The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

The reception he received in England, where he went immediately after being crowned in Normandy, showed how correct William Marshal had been in his estimate of the temper of the English people. They wanted him to be King, and not a single voice was raised in favor of the young prince. The coronation took place on Ascension Day, May 27, and Hubert Walter officiated. Whether it was done as a sop to the nation in view of the poor caliber of the new King, or whether it was the first of the checks which all men knew would have to be imposed on him, the primate solemnly intoned the words of the old ritual which declared him King by choice of the people. Years after, the archbishop confided that he had used that form of oath because the violence of John’s character rendered the solemn admonition necessary. It made no difference, of course, so far as John was concerned.

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  For many centuries before the Normans came, and all through the sanguinary stages of the Conquest, the Welsh people had remained in their mountainous corner of the island, refusing stoutly to be incorporated in the growing nation. They were of the same racial stock as the people of Brittany and with the same traditions and ideals, the same dislike for Saxons and Normans and Frenchmen. One great faith sustained these Celtic peoples in their determination to remain apart and independent, and this was the legend of Arthur, the Pendragon, the most enlightened and chivalrous of men. Out of this faith had grown the belief that someday, when the need would be great, Arthur would come back to earth with his sword Excalibur and lead his people again.

  Stories continued to grow around the Arthurian legend as time went on. It was generally believed that Glastonbury, where the old Benedictine monastery stood, was in reality the Avalon to which the body of the King was taken after his last battle. This did not prevent rumors of the finding of his grave elsewhere. Crusaders came back from the East with various stories. Some said he lay at the foot of Mount Etna, others said on Mount Sinai. One belief was universal: that anyone who ventured into the woods at midnight would hear the sound of ghostly horns and see a train of hunters ride by like shadows through the glades with the grave-faced Arthur in the lead. He was as much alive in Celtic minds as any king of the day, and the conviction that he would return was at the core of Welsh resistance to English encroachments.

  Toward the end of the reign of Henry II an announcement had been made which stunned all believers in the legend. Henry of Blois, the abbot of Glastonbury, gave it out that, acting on the revelations of a Welsh bard, he had made a search of the abbey vaults. At a considerable distance down had been found a huge coffin of oak containing the bones of Arthur and his Queen Guinevere, who had been buried with him. The unusual size of the bones made it certain that they had belonged to the tall Pendragon. The golden hair of the beautiful Queen was seen when the coffin was opened, but it had crumbled into dust as soon as exposed to the air. The main piece of evidence, however, was an inscription on the side of the coffin:

  Hic jacet sepultus inclitus Arthurus in insula Avalonia.

  If this was really the body of Arthur, he became a man and could no longer be thought of as a god. After the first sensation had died down and the bones had been reinterred in a magnificent sarcophagus, the people of Wales and Brittany rejected the story as a deliberate imposture designed to destroy their faith in the future of the Celtic race. There were repeated demands to see the coffin with the inscription, but the abbot failed to produce it. In time it was generally believed that the discovery had been planned for political reasons, perhaps on the insistence of Henry himself.

  It was soon after this that a posthumous son was born to Constance of Brittany, the widow of Henry’s third son, Geoffrey. Henry was delighted, for this was his first grandson, and he decided the boy should be given his name. This was not acceptable to the mother. Constance did not like the King or his wife (Eleanor reciprocated most heartily) and, in fact, wanted nothing to do with the English royal family. She called in the leading men of Brittany and asked their opinion about the naming of the infant duke. Unanimously they said he must be named for the Pendragon, who would return to earth in his own time in spite of lies and impostures, and so Arthur the boy was called. One troubadour declared that the King who founded the order of the Round Table had come back; that his soul had entered the body of the child cradled safely in the ducal palace behind the Mordelaise Gate.

