If you are a constitutional lawyer or historian in an English-speaking country you may have heard of “Clarendon Palace” or “Clarendon Lodge.” From 1164 to 1166 this medieval palace, three miles east of Salisbury, in Wiltshire, echoed with heated argument in Norman French. That debate marked the birthing pains of what is sometimes called England’s first constitution.
I walked among Clarendon’s ruins once, one of sixteen small boys in grey flannel shirts and uniforms, with blue ties and matching caps. We were the choristers of Salisbury Cathedral in the mid-1950s, kept in school to sing Christmas or Easter services after the other boys had gone home for the holidays. During these extra days in school, teachers took us on outings. Hence our trip to Clarendon’s ruins.
My memory of that day finds me walking the length of the king’s court, trying to keep to the few remaining brown floor tiles covered with yellow heraldic and beastly designs. Those surviving tiles were interspersed by clumps of bramble big as haystacks, jumbles of nettle, willow-herb and ragged-robin.
In the twelfth century, Clarendon was indeed a palace. In 1166, King Henry II reformed English justice here (The Clarendon Assize). But it is the events of 1164 which trigger my memory among this decay. At the end hidden from me by brambles, King Henry II once sat on the king’s bench, shouting invective at his erstwhile friend and chancellor, Thomas Becket, who had become an intransigent archbishop of Canterbury.
At Clarendon in 1164, Henry set out to curb the power of Church courts. Henry’s queen-consort, Eleanor of Aquitaine, explains: “More than two men in ten pleaded exemption from our royal courts by virtue of their claims to be in holy orders. Rascals of all stripes claimed the Church’s protection. Better a dozen Paternosters than a whipping! Better six hundred Hail Marys than one noose!” The king’s law could be evaded as long as its reach was constrained. “Before the king’s law could be seen to be just,” adds Eleanor, “the mesh in the net had to be of one size.”
Henry’s demands on the Church, the Constitutions of Clarendon, were too severe. Thomas Becket turned his back on the king and walked away, leaving Henry and his conclave of nobles and prelates astounded. Becket passed out of the hall at the point where I stood eight centuries later.
This incident sowed several tragedies, constitutional and personal. Henry had insisted that his nine year old son and heir, Young Henry, should sit with him on the king’s bench, as if father and son jointly judged Becket. Becket was Young Henry’s godfather, tutor, advisor, protector and friend; Young Henry and his betrothed had lived for several years in Becket’s household. Possibly the boy never recovered emotionally from this event. His short life mixed arrogance with tragic failings.
Constitutional separation between Church and state found wings on that day, between walls long since levelled. Young Henry’s mother, Eleanor, described another rift: “In that instant Young Henry watched the love between his father and his mentor rend like the veil of the Temple. Poor boy. He never healed. What a sad breach. So signal. So complete. It was there that our Angevin future cankered and started to die.”
Photo: Ruins of Clarendon Palace, by Andrew Bowden, via CC BY-SA 2.0