1174.} This great defeat did not dishearten the malecontents; who,
being supported by the alliance of so many foreign princes, and
encouraged by the king's own sons, determined to persevere in their
enterprise. The earl of Ferrars, Roger de Moubray, Archetil de Mallory,
Richard de Moreville, Hamo de Mascie, together with many friends of the
earls of Leicester and Chester, rose in arms: the fidelity of the
earls of Clare and Glocester was suspected; and the guardian, though
vigorously supported by Geoffrey, bishop of Lincoln, the king's natural
son by the fair Rosamond, found it difficult to defend himself, on all
quarters, from so many open and concealed enemies. The more to augment
the confusion, the king of Scotland, on the expiration of the truce,
broke into the northern provinces with a great army[*] of eighty
thousand men; which, though undisciplined and disorderly, and better
fitted for committing devastation, than for executing any military
enterprise, was become dangerous from the present factious and turbulent
spirit of the kingdom.

[* W. Heming. p. 501.]

Henry, who had baffled all his enemies in France, and had put his
frontiers in a posture of defence, now found England the seat of danger;
and he determined by his presence to overawe the malecontents, or by
his conduct and courage to subdue them. He lauded at Southampton; and
knowing the influence of superstition over the minds of the people,
he hastened to Canterbury, in order to make atonement to the ashes of
Thomas a Becket, and tender his submissions to a dead enemy. As soon as
he came within sight of the church of Canterbury, he dismounted walked
barefoot towards it, prostrated himself before the shrine of the saint,
remained in fasting and prayer during a whole day, and watched all night
the holy relics. Not content with this hypocritical devotion towards
a man whose violence and ingratitude had so long disquieted his
government, and had been the object of his most inveterate animosity, he
submitted to a penance still more singular and humiliating. He assembled
a chapter of the monks, disrobed himself before them, put a scourge of
discipline into the hands of each, and presented his bare shoulders to
the lashes which these ecclesiastics successively inflicted upon him.
Next day he received absolution; and, departing for London, got soon
after the agreeable intelligence of a great victory which his generals
had obtained over the Scots, and which,