  Eleanor had disliked her Breton daughter-in-law from the beginning. There is evidence that she was fond of Berengaria, and no hint can be found in the records that her feeling had not been friendly to the French princess who married her son Henry. She seems to have accepted Isabella of Angoulême, who later married John. But Constance of Brittany she did not like, and it may have been that her antagonism grew out of the attitude of the latter. Henry had felt the same way, believing that Constance urged Geoffrey to dispute his authority and to keep the family strife stirred up. Her insubordination in connection with the naming of the infant son was the final proof. Eleanor was in custody at Winchester when this happened, and so no share of the blame can be charged to her. It was Henry’s own decision that the young widow must remarry at once and to a man who would always act in accord with the kingly plans. He was concerned chiefly with the fear that his grandson would fall into the wrong hands, but there was another reason for the speed with which a second husband was found. Young Prince John, who could not resist pretty women, was very much attracted to his Breton sister-in-law, and an end had to be put to that.

  The husband Henry selected was one of his close adherents, a certain Ranulf, Earl of Chester, a black-a-vised and generally ill-favored little man for whom the young widow conceived an immediate dislike. Her feelings were given no consideration at all. Knowing that her son would be taken away from her if she refused, Constance went through the wedding ceremony with this unattractive bridegroom. It seems improbable that the marriage was consummated, for Constance made it clear from the beginning that she detested her new spouse. Henry was well enough content; he did not want any more Breton grandsons to complicate matters later. Ranulf played his part, literally, to the King’s taste. He took the reins into his own hands and drove Brittany in the straight path of Angevin policy. It is quite likely that he made no effort to take the nuptial couch by storm. The people of Brittany hated him, but they were in no position to get the yoke from their necks. They gave passive obedience and bided their time.

  Arthur, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, was reared as a Breton. His youthful mind was filled with the past glory of his race, and the ambition was fostered in him to become another king such as the great Pendragon Arthur. He was an active lad and showed signs of proving as skilled in the use of arms as his father had been. When he was admitted to knighthood at a very early age, he took as his device the lion, the unicorn, and the griffin, which had been worn by the illustrious monarch for whom he was named.

  When Richard failed to bring a son into the world, young Arthur became the heir apparent. The quietly fanatical group around him began to see visions in real earnest. The old prophecy would be fulfilled when a Celtic prince sat once more on the throne of England.

  When Richard’s illness led to his reconciliation with Berengaria and set him thinking about the future generally, he decided to declare Arthur his successor. With this in mind he asked Constance to send her son to him, to be raised at the court and educated under the royal eye. Arthur was then nine years old, and his mother had introduced him a short time before to the Brittany Assembly and had won their consent to his being associated with her as head of the state. She was instantly suspicious of the King’s suggestion, fearing that Richard’s purpose was to get the boy into his hands. When she held back, Richard sent her an impatient demand to meet him at Pontorson to discuss the situation. This made her more hesitant than ever, and he issued peremptory orders to her husband to make her a prisoner. The ever-pliant Ranulf obeyed his King by lodging his wife in one of the castles of Brittany.

  The people were ready to rise in her defense, but Constance sent secret instructions to the
ir leaders that no time was to be wasted in efforts to release her. One thing only counted: Arthur must be kept out of the hands of the English. They obeyed her by making one of their number, the Sieur de Vitré, guardian of the young prince. The Sieur de Vitré proved a resourceful custodian, flitting about the country from one hiding place to another and defeating all efforts to locate his charge. Ranulf of Chester, finding himself unable to cope with the situation, called for help. Richard answered by sending in a body of his Brabançons, and there was much useless fighting and bloodshed. In the end the prince was spirited out of Normandy and placed in the care of the King of France. Richard then threw up his hands, gave orders for the release of his sister-in-law, and from that moment lost all interest in Arthur as his successor. When he died he named John as his choice for the throne.

  The likeliest explanation of Richard’s course is that he began with the intention of acknowledging Arthur as his heir and that the antagonistic attitude of the mother stirred him to peremptory methods. Such was Richard’s way in everything. It is inconceivable that he intended to get rid of the boy, as Constance feared. He had been given so much reason to suspect the motives of John that he would not have stained his own name with murder to secure the succession of his perfidious brother. The blame for the impasse must at least be shared by the haughty and impetuous Constance.

