And it was a perfect time to come into this colossal inheritance.
For the mid-12th century really was the springtime of the Middle Ages.
Literacy and learning were spreading from the cathedral schools in Paris and Canterbury.
Monasteries were being founded at a record pace,
and although they were supposed to be purged of worldliness,
before long
they were the engines of economic power,
producers of wool,
masters of the mills and rivers.
So if this was indeed springtime,
Henry and Eleanor had just got themselves the fattest and the ripest fruit.
Still, it's unlikely they ever thought of it as a true empire in the Roman sense of a single realm.
Its many regions were all treated separately, according to their customs.
And while Westminster was increasingly at the heart of administration,
Rouen in Normandy,
Chinon in Anjou
and Poitiers in Aquitaine were just as important.