Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  Gaining the Accomplishments of the Court

  If young Henry was not bookish, he was nonetheless highly accomplished in courtly speech and manners. As Walter Map remarked, he was ‘richly endowed with eloquence and charm of address (beatissimus eloquencia et affabilitate)’.79 His brother Geoffrey of Brittany was also noted as ‘an excellent and eloquent knight, as much an heir to Ulysses as to Achilles’, which strongly suggests that polished speech was an important element in the instruction of all Henry II’s sons, and another family tradition: their grandfather Geoffrey le Bel had been praised for being ‘most eloquent (facundissimus) among clerics and laymen’.80 Refined manners were not only an indication of high birth and good breeding, but, as John of Salisbury explained, were an essential attribute for a ruler:

  he should be affable of speech, and generous in conferring benefits, and in his manners he should preserve the dignity of his authority unimpaired. A pleasant address and a gracious tongue will win for him the reputation for benignity . . . the reverence of subjects is a fit reward of dignity of manners.81

  The court of Henry II, whom Map calls ‘that treasure house of courtesy’, was famed for the vibrancy of its intellectual circle and as a place of refined conduct.82 It was not by chance that one of Henry’s chaplains, Stephen of Fougères, who became bishop of Rennes, composed the earliest known vernacular French guide to courtesy and good manners, Le Livre des manières, as a guide for laymen.83 For those with ambition and who sought the court as a place of advancement needed to master curialitas, among whose requirements were elegance of manners (elegantia morum), urbanity (urbanitas), and witty and sophisticated speech (urbanissima facetiae).84 Gerald of Wales, for example, described William FitzAldelin, one of prince Henry’s tutors and a man very much on the rise, as ‘generous and courteous (vir dapsilis et curialis)’, whose appearance ‘was that of a generous and easy going man (vir in facie liberalis et lenis)’.85 Young Henry had already received the very best instruction in curialitas in Becket’s household, and his charming, affable manner was to strike many contemporaries. Gervase of Tilbury, a member of the Young King’s court, noted of his lord that ‘as he surpassed all others in the grace of his person, so he outstripped them all in valour, cordiality, and the outstanding graciousness of his manner (morum insigni gracia)’, describing him as ‘courteous and cheerful’ and ‘gracious (graciosus) to all’.86

  The accomplishments ascribed to the prince find close echo in the description of the knight Folcon in the contemporary Provençal epic Girart de Roussillon: ‘Lords, look at the best knight you have ever seen . . . he is brave and courtly and skilful, and noble and of a good lineage, eloquent, handsomely experienced in hunting and falconry: he knows how to play chess and backgammon, gaming and dicing. And his wealth was never denied to any, but each has as much as he wants . . .’87 Hawking and hunting, the consuming passion of the medieval aristocracy, was to occupy much of young Henry’s leisure time, both during and beyond his adolescence.88 When in 1162 the prince had crossed from Normandy to England in the royal esnecca, falcons and goshawks had been transported with him.89 These prized birds could be very costly; in 1170, for example, William de Havill received 24 shillings for two hawks purchased for ‘the king, the king’s son’, and 20 shillings for one hawk for the king of Scots.90 Huntsmen and falconers formed an important element within the royal household, while a number of serjeanty tenures were held for duties relating to hunting, including, for example, one which stipulated service with hawks and a greyhound between Michaelmas and Candlemas for when the king hunted herons.91 It is likely that young Henry had accompanied Thomas Becket, his guardian, on hunting trips, while he would have also hunted regularly with his father, ‘a great connoisseur of hounds and hawks’, who earned the criticism of clerical observers for his immoderate love of the chase.92 For in times of peace, sometimes even in those of war, the daily rhythm of the royal court, as well as its itinerary through the king’s domains, was shaped by the insatiable addiction of the king and his companions to the hunt. In the late summer of 1169, for example, Henry II held a series of meetings with a papal delegation, headed by Gratian of Ostia and Vivian of Orvieto, which have been described as ‘snatches of discussion squeezed in between hunting trips’ as they followed the king while he itinerated around the duchy.93 Doubtless the king intended this to emphasize how peripheral he regarded the matter of peace with Becket, yet in reporting these negotiations to Thomas an anonymous informant provides a valuable glimpse of what must have been a commonplace – the king and his son out hunting, each with his own entourage. While at Domfront, King Henry had returned from hunting and, late in the day, came to the legates’ lodgings, greeting them ‘with great honour and reverence and humility’. Just then, ‘lord Henry, the king’s son, came to the door of the lodging, and many young men with him, all blowing horns in the usual manner to announce the taking of a stag’. In a splendid courtly gesture already indicative of the charm and affability for which he would be renowned, young Henry presented the stag to the delegates.94