  Now that Richard was dead it seemed certain that the quarrel over the succession would embroil England and France in another long and bloody war. Constance, that intense and bitter woman, was as suspicious of Philip, however, as she had ever been of the English, and with the soundest of reasons. The French King had espoused the cause of Arthur with open professions of disinterest, but it had soon developed that he was thinking of nothing but his own gain. His intention was to incorporate Brittany and the provinces of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine into his dominions and to make Arthur a vassal. The young prince, who was still at the French court, realized the truth after the capture of certain towns in Anjou which had held out against the French forces. Philip proceeded to raze the walls and dismantle the forts, at the same time punishing the inhabitants with the utmost severity. Arthur remonstrated at this treatment of people he regarded as his own subjects. Philip did not think it necessary to dissemble. He answered, “Am I not at liberty to do what I want in my own territories?” The purpose of the French King was now so clear to everyone that a bard at his court addressed a poem to him in which he said, “Thou art bound to plant thy tents and enlarge thy states that thou mayst possess in full the dominions of thy ancestors, that the stranger may no longer occupy ought within our borders, but the white dragon and his venomous brood be extirpated from our gardens!”

  Arthur made his escape from the French court and reached his native land. His mother, whose wild flights of passion involved her in one mistake after another, was now convinced that her son could no longer hope to sit on the throne of England. She decided that the only thing left for them to do was to concentrate their efforts on achieving for him his full rights as Duke of Brittany. To accomplish this she handed Arthur over to John! She was, clearly, a woman of faulty judgment and furious impulses, but this move was a mistake of such magnitude that it is difficult to conceive of the reasoning which led her to it, unless she thought that John’s one-time liking for her would make him partial to her son. She alienated Philip—a small loss, perhaps, in view of his professed intentions—and by making Arthur swear homage to John as King of England she destroyed the validity of her son’s claim. When the prince strove later to regain his rights, he was technically a disobedient vassal, and John was afforded that much justification for the violent course he followed.

  The desertion of the Breton prince left Philip without any reason for continuing the struggle. He had suffered some reverses and he was now anxious to terminate the contest. Eleanor took it on herself to seize this golden opportunity. Her wisdom had been increasing with each passing year and, as she had now reached the age of seventy-eight, she was a very wise woman indeed. She had assumed again the government of her own dominions and, as the people of Aquitaine were as loyal to her at seventy-eight as they had been when she was lovely and fifteen, she was having success in establishing order. She did homage to Philip for Aquitaine and she arranged with him for the marriage of his son Louis to her own granddaughter, Blanche of Castile.

  To make sure there would be no slip and no delay, this indomitable woman rode all the way to Spain, over many hundreds of miles of bad roads from her Aquitainian home to the high passes of the Pyrenees, and then across the rough trails of Navarre to the arid plains of Old Castile. The weather was unusually warm and the land they passed was baked and the heat was sometimes almost unbearable. Eleanor bore up under Count of Marche. The girl had been sent to one of his castles for the same reason that princesses were conveyed early to the country of the man they were to marry. She was content with her lot, being as much in love with the fine, upstanding Hugh as one of her egocentric nature could be. Hugh the Brown was completely enamored of her and was urging that she had now reached the age to marry.

  (3) A recent view of the interior of Fontevrault where four great figures in English history were buried. They are Henry II, his consort Eleanor of Aquitaine, their son Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the wife of King John, Isabella of Angoulême. When viewed at close range the smallness of Isabella’s bier supplies proof of the story of her long concealment in the secret room of the convent. (BILDARCHIV FOTOMARBURG)

  Having concluded peace with Philip, the newly crowned King of England decided he would follow his mother’s advice and make a royal processional through his western dominions. She had mentioned in particular the wisdom of forming an alliance with the Count of Marche. His first stop was Angoulême to receive the homage of Count Adhémar. The count and his wife, an ambitious pair, wanted to make the best possible impression on the new head of the Angevin empire. What better could they do than have their beautiful Isabella there to receive him? Perhaps their purpose ran deeper. At any rate, they arranged for their daughter to pay them a visit during the time that John was there.

