Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  The Young King’s Baronial Supporters

  In addition to these powerful external allies, the Young King could count on the ready support of disaffected elements within the regional aristocracies of the Angevin lands. A number of nobles were already inveterate opponents of Henry II. In Poitou, where memories of the bitter campaigns of 1167–68 were still fresh, Guy and Geoffrey de Lusignan, Geoffrey de Rancon, William count of Angoulême, and the lord of Parthenay were once more among the leading rebels. They were now joined by a significant number of other leading Poitevin lords, including Joscelin de Mauléon, Thomas of Coulonces, William de Chauvigny, Charles de Rochefort and two of the greatest magnates of northern Poitou, Peter de Montrabei, lord of Preuilly, and Robert de Blé, who held the stronghold of Champigny-sur-Veude.174 Some, however, remained loyal to the Old King, notably Aimar viscount of Limoges, whose marriage to Sarah, daughter of Earl Reginald of Cornwall, led him fully to expect a rich inheritance.175 Despite Eleanor’s own deep involvement in fomenting rebellion, very little can be gleaned concerning the course of the risings further south, though it has been argued that the Aquitanian nobility regarded the war as an opportunity more to prosecute local quarrels than to fight primarily for the Young King’s cause.176 In Brittany, disaffected elements of the nobility were rallied by Ralph of Fougères, a long-standing opponent of Plantagenet pretensions to control of the duchy, and Eudo de Porhoët, who claimed for himself the title of duke of Brittany, ‘Dei gratia’.177 Attacks from these groups threatened western Normandy, Anjou and the Saintonge, while in turn Brittany served as a refuge for rebels from Henry II’s other continental territories.178 In Maine, there had already been stirrings of revolt in 1166 and 1168, provoked in large part by Henry II’s policy of appropriating key castles along the marches of Normandy, while some of the dissident Manceaux lords had links to the rebels in Brittany.179 In the Touraine, there was a notable concentration of rebel castles in the valleys of the Vienne and Creuse.180 Their proximity to Blois, the principal fortress of Henry II’s enemy Count Theobald, rendered this flank of the Angevin heartlands vulnerable and might leave Tours itself – the strategic key of the central Loire – open to attack.181

  Little is known of the pattern of rebellion within Anjou itself, but it has been suggested that Henry II’s absences from the province, and the shift of the dynasty’s political focus away from the comital heartland, had weakened ties of affiliation between the local nobility and the count; few Angevins profited from Henry’s greater conglomeration of lands and powers, and only the office of seneschal provided an aristocracy primarily focused on local affairs with any serious contact with comital government and the wider concerns of the empire.182 In Anjou itself, moreover, the power of the count was far more circumscribed than that enjoyed by Henry II as duke of Normandy or as king of England. Despite efforts to build up a loyal cadre of officials raised from more minor families, comital demesne remained dispersed, the efficacy of local administration was restricted to areas formed around key comital castles, and the local nobility remained stubbornly autonomous.183 Henry had inherited a tradition of sporadic rebellions of influential castellan families, against which his father Geoffrey had contended with mixed success. These lords may have felt increasingly excluded by ‘an extended kin-group at the heart of the Angevin administration’ which dominated key positions in the county over several generations, while John of Marmoutier was doubtless voicing wider resentment when he complained of the rapacity and corruption of local prévôts or bailiffs and lesser comital officials.184

  In Normandy, support for young Henry was particularly strong.185 In part, the involvement of nobles on the duchy’s eastern and south-eastern borderlands reflected pre-existing patterns of rebellion.186 The counts of Eu and Aumale, where Normandy marched with the county of Ponthieu, and the lords of the Norman Vexin had long been caught between the competing ambitions of the Anglo-Norman king-dukes and the Capetian kings of France.187 Accordingly, they had an equally long tradition of being mercurial in their allegiance, not least during the major rebellions against Henry I in favour of his nephew William Clito in 1118–19 and 1123–24.188 Similarly, the Franco-Norman counts of Meulan ruled an extensive agglomeration of estates that straddled the border between Normandy and France, but in times of conflict their loyalties more often than not lay with the kings of France.189 In 1173–74, among the Young King’s most powerful supporters in eastern Normandy was Count Robert II of Meulan, lord of Pont Audemer and one of the greatest landholders in the French Vexin.190 The counts of Evreux and of Alençon, and other lords holding powerful and compact lordships on the southern and south-eastern confines of the duchy, similarly had a long tradition of resistance to ducal authority.191 Thus among the rebels in 1173–74 were John, count of Sées, who held 111 knights’ fiefs and had fought against Henry II in 1168, Gilbert de Tillières and Galeran d’Ivry, as well as the lords of L’Aigle, Breteuil and Le Neubourg.192

