Saturday, March 18, 2017

Churchill on the English jury (part 1)

Winston S. Churchill is more admired by some right-of-center Americans than by others, but all confess that Churchill was a good writer. It is in Churchill's role as a writer that we heed his voice today. In book two of Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956), Churchill relates the origin of the English jury. His story begins with an accident:
The Anglo-Norman state was now powerful. Henry [fourth child, third son of William the Conquerer] was lord of England, Normandy, and Maine. In 1109, his only legitimate daughter, Maud, was betrothed to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany. On the other hand, the reunion of England and Normandy after [the Battle of Tenchebrai] had stirred the hostility of France.... A wearing warfare darkened the later years of the reign.
What may be judged malignant fortune now intervened. The King had a son, his heir apparent, successor indisputable. On this young man of seventeen many hopes and assurances were founded. In the winter of 1120 he was coming back from a visit to France in the royal yacht called the White Ship. Off the coast of Normandy the vessel struck a rock,...
This was the accident, without which the English jury as we know it might never have emerged.
[T]he vessel struck a rock and all but one were drowned. The prince had indeed been embarked in a boat. He returned to rescue his sister. In this crisis the principle of equality asserted itself with such violence that at the ship's side so many leaped into the boat that it sank. Two men remained afloat, a butcher and a knight. "Where is the prince?" asked the knight above the waves. "All are drowned," replied the butcher. "Then," said the knight, "all is lost for England," and threw up his hands. The butcher came safe to shore with the tale.
The last italics are mine, but our story is only beginning.
None dared tell ... the King. When at last he heard the tidings "he never smiled again." This was more than the agony of personal grief for an only son. It portended the breakdown of a system and prospect upon which the whole life's work of Henry stood. The spectre of a disputed succession glared again upon England, and every noble in his castle balanced his chances upon who would succeed to the crown.
There were two claimants, each of which had a fair share of right. The king had a daughter, [Maud, earlier mentioned], but although there is no salic law in the Norman code this clanking, jangling aristocracy, mailed and spurred, did not take kindly to the idea of a woman's rule. Against her stood the claim of Stephen, [Henry's nephew], son of [William the] Conquerer's daughter Adela [who was Henry's elder sister]. Stephen of Blois, no inconsiderable figure on the Continent, with great estates in England added, was, after his elder brother had waived his claim, the rightful male heir. Throughout Christendom the accusation of violating an oath was almost mortal,... But here was a dilemma which every man could settle for himself according to his interests and ambitions. Split—utter, honest, total!...
Upon [his] daughter, after mature consideration, Henry founded all his hopes. On two separate occasions he called his murmuring barons together and solemnly swore them to stand by Maud.... The English mood in later ages has never barred queens, and perhaps queens have served them best. But here at this time was a deep division, and a quarrel in which all parties and all interests could take sides....
Henry I expired on December 1, 1135.... [Maud] was with her husband in Anjou and Stephen was first on the spot. Swiftly returning from Blois, made his way to London and claimed the crown....
There was an additional complication. Henry I had a bastard son, Robert of Gloucester, a distinguished soldier and a powerful magnate in the West Country....
King David of Scotland, persuaded of the English decay, crossed the Border and lay claim to Northumbria....
The civil war developed.... Stephen, faced with powerful rivals, failed to preserve the rights of the Crown. The royal revenues decreased, royal control of administration lapsed; much of the machinery passed for a time out of use. Baronial jurisdiction reasserted its control; baronial castles overawed the people. It seemed that a divided succession had wrecked the work of the Norman kings....
The disputed reign of Stephen and the consequent civil wars continued seventeen years, during which Maud's son Henry, whose father was Holy Roman Emperor,[*] came of age.
Before he was twenty, Henry [Maud's son] had cleared Normandy of rebels and pacified Anjou. He turned forthwith to England. It was a valiant figure that landed in January 1153, and from all over England, distracted by civil wars, hearts and eyes turned toward him. Merlin had prophesied a deliverer;...
You didn't know that Merlin himself had a hand in the founding of the English jury, did you?
[H]ad [young Henry] not in his veins blood that ran back to William the Conquerer, and beyond him, through his grandmother Matilda, wife of Henry I, to Cedric and the long-vanished Anglo-Saxon line? A wild surge of hope greeted him from the tormented Islanders,...
All this because a yacht had struck a rock, and a prince had died, failing to save his sister.
[A]nd when [young Henry] knelt after his landing in the first church he found "to pray for a space, in the manner of soldiers," the priest pronounced the will of the nation in the words, "Behold there cometh the Lord, the Ruler, and the kingdom in his hand."
There followed battles: Malmesbury, where the sleet, especially directed by Amighty God, beat upon the faces of his foes; Wallingford, where King Stephen by divine interpositions fell three times from his horse before going into action. Glamour, terror, success, attended this youthful, puissant warrior, who had not only his sword, but his title-deeds. The baronage saw their interest favoured by a stalemate; they wanted neither a victorious Stephen nor a triumphant Henry. [Notwithstanding,] a treaty was concluded at Winchester in 1153 whereby Stephen made Henry his adopted son and his appointed heir. On this Henry did homage and made all the formal submissions, and when a year later Stephen died he was acclaimed and crowned King of England with more general hope and rejoicing than had ever uplifted any monarch in England since the days of Alfred the Great.
In part 2, Churchill will begin to explain how these developments made possible the English jury.

[*] Correction: the Emperor had died and Maud had remarried. Young Henry's father was thus Maud's second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou.

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