The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  Henry was deeply attached to his second illegitimate son, Geoffrey. He not only reared him and had him educated well under his own eye, but he saw to it he was appointed Bishop of Lincoln at the age of twenty. Geoffrey had not wanted to take holy orders, and for a time he refused the post, saying repeatedly, “Nolo episcopari!” He wanted to be a soldier, and when Henry was raising an army for service against the Scots, he arrived at camp with one hundred and forty knights he had recruited and equipped at his own expense.

  The son of Fair Rosamonde was lucky enough to have an immediate opportunity of showing what a good soldier he would have been. His company was sent to check Roger de Mowbray, who was advancing from the coast with a force of recruits from Normandy. The lavish offers of land that the Young King was making in Paris had put it into the heads of these greedy Normans that all the country was to change ownership again. As the foot troops tramped along the roads behind the belted knights, they looked enviously at the fine green meadows dotted with fat sheep and sang a new song:

  “Hoppe Wyllykin! Hoppe Wyllykin!

  Ingland is myne and thyne!”

  The young bishop led the charge of his mounted troops against these grasping mercenaries. The invaders were unable to withstand the fury of the onslaught and ran away in a great panic, with Geoffrey and his men riding after them and shouting, “Ingland is myne, not thyne!”

  It was on this occasion that Henry made clear how much he cared for Rosamonde’s son. He met Geoffrey after the latter’s return from his triumph and threw an arm affectionately around his shoulders.

  “Thou art my true son!” he said in a tone loud enough for many to hear. Then in a lower tone he added, “The others, they are the bastards!”

  In the year 1181 the question of Geoffrey’s fitness to remain Bishop of Lincoln came to an issue. The Pope demanded that he take holy orders or resign the see. Geoffrey refused and, accordingly, was removed from his high post. Henry thereupon made him chancellor, and he continued to sit in the chair once occupied by Thomas à Becket until the King’s death.

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  Despite the emphasis which has been laid in history on the story of the Fair Rosamonde and the wicked role played in it, supposedly, by Eleanor, it is certain that the Queen was never much concerned over Henry’s affair with the daughter of the Cliffords. If she had known of the existence of the House Beyond the Gate, she had been allowed little time to feel any resentment, for the record shows that Rosamonde entered Godstow shortly after Henry became King. If the Queen had felt any bitterness, it is unlikely that Henry would have reared the boy Geoffrey at court.

  It has always been necessary for queens to accept the fact that kings have mistresses. This has been one of the almost inevitable consequences of unlimited power. Henry did not belong in the ranks of the extremely rare exceptions. He had a son by the daughter of one Sir Ralph Blewitt. She was succeeded by a handsome girl at Stepford who was not of the nobility; her name, therefore, is not recorded. In Normandy he enjoyed the favors of a daughter of Eudes of Porrhoet. The greatest beauty in England, a sister of the Earl of Clare, refused the King’s advances, much to his surprise, no doubt.

  There is nothing to indicate that any of these matters disturbed Eleanor unduly. The romance which led to serious trouble came much later, and the circumstances of this affair were such that all the sympathy must be given the Queen. Mention has already been made of the second daughter of Louis of France, who was betrothed to Prince Richard. She was sent to England at the age of five to be brought up and educated there. A pretty and bright child, she seems to have been a general favorite at first. Henry saw little of her, it being the rule to rear royal children in households of their own, with tutors and confessors and almoners and whole droves of servants. The little French girl was stationed perhaps at Tower-Royal or at Woodstock, where the air was supposed to be particularly healthful. When he did see her, sitting impatiently at her lessons or romping with children of her own age, he must have been aware that she was an unusually lively child.

  She was brought to live at court at an early age, for the most important part of her education was to learn how to conduct herself as a princess or queen, and the King must have seen much of her whenever he returned from his long sojournings abroad. She does not seem to have been a beauty, but the vivacity of her girlhood had matured into traits in which he took a pleasure—a witty tongue, a gift for wearing clothes, a grace in walking and dancing, an equipment of little mannerisms all her own. Richard was seldom in England while she was growing up, and when he did come he showed no interest in the girl he would have to marry someday. His interests were confined to fighting and hunting and drinking. To Richard the fine edge of a well-balanced sword or a horse of high mettle was of much more concern than the light in a lady’s eyes. His father was more observant.

  The wedding should have taken place when the princess reached her fifteenth birthday. Henry found some good reason for postponing it, probably the fact that he was under the necessity of traveling continuously about his unsettled dominions. Eleanor, of course, knew the real reason.

