At last the moment seemed come, not only to win a peace with France, but to carry out a long-cherished scheme for the ordering of the Angevin Empire.  He met the King of France at Montmirail on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1169, and the mighty Angevin ruler bowed himself before his feebler suzerain lord to renew his homage.  “On this day, my lord king, on which the three kings offered gifts to the King of kings, myself, my sons, and my land, I commend to your keeping.”  His continental estates were divided among his sons, to be held under his supreme authority.  The eldest, Henry, who had in 1160 done homage to Louis for Normandy, now did homage for Anjou, Maine, and Britanny.  Richard received Aquitaine, and Geoffrey was set over Britanny under his elder brother as overlord.  This division of Henry’s dominions by no means implied any intention on the king’s part of giving up the administration of the provinces.  It was but the first step towards the realization of his imperial system, by which he was to reign as supreme lord, surrounded by the sub-rulers of his various provinces.  Harassed as he had been with ceaseless wars, from the Welsh mountains to the Pyrenees, he might well believe that such a system would best provide for the defence of his unwieldy states; “When he alone had the rule of his kingdom,” as he said later, “he had let nothing go of his rights; and now, when many were joined in the government of his lands, it would be a shame that any part of them were lost.”  In the difficulties of internal administration the system might prove no less useful.  That any serious difference of interest could arise between himself and the sons whom he loved “more than a father,” Henry could never, then or afterwards, believe.  He rather trusted that a wise division of authority between them might secure the administrative power in the royal house, and prevent the growth of excessive influence among his ministers.  But for all his hopes, the treaty of Montmirail was in fact a crowning triumph for France; it was virtually the first breaking up of the Empire, and had in it the seeds of Henry’s later ruin.

There was another side to the treaty.  Henry and Thomas met at Montmirail for the first time since the council of Northampton over four years before, to renew a quarrel in which no terms of peace were possible.  The old hopeless dispute raged afresh, the king demanding a vow to obey the “customs of the kingdom,” Thomas insisting on his clause “saving my order,” “saving the honour of God.”  The former weary negotiations began again; new envoys hurried backwards and forwards; interminable letters argued the limits of the temporal and spiritual powers in phrases which lost nothing of their arrogance from the fact that neither side had the power to enforce their claims.  The Primate would have no counsels.  “Believe me,” Thomas wrote of Henry, “who know the manners of the man, he is of such a disposition that nothing but punishment can mend.”