While the King was thus employed at home, intelligence came that his brother Geoffrey was endeavouring by force to possess himself of the Earldom of Anjou, to which he had fair pretensions; for their father considering what vast dominions would fall to his eldest son, bequeathed that earldom to the second in his last sickness, and commanded his nobles then about him, to take an oath that they would not suffer his body to be buried until Henry (who was then absent) should swear to observe his will.  The Duke of Normandy, when he came to assist at his father’s obsequies, and found that without his compliance he must draw upon himself the scandal of keeping a father unburied, took the oath that was exacted for observance of his will, though very much against his own.  But after he was in possession of England, whether it were that his ambition enlarged with his dominions, or that from the beginning he had never intended to observe what he had sworn, he prevailed with Pope Adrian (of English birth) to dispense with his oath, and in the second year of his reign went over into Normandy, drove his brother entirely out of Anjou, and forced him to accept a pension for his maintenance.  But the young prince, through the resentment of this unnatural dealing, in a short time died of grief.

Nor was his treatment more favourable to the King of Scots, whom, upon a slight pretence, he took occasion to dispossess of Carlisle, Newcastle, and other places granted by the Empress to that prince’s father, for his services and assistance in her quarrel against Stephen.

Having thus recovered whatever he had any title to demand, he began to look out for new acquisitions.  Ireland was in that age a country little known in the world.  The legates sent sometimes thither from the Court of Rome, for urging the payment of annats, or directing other Church affairs, represented the inhabitants as a savage people, overrun with barbarism and superstition:  for indeed no nation of Europe, where the Christian religion received so early and universal admittance, was ever so late or slow in feeling its effects upon their manners and civility.[48] Instead of refining their manners by their faith, they had suffered their faith to be corrupted by their manners; true religion being almost defaced, both in doctrine and discipline, after a long course of time, among a people wholly sunk in ignorance and barbarity.  There seem to have been two reasons why the inhabitants of that island continued so long uncultivated; first, their subjection or vassalage to so many petty kings, whereof a great number is mentioned by authors, besides those four or five usually assigned to the several provinces.  These princes were engaged in perpetual quarrels, in doing or revenging injuries of violence, or lust, or treachery, or injustice, which kept them all in a continual state of war.  And indeed there is hardly any country, how renowned soever in ancient or modern story, which may not be traced from the like original.  Neither can a nation come out from this state of confusion, until it is either reduced under one head at home, or by force or conquest becomes subject to a foreign administration.