Henry I., king of England, the youngest and only English-born son of William the Conqueror, was born in 1068, according to tradition at Selby, in Yorkshire. His father left him £5000, with a part of which he bought the districts of the Cotentin and the Avranchin from his brother, Robert of Normandy; and, when war broke out between William Rufus and Robert, Henry, although he had been imprisoned by the latter, helped him to defend Normandy, and saved his capital city, Rouen, for him. Yet in the treaty which followed (1091) he was excluded from the succession, and his brothers joined to deprive him of his lands. Immediately after the death of William he rode to Winchester, seized the royal treasure, and in the absence of Robert, who was then on his way home from crusading in Palestine, was elected king by such of the Witan as were at hand, and crowned at Westminster four days after. He at once issued a charter restoring the laws of Edward and the Conqueror, recalled Anselm, and set about the stern reforms which gained him among his people the name of the Lion of Justice. He also strengthened his position by a marriage with Eadgyth (her name was changed to Matilda), daughter of Malcolm of Scotland and the good Queen Margaret, who was descended from the old English royal house. The highest honours under Henry, both in church and state, were strictly withheld from men of English blood; yet it was on the native English support that the king relied; and in 1101, when the nobles conspired to bring in Robert, who had now returned home, the English stuck faithfully by the king born in their own land, and the Normans were powerless. Without a battle Robert was induced to resign his claims, and Henry then established his power so securely that there was peace in England to the end of his reign. On the Scottish border also there was peace, and only twice (1114 and 1121) did Henry feel compelled to make expeditions into Wales. His controversy with Anselm (q.v.) regarding investiture, too, was conducted without bitterness on either side, and resulted in a compromise; while a later dispute with the papal see was ended in 1119 by Calixtus solemnly confirming the ancient customs of England.
Robert had received a pension of 3000 marks, but in 1105-6 Henry made war upon his badly-governed duchy; Robert was defeated in a bloody battle beneath the walls of Tinchebrai, on September 28, 1106, and was kept a prisoner during the remaining twenty-eight years of his life. The acquisition of Normandy, the ancient patrimony of his family, had been a point of ambition with Henry; to hold it he was obliged to spend long periods away from his kingdom, and to wage a nearly constant warfare, supported largely by English arms and by subsidies wrung from his English subjects. The French king, Louis the Fat, and the Counts of Anjou and Flanders took part with William, Robert's youthful son; but the first war ended in the peace of Gisors (1113), on terms favourable to Henry; and in the following year his daughter Matilda was married to the Emperor Henry V. of Germany, and a new alliance thus formed. The second war (1116-20) was marked by the defeat of the French king at Noyon in 1119; and in the same year he presented a formal complaint to Calixtus II. at the Council of Rheims. Henry, however, was able in a personal interview to satisfy the pope, who succeeded in bringing about a peace. In 1119, also, Henry's only son, William, was married to the daughter of the Count of Anjou; but in 1120 he was drowned by the sinking of the White Ship on his way from Normandy to England, and Henry's successes in arms and intrigue were darkened for life. A fresh rebellion in Normandy ended in the battle of Bourgetheroulde (1124), and in cruel punishments inflicted on the principal prisoners taken. In 1126 Matilda, now a widow, came back from Germany; in the same year Henry induced the Witan to swear to receive her as Lady of England and Normandy if he should die without heirs-male; and before the year was out she was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, the son of the Count of Anjou. In 1127 Robert's son William was put in possession of the vacant county of Flanders; but in 1128 he died, and the wars between Henry and Louis ceased. Henry himself died on December 1, 1135, and the crown was seized by his sister Adela's son, Stephen of Blois.
Henry I. was styled Beauclerc, or the Scholar, in honour of his learning, which, for a king in his age, was not undeserving of distinction. Able he was, but crafty, passionless in his policy, and often guilty of acts of cold-blooded cruelty; yet he was at least consistent in his severity, unmoved by impulses such as, generally evil but sometimes good, had governed Rufus; and even his licentiousness was judged lightly after the foul vices of the Red King. Law was administered during his reign with strictness, and generally with fairness; the innocent might now and then be confounded with the guilty, and the penalties were often severe and barbarous enough, but, at the worst, only individuals suffered from his cruelty, while the great mass of his subjects reaped the blessings of his firm rule. Moreover, under the equal weight of his heavy hand, Normans and English were slowly compressed into one nation; and after the landing of Robert at Portsmouth in 1101, never again did the two races meet in arms face to face on English soil. 'Good man he was,' writes the chronicler, 'and mickle awe was of him. Durst none man misdo with other on his time. Peace he made for man and deer.'
See Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. v. (1876); also Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (1874); and Dean Church's Saint Anselm (1870).