near Alençon, and there made peace with him, for, as he had by gifts won over to his side many of the nobles of Maine, the count was not unwilling to come to terms; he did homage to Henry for Maine, and promised to give his daughter in marriage to Henry's son William. Henry pardoned the Count of Evreux and some other banished lords. Shortly afterwards Henry and Louis made peace at Gisors. The amount of Henry's success may be gauged by the concessions of the French king, who acknowledged his right to Bellême, Maine, and all Brittany. He received the homage of the Count of Brittany, subdued the forces which held out in Bellême, and then returned to England.
During Henry's reign the English power in Wales was strengthened by colonisation and conquest. The English regarded with dislike the large number of Flemish which had settled in their country since the Conquest, and Henry in 1111 settled them in the southern part of Dyfed or Pembrokeshire, where they formed a vigorous Teutonic colony, held their ground against the Welsh, and converted a land originally Welsh into an outlying English district, ‘Little England beyond Wales’ (Gesta Regum, iv. 311, v. 401; Flor. Wig. ii. 64; Orderic, p. 900; Ann. Cambriæ, an. 1106; Freeman, English Towns and Districts, pp. 33–9). Barnard, an English bishop of Norman race, was appointed to the see of St. David's, and professed obedience to Canterbury (Councils and Eccl. Docs. i. 307); obedience was likewise professed by the Bishop of Llandaff, who was consecrated by Anselm in 1107. Owen, the prince of Powys, caused a good deal of trouble, and carried on constant wars against the Normans and Flemings until he was slain in 1116. After one of his raids Henry granted the present Cardiganshire to Gilbert of Clare, who subdued the district in 1111. After his return from Normandy, Henry, in the summer of 1114, led a large army into Wales against Gruffyd of North Wales and Owen. On his approach the Welsh made peace with him, and after ordering castles to be built he returned, and on 21 Sept. embarked at Portsmouth for Normandy, where he remained until the following July. His relations with Scotland, where three of his wife's brothers reigned in succession, were uniformly peaceful. David I [q. v.], the queen's youngest brother, passed his youth at the English court, and Henry gave him an English wife and an English earldom. At the same time he was careful to strengthen the borders against the Scots as well as against the Welsh. The eastern border he gave in charge to Ranulf Flambard, bishop of Durham, whom he reinstated in his see in 1107 (Orderic, p. 833); over the western border he first set an earl of Carlisle, and on his death divided the district of Carlisle into baronies, and gave it a county organisation. He also carried on the work begun by his brother of making Carlisle an English city by completing the monastery of Austin canons, and making it the cathedral church of a bishop of Carlisle. In 1114 he sent his daughter Matilda over to Germany to be the wife of the Emperor Henry V; at the time of her betrothal in 1110 he had levied an aid which the English chronicler says was specially burdensome because it came in a year of scarcity. When he was in Normandy in 1115 he made all the barons do homage and swear fealty to his son William as heir to the duchy, and on 19 March 1116 he caused the prelates, nobles, and barons throughout the whole of England to do the like at an assembly which he held at Salisbury (Anglo-Saxon Chron. a. 1115; Flor. Wig. ii. 69; Eadmer, Historia Novorum, v. col. 496; Dr. Stubbs considers this to have been a general muster of landowners, Constitutional History, i. 358; and William of Malmesbury says that the oath was taken by all freemen of every degree in England and Normandy, Gesta Regum, v. 419. In the face of the English chronicler and Florence this may perhaps be put down as merely rhetorical).
After Easter Henry again visited Normandy, and, taking up the quarrel of his nephew Theobald with Louis VI, sent forces into France, took the castle of St. Clair, and did much damage. Provoked by this invasion, Louis adopted the cause of Robert's son William, and attacked Normandy, and, as he knew that the dukes had thoroughly fortified the border, seized by a clever stratagem a little town called Gue Nichaise, where there was a bridge across the Epte. Henry tried to blockade him by building two forts against his quarters, but Louis called them ‘Malassis’ and ‘hare's-form’ (trulla leporis), stormed Malassis, and carried on a desultory warfare Suger, p. 43; Orderic, p. 842). The French king was joined by Baldwin of Flanders and Fulk of Anjou, who combined with him to place William Clito in possession of Normandy. Many of the Norman barons revolted, and Amaury of Montfort, who claimed Evreux, the fief of his uncle William, was active in gaining fresh adherents to the league against Henry. During 1117 Henry remained in Normandy, and in the following year matters became serious. While Count Baldwin was mortally wounded at Eu, and the king did not suffer any important defeat, the defection of his lords still continued. On