  He saw her first beside her mother at the ceremony. She was wearing a plain gold circlet on her head from which a cloud of diaphanous veiling fell over her shoulders. He thought perhaps that she was a sprite rising from the mist, but a second glance convinced him she was lovelier than any water sprite could be. Her gown of scarlet and gold had been fitted closely to her fine figure, and it showed considerably more of her white shoulders than was customary. It was not just beauty she possessed; she had ways of her own, ways of carrying her head, of walking so that her long, brocaded skirts did not move. She was in fact, irresistible.

  John was thirty-two and she was fifteen. He was married. He could pick and choose among the best-looking women of his court; and, to do him credit, he did. If there was one woman he should treat with distant respect and nothing more, it was this future daughter-in-law of the Count of Marche. But after one long and breathless look John decided that he would disregard all dictates of policy and decency and common sense, that he would divorce his wife and marry Isabella of Angoulême.

  Unfortunately for all concerned, the shrewd parents of the radiant little coquette observed how deeply the King was smitten. They would rather have the King of England as a son-in-law than the comparatively humble Hugh the Brown. Isabella seems to have agreed with this view of things, even though her personal preference was for the handsome Hugh rather than the thickset John.

  The upshot was that Hugh of Lusignan and his brother, the Count of Eu, were sent to England to lead a foray along the western marches. It is quite possible that the plotters against his happiness hoped he would suffer the fate of Uriah, but no brand or arrow penetrated the armor of the gallant Hugh. The only purpose the campaign served was to afford time for the wedding arrangements to be made.

  John’s wife Avisa was a granddaughter of that great leader and knight of the bend sinister, Robert of Gloucester, and so they were cousins
a few times removed. There had been opposition to the match on that account, and the Pope had been fulminating about it ever since, even demanded that they separate. It was an easy matter, therefore, to break the bond. The Archbishop of Bordeaux called a synod to consider the problem, and it was solemnly declared that the marriage to Avisa was null. Soon afterward John and Isabella were married in the cathedral of that city.

  Hugh the Brown came back from England to find that his Bathsheba had been stolen in his absence. He issued a furious challenge to his successful rival to meet him in mortal combat. John accepted but said he would appoint a champion to fight in his place, his life being too important to risk in a personal quarrel. The slighted Count of Lusignan protested angrily that he would fight John himself or no one. The case split the Angevin world wide open, and it was plain to the least discerning eye that the King’s action had shaken the loyalty of the nobility he must depend on in any future trouble with France.

  John did not care. He was so infatuated with his girl wife that nothing else mattered. He neglected his duties to dance attendance on her. It was the custom for kings to retire early and rise at five to begin the labors of the day. It would be noon before the uxorious King would emerge from the curtains of the nuptial couch and call huskily for the royal wine cup. Sluggard was the most complimentary term that his people began to call their liege lord. As for Isabella, they termed her a siren and a Messalina.

  The newly wedded pair left for England as soon as possible, and Isabella was crowned Queen at Westminster on October 9. It was a very elaborate ceremony, but it served to bring out a bad trait of John’s to which no reference has yet been made, parsimony. Although thirty-three shillings were paid for strewing the abbey with fresh rushes and twenty-five to the choir for the singing of the Christus Vicit, the King would allow his wife, whose greatest passion was for fine clothes, no more than three coronation cloaks and one pelisse of gray. There is no mention in the records of gifts of jewelry, although John had chests full of bracelets and rings and chains, the accumulated loot of all the Norman kings. He appeared at the coronation himself like a glittering Eastern potentate, bespangled with rubies and emeralds, and with sapphires sewn on his white gloves. John, in fact, was a dandy and loved to bedeck himself in this way. It was inevitable that the young Queen, thus made aware painfully of another flaw in the character of her royal spouse, would think wistfully of the generosity that Hugh the Brown had always shown.