At the start of the 13th century, the Kingdom of England formed part of the Angevin Empire spreading across Western Europe. Henry was named after his grandfather, Henry II, who had built up this vast network of lands stretching from Scotland and Wales, through England, across the English Channel to the territories of Normandy, Brittany, Maine and Anjou in north-west France, onto Poitou and Gascony in the south-west. For many years the French Crown was relatively weak, enabling first Henry II, and then his sons Richard I and John, to dominate France.