gland was still dragged by the
policy of her Angevin rulers into all the complications of European
politics. The friendships and the hatreds of her king settled who were
to be the allies and who the foes of England, and practically fixed the
course of her foreign policy for seven hundred years. A traditional
sympathy lingered on from Henry's days with Germany, Italy, Sicily, and
Spain; but the connection with Anjou forced England into a hostility
with France which had no real ground in English feeling or English
interests; the national hatred took a deeper character when the feudal
nobles clung to the support of the French king against the English
sovereign and the English people, and "generation handed on to generation
an enmity whose origin had long been forgotten." From the disastrous
Crusade of 1191, "from the siege of Acre," to use the words of Dr.
Stubbs, "and the battle of Arsouf to the siege of Sebastopol and the
battles of the Crimea, English and French armies never met again except
as enemies."

CHAPTER III

THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND

The building up of his mighty empire was not the only task which filled
the first years of Henry's reign. Side by side with this went on another
work of peaceful internal administration which we can but dimly trace in
the dearth of all written records, but which was ultimately to prove of
far greater significance than the imperial schemes that in the eyes of his
contemporaries took so much larger proportions and shone with so much
brighter lustre.

The restoration of outward order had not been difficult, for the anarchy
of Stephen's reign, terrible as it was, had only passed over the surface
of the national life and had been vanquished by a single effort. But the
new ruler of England had to begin his work of administration not only
amid the temporary difficulties of a general disorganization, but amid
the more permanent difficulties of a time of transition, when society was
seeking to order itself anew in its passage from the medieval to the
modern world; and his victory over the most obvious and aggressive forms
of disorder was the least part of his task. Through all the time of
anarchy powerful forces had been steadily at work with which the king had
now to reckon. A new temper and new aspirations had been kindled by the
troubles of the last years. The deposition of Stephen, the elections of
Matilda and of Henry, had been so many formal declarations that the king
r