  Yet for the nobility, hunting was more than recreation: it was vital training. Long before the development of the tournament, the hunt had been an essential mechanism of bonding within the warrior elite.95 It developed the physical strength and endurance of young men and afforded training in horsemanship, agility in the saddle, riding at speed and the handling of weapons.96 It was for good reason that Alfonso XI of Castile (1312–50) could later liken the chase to warfare, because ‘one must be well horsed and well armed . . . be vigorous . . . suffer lack of good food . . . rise early . . . undergo heat and cold, and conceal one’s fear’.97 It exposed participants to very real danger; fatal shooting accidents were not uncommon, while the hazards of riding fast through the forest or falls from horseback claimed the lives of some, including young Henry’s great-grandfather Fulk V of Anjou.98 Hunting wild boar was especially perilous, but there were other dangers. In 1179, a hunting expedition near Compiègne almost proved fatal for the young Philip Augustus, then aged fourteen. Impetuously riding after a wild boar – or so the tale was later told – he had become separated from his entourage, and it was not until the following day that the boy, starving and terrified, was discovered by a charcoal burner and returned safely to his father. But the trauma and exhaustion led to the swift onset of a serious illness, which he was fortunate to survive.99

  William FitzStephen gives a precious glimpse of other kinds of sporting activities that the prince and his companions would have engaged in when noting of the Londoners that ‘on feast-days throughout the summer the young men indulge in the sport of archery, running, jumping, wrestling, slinging the stone, hurling the javelin beyond a mark and fighting with sword and buckler’.100 Such activities accord closely with those listed in Gottfried von Strasbourg’s Tristan, written c.1210, as among the youthful hero’s accomplishments. He also ‘learned to ride nimbly with shield and lance, to spur his mount skilfully on either flank, put it to the gallop with a wheel and give it free rein and urge it on with his knees, in strict accordance with the chivalric art’.101 To hone just these skills, young Henry and his fellows would practise running at the quintain, described by Gerald of Wales as ‘a strong shield hung securely to a beam, whereon aspirants for knighthood and stalwart youths mounted on galloping chargers may try their strength by breaking their lances or piercing the obstacle – this a prelude to the exercises of knighthood’. Gerald tells of his own delight in how, when passing through Arras at Pentecost, 1179, he had witnessed jousting at the quintain, which Count Philip of Flanders had had erected in the great town square, now crowded with spectators. From the balcony of his lodgings he saw ‘the Count himself, and with him such a multitude of noble knights and barons, so many a fine horse galloping at the shield and so many lances broken, that, though he diligently watched each several thing, he could not sufficiently wonder at the whole’.102

  As yet, Henry was still too young to participate in real tournaments,
which would come to play so important a role in his later life. But William FitzStephen reveals that youths in their earlier adolescence who were not yet old enough to receive the belt of knighthood might engage in other forms of equestrian games. In London on every Sunday during Lent,

  after dinner a fresh swarm of young men go out into the fields on war-horses, steeds foremost in the contest, each of which is skilled and schooled to run in circles. From the gates there sallies forth a host of laymen, sons of the citizens, equipped with lances and shields, the younger ones with spears forked at the top, but with the steel point removed. They make a pretence at war, carry out field exercises and indulge in mimic combats. Thither too come many courtiers, when the king is in town, and from the households of the bishops, earls and barons come youths and adolescents, not yet girt with the belt of knighthood, for the pleasure of engaging in combat with each other . . . their boy riders divide their ranks; some pursue those immediately in front of them, but fail to catch up with them; others overtake their fellows, force them to dismount and fly past them.103