  Compared with these border areas, there is little evidence for open rebellion in 1173–74 in the Cotentin, where lords such as Richard du Hommet, constable of Normandy, Jordan Taisson, lord of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, and William Vernon, lord of Néhou, remained prominent supporters of Henry II.193 Equally, while hostilities broke out in the valleys of the Seine, Avre and Eure, central Normandy remained largely quiescent, as it had done under Henry I.194 This, however, may well have been more a reflection of the strength of Henry II’s military position in these areas of the duchy than of genuine support for him. Indeed, the rebellion of 1173–74 was far more serious in Normandy than has often been allowed.195 By 1173, Henry II had clearly alienated not only fractious border lords but a significant element of the leading nobles of the duchy, including two of the greatest cross-Channel magnates.196 Robert III, earl of Leicester, had inherited the extensive Beaumont lands in England in 1168, but his sphere of political influence seems to have been primarily in Normandy. As lord of the honours of Breteuil and Pacy, and of the Grandmesnil lands in central Normandy through marriage to his wife Petronilla, he was one of the most powerful magnates in the duchy, holding some 121 knights’ fiefs. Two of his sons, William and Robert, also partisans of the Young King, were associated with the household of Count Robert of Meulan, with whom Earl Robert had close ties.197

  Of similar stature was Hugh, earl of Chester, who in addition to lands in Cheshire, the northern Welsh marches, extensive estates in the Midlands and lands in some twenty English shires also wielded great power in south-west Normandy. Here he was viscount of the Avranchin, the Bessin and the Val de Vire, as well as lord of the honours of St Sever in the Cotentin, and Briquessart, his chief Norman seat, near Bayeux. He held the important castle of St James de Beuvron on the marches with Brittany, and was connected through marriage to the count of Evreux.198 When war broke out, Hugh made the Norman–Breton border, rather than the northern Midlands, the base for his resistance to the Old King, and formed an alliance with Ralph of Fougères. As he had been returning from Compostella when the Young King fled to France, this may have been the only pragmatic option left to Hugh, but it may also reflect the wider strategic aims of the young Henry and his advisors, for the long-standing claims by the earls of Chester to Carlisle could well have caused conflict with William the Lion, whose support the allies could not afford to lose. Hugh was followed into revolt by several of his vassals from the Welsh marches, such as William of Rhuddlan, who with others was to be captured fighting for the earl at Dol in 1173.199 Other leading Norman supporters of young Henry included William of Tancarville, chamberlain of Normandy and the former lord of William Marshal, who held ninety-four fiefs, and William FitzErneis.200 In all, these and other significant Norman rebels commanded the service of around 550 of their own knights, and accounted for around 100 of the 750 fiefs owing military service to the duke recorded in the inquest of 1172, but the rebels doubtless included men of more modest stature.201

  The role of Robert of Leicester was critical in transforming simmering discontent in Engl
and into pockets of open revolt. Here, however, fewer great lords came out openly in support of young Henry than in Normandy and the Angevins’ other continental lands, though the Old King was constantly in fear of more widespread defection. The network of strongly garrisoned royal castles served as an effective deterrent in much of the country, and active rebellion was largely restricted to the Midlands, East Anglia and parts of Yorkshire. In addition to the earls of Leicester and Chester, the known rebels in England included two other earls, William Ferrers of Derby and Hugh Bigod of Norfolk, together with Hamo de Masci, Geoffrey de Cotentin, Thomas de Muschamp, Robert de Lundres and Roger de Mowbray.202 Of these, the most powerful supporter of the Young King was Hugh Bigod, who by 1173 had already had a long and turbulent political career.203 His lands made him the fifth-richest magnate in the kingdom, and with an extensive power base centred on his castles at Framlingham and Bungay in east Suffolk, he was to prove a vital part of the allies’ plans to use East Anglia as an invasion point.204

  Support for the Young King was not universal, however, and in Warren’s words, ‘there was not so much a tide of baronial opposition so much as a choppy sea’.205 An indication of the extent of support the Old King could still command is provided by Howden’s list of Henry’s principal army commanders at Breteuil in August 1173, which included William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, one of the great cross-Channel magnates and a close confidant of the king, William, earl of Arundel, Richard du Hommet, the constable of Normandy, John count of Vendôme, Richard de Vernon, Richard FitzCount, son of Earl Robert of Gloucester, Jordan Taisson and Henry du Neubourg.206 In addition, the king’s illegitimate brother, Hamelin, earl Warenne, William earl of Gloucester and Richard FitzGilbert, who also held substantial holdings in the duchy, all remained loyal, and there is no record of William de Roumare, earl of Lincoln, being in the rebel camp.207

