Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
This was a remarkable and dysfunctional royal family. England's King Henry II
(1133-1189)—Becket's murderer—lies alongside his wife and their children. Henry's
wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (the one reading a book while dead), was the ex-wife of the
King of France and was renowned as Europe's most sophisticated lady. The wedding of
Henry and Eleanor united their two families' large land holdings, creating an “England”
that stretched as far down as southern France. It would eventually take the Hundred Years'
War (1336-1453) to sort out the current border between England and France.
As king, Henry placed church courts under secular control, causing the rift that led
to Becket's bloody murder. In Henry's old age, his children rebelled, taking arms against
him for their slice of the royal pie. Henry's heir, Richard the Lionhearted, famous as the
good guy in the Robin Hood legend, was actually an absentee monarch—a French-speak-
ing dandy allied with the King of France. Younger son John, the “evil” King John of the
Robin Hood legend, became a tyrant, prompting English nobles to make him sign the doc-
ument called the Magna Carta, which established the principle that even kings must follow
the law. (The British Library has a copy of the Magna Carta—
see the British Library
Tour chapter.)