  Kings had advantages over other men in the pursuit of romance, but they suffered from one serious handicap. They had no privacy at all and so could not conceal their illicit maneuverings. Henry’s dalliance with Alice must therefore have followed along the usual lines. He spent longer hours with his officials in the chancellery, presumably in the preparation or revision of writs. Actually he was engaged much of the time in writing notes to the princess, a habit she found rather provoking, as she was not a good scholar and had the greatest difficulty in deciphering them. The humblest kitchen knave or scullion would know about these notes. The King was addicted to the chase, but sometimes he would develop a sudden desire to return to the castle. He would leave his horse with a groom conveniently stationed at the rear, slip in at a back postern, and hurry on tiptoe along halls which had been cleared in advance, reaching finally a room adjoining the apartments of Alice. He thought he was being clever and that no one guessed what it was all about; but the groom, the custodian of the postern, the servants who kept watch over the halls, and the ladies of the princess talked it over and snickered and speculated. Sometimes he would summon a conference of his advisers and would keep them an unconscionable time in an anteroom while they were supposed to be with him. In the meantime a door would open behind the King, he would hear a rustle of silken skirts and feel a hand touch his sleeve. A voice would whisper, “My sweet lord and King!” And all over the palace that evening there would be gossip and guessing as to how long the princess had stayed with him.

  Eleanor did not need to be told. She had known all about such tricks as this before Henry was born. She was one of the first to realize that her husband was being guilty of the serious offense of toying with the affections of his daughter-in-law-elect. This was different from his earlier affairs. The Queen could forget about the Fair Rosamonde, but she could not pass over or condone anything as gross and dangerous as this. She knew with what zest this tidbit would be rolled over gossiping tongues in every court in Europe. She, the once fascinating Eleanor of Aquitaine, would become known as a neglected and deceived wife. This was not to be borne in silence.

  Eleanor took her distress over the outrageous conduct of Henry to her sons. Their anger can be imagined, particularly that of Richard, who was the one directly injured. He had not shown any interest in the girl, but he was not willing to find himself decorated with antlers on his forehead even before he was married. All of the sons were fond of their mother, and their sympathies were entirely with her in this unsavory mess. When she was taken back to England a prisoner, their opposition to Henry became irreconcilable.

  Curiously enough, the gossip in England at this point was not of Henry and Princess Alice but was all about the Fair Rosamonde. It had happened that the imprisonment of the Queen followed closely on the death of Rosamonde Clifford at Godstow, and the chance to link one event with the other was too good to be missed. It was taken for
granted that Henry had remained faithful to his early mistress, that she had assumed the veil to escape the vengeance of the Queen but had been tracked down and poisoned nevertheless. The fact that Eleanor was kept a prisoner so long nourished the legend, and after that it could not be stopped. A ballad was evolved from the story, with all the imaginary trappings of maze and bower and ball of thread, and the wicked Queen and the cup of poison. Improvements were made in the ballad of Henry and the Fair Rosamonde as time rolled on. It was a favorite with minstrels for centuries after, the most often clamored for when a wandering crowder arrived at a tavern with his cithara over his shoulder. The final version was that of one Thomas Delone, written perhaps in the fifteenth century, in which some sweeping innovations appear, including a fanciful description of the House Beyond the Gate.

  Most curiously the bower was built,

  Of stone and timber strong;

  One hundred and fifty doors

  Did to the bower belong,

  And they so cunningly contrived

  That none but with clue of thread

  Could enter in and out.

  The House Beyond the Gate, to return to earth after this not too poetic flight, was quite small. It was a single-story huddle of gray stone with one door, two or three windows, and perhaps a chimney.

  In the meantime Louis of France had caught some echoes of the scandal involving his daughter, and he clamored indignantly for the wedding with Richard to take place as arranged, as a means of stopping the stories. Richard, prompted by a desire to put his father in a false position rather than a wish for his long-promised bride, joined in with the same demand. Henry found reasons for a further postponement.

  This went on year after year. Henry showed all the resourcefulness of his one-time friend and chancellor, Thomas à Becket, in the contrivance of excuses. When Louis died in 1180 and was succeeded by his son Philip, the situation had not changed. Alice was still going wherever the King went, and Henry was more openly infatuated with her than ever. He was making covert advances to the Pope in the matter of a divorce from Eleanor. If he had succeeded in this, he would unquestionably have married the French princess at once and let the world say and think what it liked. But the Pope refused to consider the granting of a divorce.

  On one occasion, when embarrassed by the embittered attitude of all his sons, Henry made a suggestion which obviously he had no thought of carrying out. He declared that, inasmuch as Richard had been a false and disobedient son, he would not allow him to marry the princess but that John, freed by the death of the heiress of Maurienne, should wed Alice as soon as he grew old enough. This served the same purpose of every suggestion Henry had made in the matter. Letters had to be exchanged and several months were wasted. As the idea found no favor, it was finally dropped, just as the King had intended.

  The second Henry was finding himself, in fact, in much the same position as the last of the Henrys in the matter of Anne Boleyn. With a wife on his hands and no legitimate reason for a divorce, Henry VIII went to the extreme of separating England from Rome and then promulgating his own divorce. Henry II lived in an age when such a solution was unthinkable. All he could do was to play for time and hope that Eleanor would die. The few things known about Alice suggest that she had some qualities in common with Anne Boleyn. She was ambitious, clever, an aid to the King in planning the devious excuses which kept her from the nuptial couch of Richard. She must have been deeply attached to Henry or she would never have acquiesced in the highly unenviable position this created for her.