  Though less violent than the mêlée of the tournament itself, for which they provided a degree of basic training, such hastiludes or behourds were not without danger, and injuries were common. Nonetheless, remarked FitzStephen, ‘theirs is an age greedy of glory, youth yearns for victory, and exercises itself in mock combats in order to carry itself more bravely in real battles’.104

  The Vassal of King Louis: The Settlement of Montmirail, 1169

  The necessity of such training for war was readily apparent, for in the years between 1166 and 1168 young Henry witnessed his father engaged in widespread and bitter warfare. Since his accession, Henry II had frequently been forced to take military action to quell disturbances in the borderlands where Brittany marched with Normandy and Anjou, but his move in 1166 to annex Brittany by the deposition of Conan, whose daughter was betrothed to Henry’s third son Geoffrey, was fiercely resisted by elements of the Breton nobility.105 Following the failure of Henry’s major expedition of 1165, the Welsh, led by Rhys of Deheubarth and Owain of Gwynedd, had made a substantial recovery at the expense of the Anglo-Norman marcher lords.106 Concurrently, in Aquitaine mounting discontent with Henry’s attempts to impose a more direct and exploitative form of lordship in a region in which the nobility had enjoyed a substantial degree of autonomy had erupted into rebellion. King Louis, seeing his opportunity to weaken his Angevin opponent indirectly, had offered support to the insurgents, exploited Henry’s continuing quarrel with the exiled Thomas Becket by granting him refuge at Sens, and in 1167 even raided into the Vexin in an attempt to force Henry to abandon a campaign to consolidate his authority in the Auvergne. Louis was worsted when Henry stormed and burned the great castle at Chaumont-sur-Epte, but the Breton and Aquitanian rebels continued to look to him for support, while they as well as Owain of Gwynedd and William the Lion of Scotland offered him their allegiance. Henry’s response had been not to attack Louis directly, but to devastate the lands of his vassals on the frontiers of Normandy, including those of the counts of Ponthieu and Perche.107 By the close of 1168, it was apparent to all that, despite Louis’ efforts, Henry II had suppressed the insurrections in Brittany and Aquitaine and contained the attacks of the French, who now had little option but to come to a settlement.

  Accordingly, on 6 January 1169, Henry II met with Louis at Montmirail in the county of Chartres near La Ferté-Bernard for a major peace summit, with the feast of the Epiphany carefully chosen for its royal symbolism. Its aim was to end the period of open hostilities between the two kings, to reconcile Henry with dissidents in Brittany and Poitou, and to stabilize dynastic relations. For young Henry, the conference was to mark a crucial ratification of his position as Henry II’s principal heir and define his own feudal relationship with Louis VII, his father-in-law and overlord. The talks had been brokered primarily, or so John of Salisbury believed, by Count Theobald of Blois and Bernard, a monk from the abbey of Grandmont, which Henry held in particular veneration, and it was hoped that the assembly would also afford an ideal forum for a final reconciliation between the king and Becket.108 On the opening day, according to John of Salisbury, Henry II ‘offered himself, his children, his lands, his resources, his treasures; placed all under his [Louis’] judgment, to use or abuse as he would, to hold, to seize, give to whom he would as he liked, with no conditions stipulated or attached’.109 Writers favourable to Becket were eager to portray Henry II as a suppliant vassal recognizing the full authority of the Capetian king as his overlord, and to contrast the upright conduct of Louis, the rex Christianissimus, with the duplicity and bad faith of his Plantagenet rival.110 Yet such studied, even exaggerated deference on Henry’s part, which was a consistent feature of his dealings with Louis, was but a diplomatic tool and in 1169, as earlier, it masked the reality of the balance of power.111

