henry introduced during his long rule, however, had major long-term consequences. His legal changes are generally considered to have laid the basis for English Common Law, with the Exchequer court a forerunner of the later Common Bench at Westminster. Henry's itinerant justices also influenced his contemporaries' legal reforms: Philip Augustus' creation of itinerant bailli, for example, clearly drew on the Henrician model. Henry's intervention in Brittany, Wales and Scotland also had a significant long-term impact on the development of their societies and governmental systems.