  With Eleanor in captivity at Winchester, there was no longer need for the King to cover up his movements. His court became convinced that he and the princess were living together as man and wife, and so the whole world came to believe the same. Henry stood out in this matter against all counsel, all pressure, all the misfortunes which could be traced directly to his ill-advised course.

  After Richard became King, Philip tried to force him to carry out the old arrangement and marry Alice. Richard refused on the ground that she had been his father’s mistress and had borne him a son. If such were the case, the child was born abroad, for there are no records of it in England, and must, moreover, have died in infancy. Philip did not dispute the statement. He finally agreed to a cancellation of the betrothal, and Richard married Princess Berengaria of Navarre instead. Philip then gave his unfortunate sister in marriage to a nobleman of France; a sorry conclusion for her, but not as grim an ending as that of Anne Boleyn, who succeeded in making herself Queen and laid her head on the block because of her success.

  But this was after the death of Henry. As long as he lived, he refused to give Princess Alice up. She was thirty-two when he died and for seventeen years had been the object of his infatuated attachment.

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  Another reason the sons had for their continuous efforts to free themselves of parental control was the stern and unchangeable nature of that control. Although Henry and Richard and Geoffrey were granted the outward semblance of authority, they were puppets in the fullest sense of the word. Henry always selected the men to work with them. He saw to it that these advisers and administrators had been thoroughly trained in his own ways of doing things. These stern Norman officials were under orders to see that nothing was done of which Henry would not have approved. If one of the sons differed from his advisers and decided to take matters into his hands, they would produce papers which showed they had the power and the son no more than a make-believe authority. If the son appealed to his father, the latter would side with the officials.

  In 1168, when the people of Aquitaine had been on the point of rebellion, Henry had sent Eleanor to Bordeaux to assume the rulership of her own duchy. All Aquitaine was delighted. At last their beautiful Eleanor, to whom they had always given their full allegiance and with whose peccadilloes they had been rather pleased than otherwise, was back again. It seemed like a perfect arrangement, and the Queen approached her task with a deep sense of pleasure. But she soon found herself in the position which would later irk her sons. The Earl of Salisbury had been sent with her and also a whole corps of officials from the English Curia and chancellery. When Eleanor wanted to make changes to meet the demands of her people, the earl said no. She was unable to alter any of the laws and regulations which had caused their dissatisfaction. She sent passionately angry appeals to Henry to relieve her of these stern and heavy-handed men. Henry paid no attention. She was frustrated at every turn, and because she was doing nothing for them the people began to lose some of their affection for her, and this galled her high spirit.

  The result was that the nobility of Aquitaine staged a palace revolution and murdered the Earl of Salisbury and all his seneschals in one day. The uprising had been badly planned and was soon suppressed. Eleanor was recalled to England, and the old methods of administration were continued thereafter without any change or amelioration.

  The laws which Henry had established in England and which he was now enforcing in his continental dominions were better laws for the people than those which had existed before. It was the nobility who objected. They saw their feudal power being pared, they were forced to pay heavier taxes, they found themselves subjects under these new laws instead of rulers. They had for Henry nothing but hatred, these chivalrous knights of Aquitaine and Poitou. But Henry was right and they were wrong.

  Unfortunately his sons lacked the insight which Henry possessed in such a great degree. It seemed to the three princes that their father was wrong and the barons who resisted him were right.

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  The struggle between Henry and his sons covered a period of sixteen years. It was very much confused and mixed up. At one time all the princes would be against their father. At other times they were fighting among themselves. At several stages the princes turned on their own allies in Aquitaine and Brittany and put them down with fire and sword.

  In 1175 the King and Li Reys Josnes made a tour of England together. They visited the tomb of the Martyr. They made a close in
spection of the Welsh Marches. They traveled as far north as York. This joint processional had a purpose, of course: to show the people of England that at last the differences between father and son had been adjusted and that once again there was amity in the royal family. Perhaps at no time in his life had Henry been happier.

  In the full flush of this peacemaking he began to apply himself again to judicial reform. He defined more clearly the bounds of the six circuits and for the first time gave the justiciarii itinerantes power to deal with all cases, with questions of property and wardship and inheritance as well as crime and punishment. Henry remained two years in England, one of his longest stays. Around him at this time were the finest minds England had produced, historians, poets, lawyers. The lawyers were particularly noteworthy. The machinery of the state had created a new class, men of the law who had great ability and learning. Their equal was not to be found in any other country.

  But in 1177 the trouble started afresh. The princes flew to arms again and Henry hurried back to Normandy. There seemed no way of pacifying his passionate brood. They hated him and they were at odds with one another. “Is it to be wondered at,” asked Richard once, “that we live on such bad terms with one another, having sprung from such stock? From the devil we came, to the devil we must return.”