  The proceedings consisted of two distinct but closely related events: first, a settlement between the two kings themselves, then the performance of homage by young Henry and his brothers to Louis for their continental fiefs. Henry II had performed homage to Louis for the duchy of Normandy in 1151, but he had not done so again since becoming king of England.112 In 1167, however, at a time of escalating hostilities, Louis had defied Henry, renouncing him as his man and returning his homage.113 Such an act of diffidatio was more than just a formal declaration of war; it was an extreme step, designed to remove any restraint on military or political action imposed by the obligations binding lord and vassal, and, in theory, it allowed the lord to reclaim his fief by force from a contumacious erstwhile vassal. Yet as the recent warfare had once again painfully revealed, Louis was in no position to confiscate the duchy by force. Indeed, in such circumstances, Louis’ defiance had only harmed his own position; of his own volition, he had dissolved the powerful ties of the lord–vassal relationship which had previously restrained the scope of Henry’s actions against him, as events at Toulouse in 1159 had witnessed. In response to Louis’ defiance, Henry II ‘had often solemnly and publicly sworn that he would never again return to his homage and allegiance (hominium) to the most Christian king of France, so long as he lived’.114 In his fiercely pro-Norman work the Draco Normannicus, Stephen of Rouen, a monk of Bec, made much of this reciprocal defiance by Henry, ‘the indomitable lion spurning all yokes’, and saw his rejection of French overlordship as the natural and indeed rightful consequence of the fact that Henry ruled a great empire, while Louis held a kingdom barely a third of Charlemagne’s former realm.115 Stephen went on to develop this theme, describing at length the replacement of the Merovingian ‘rois fainéants’ by Pepin, mayor of the palace, and his heirs.116 The implication was clear: the Plantagenets were the new Carolingians, who should replace the weak and decadent Capetians.

  It was fortunate for Louis VII that Henry II did not share Stephen’s ambitions. Nevertheless, when at Montmirail the two kings made peace, Henry did not again perform homage to Louis. Instead, he returned to the allegiance he owed by his earlier homage in 1151, but did so by a handshake and the kiss of peace – gestures distinct from the ritual of placing the vassal’s hands within those of the lord, an act central to the performance of homage itself.117 Henry was careful to reserve his regal dignity and the Angevin principle was clear: homage to the king of France was acceptable before becoming king, but once crowned and anointed, kings of England did not perform homage to the kings of France. Should expediency require acts of submission, these were to be performed instead by the king’s sons.

  Henry’s return to Louis’ allegiance was an important concession. In return, what he sought – and obtained – was a very public recognition of his own family settlement, achieved by offering the homage of his sons to Louis for his continental fiefs. Montmirail represented not a case of homage being demanded by an overlord from a reluctant vassal, but of homage actively sought by Henry II as a formal recognition of his heirs’ rights of inheritance.118 For young Henry’s succession would represent a highly signif
icant transition in the status of Henry II’s lands and mark an important step towards their unity and stability. Though customs of inheritance could vary within the territorial principalities of France, it was widely acknowledged that the eldest son would inherit the patrimony, that is the core territories which had previously passed to his father by inheritance, and which were generally regarded as indivisible. By contrast, there was greater freedom in the way a lord could bequeath acquisitions, those lands he had gained himself during his lifetime by marriage, purchase or conquest, and these might readily be granted as he chose to younger sons.119 Yet whether a lord chose to divide his lands between sons or keep them united under one son, by the process of inheritance what had been acquisition in the earlier generation became patrimony in the next. Thus in 1151 Geoffrey V of Anjou had bequeathed his patrimony of Anjou and Maine to his eldest son Henry, along with his conquest of Normandy which he had claimed iure uxoris. Greater Anjou and Normandy were thus bound together as Henry II’s inherited patrimony, which he in turn would bestow on young Henry, together with his acquisition of the kingdom of England. The combined territories of England, Normandy and Anjou now would become young Henry’s indivisible patrimony, binding these three core elements of the Angevin ‘empire’ more firmly together.120

  What made Louis amenable to the Angevin family settlement proposed at Montmirail was Henry’s stipulation that Richard, as second son, was to inherit Aquitaine, while Geoffrey was to be assigned Brittany. Young Henry and Richard, moreover, were to perform homage directly to Louis, rather than to their father. Henry II was thus assuring the French king of at least a degree of future partition of his great assembly of lands. With good reason, Louis had been deeply concerned that if Henry chose to grant all or the majority of his lands to his eldest son, the Capetians would be confronted – and perhaps overwhelmed – by a Plantagenet rival possessing an unprecedented concentration of power.121 These fears, which had long plagued Louis, had already been addressed by Henry in the terms of peace he had proposed to the French king in March 1168. According to John of Salisbury, King Henry had at that time offered