s the nominal government of Henry proved
extremely ineffective. Huge taxes were raised, but little good came
from them. The magnates held sullenly aloof; the people grumbled; the
Church lamented the evil days. Yet for five and twenty years the
wretched system went on, not so much by reason of its own strength as
because there was no one vigorous enough to overthrow it.

The author of all this mischief was a man of some noble and many
attractive qualities. Save when an occasional outburst of temper showed
him a true son of John, Henry was the kindest, mildest, most amiable of
men. He was the first king since William the Conqueror in whose private
life the austerest critics could find nothing blameworthy. His piety
stands high, even when estimated by the standards of the thirteenth
century. He was well educated and had a touch of the artist's
temperament, loving fair churches, beautiful sculpture, delicate
goldsmith's work, and richly illuminated books. He had a horror of
violence, and never wept more bitter tears than when he learned how
treacherously his name had been used to lure Richard Marshal to his
doom. But he was extraordinarily deficient in stability of purpose. For
the moment it was easy to influence him either for good or evil, but
even the ablest of his counsellors found it impossible to retain any
hold over him for long. One day he lavished all his affection on Hubert
de Burgh; the next he played into the hands of his enemies. In the same
way he got rid of Peter des Roches, the preceptor of his infancy, the
guide of his early manhood. Jealous, self-assertive, restless, and
timid, he failed in just those qualities that his subjects expected to
find in a king. Born and brought up in England, and never leaving it
save for short and infrequent visits to the continent, he was proud of
his English ancestors and devoted to English saints, more especially to
royal saints such as Edward the Confessor and Edmund of East Anglia.
Yet he showed less sympathy with English ways than many of his
foreign-born predecessors. Educated under alien influences, delighting
in the art, the refinement, the devotion, and the absolutist principles
of foreigners, he seldom trusted a man of English birth. Too weak to
act for himself, too suspicious to trust his natural counsellors, he
found the friendship and advice for which he yearned in foreign
favourites and kinsmen. Thus it was that the hopes excited by the fall
of the Poitevins wer