  The Young King, moreover, gained little support among churchmen in the Angevin lands. Save for Hugh de Puiset, bishop of Durham, who as Jordan Fantosme noted was ‘hand in glove’ with William the Lion, the English episcopate remained firmly loyal to Henry II, while the alleged complicity of the abbot of Peterborough with the rebels appears exceptional among the heads of religious houses.208 Norman ecclesiastics, led by Archbishop Rotrou, were similarly unswerving in their support for the Old King, with the important exception of Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, for long one of Henry II’s leading counsellors, but who, disaffected by his waning influence at court, appears to have been in secret correspondence with the Young King.209

  Motives and Ambitions

  Why did such men support the Young King? If a coherent manifesto of grievances was drawn up by those who took young Henry’s side against his father, it has left no record. The Young King’s letter to Alexander III justifying taking up arms against his father remains the only direct voice of the opposition, and while it implies injustice and misrule, its emphasis is primarily on Henry II’s abuses against the Church and his persecution of Becket.210 Unsurprisingly, chroniclers close to the court displayed little sympathy for the motives of the rebels, and Ralph of Diss, who offers the fullest explanation, saw little save self-interest and unfounded resentment towards Henry II’s policies:

  These men, who for just and provable causes the king had condemned to forfeiture, joined the party of the son, not because they regarded his as the juster cause, but because the father, with a view to increasing the royal dignity, was trampling on the necks of the proud and haughty, overthrowing the suspected castles of the country, or bringing them under his own power; because he ordered or even compelled the persons who were occupying the properties belonging to his own house and to the exchequer to be content with their own patrimony; because he condemned traitors to exile, punished robbers with death, terrified thieves with the gallows and mulcted the oppressors of the poor with the loss of their own money.211

  Certainly many of those who came out in support of the Young King had suffered the loss of revenues or castles resulting from Henry II’s acts of resumption, had been frustrated in claims to lands, or chafed against the impositions of Angevin government.212 As early as 1154, Henry, while still only duke of Normandy, had attempted ‘gradually and circumspectly’ to restore ducal demesnes encroached upon by predatory lords during the troubles of Stephen’s reign or alienated by his father Geoffrey to the Norman magnates as a necessary means of buying their support.213 From his return north following the Toulouse expedition in late September 1159 to the spring of 1163, Henry had based himself primarily in Normandy, intent on strengthening his authority there.214 Nobles had been forced to surrender ducal castles they had previously held as the king’s custodians, while in 1161 Henry II had taken the castles of the count of Meulan and many other Norman magnates into his own hands and garrisoned them with his men.215 Similarly, in 1162 one of the most influential Manceaux lords, Geoffrey of Mayenne, had been forced to surrender the castles of Gorron, Ambrières and Châteauneuf-sur-Colmont on the Maine–Anjou border, while in 1166 William Talvas had to yield Alençon and Roche-Mabille.216 In England, royal resumption or appropriation of key fortresses had likewise occurred on a significant scale in the opening years of Henry’s reign.217 Richer de l’Aigle, for example, had lost the castle of Pevensey after 1154, and it is probable that he sought its restoration and the grant of other lands from the Young King as the price of his support.218

  Rights and prerogatives had also been challenged. In 1163, an inquest ‘by sworn testimony into the respective rights of the king and the barons to revenues and customary dues in Normandy’ had been undertaken under Rotrou, then bishop of Evreux, and Rainald of St Valéry.219 In England, the inquest of 1166 resulting in the Cartae Baronum had been followed in 1170 by the extension of the Inquest of Sheriffs into a far wider investigation of the activities and revenue collection of all landholders and their officials.220 If this was not sweeping enough, the 1170 inquest had also made provision for careful inquiry into and recording of ‘transgressions of the forest, and concerning those who have trespassed in his [King Henry’s ] forests and injured his stags and hinds and other wild beasts’.221 The later 1160s had witnessed notoriously oppressive forest eyres, which had continued until the eve of the war.222 Normandy likewise experienced an intensification of Angevin government through the major inquest in 1172 into the knight service owed to the duke, which may have provoked well-founded fears of increased royal demands for money or service.223 Henry II’s government was perceived as venal, rapacious and harsh. Writing in 1174 shortly after the end of the war, Wace lauded Henry II as a strong king but did not attempt to disguise the heavy-handed nature of his rule:

  People often talk of him and his courage, and of the evil doers he destroys, like birds trapped in a cage. No baron in his land owns so much property that, if he dares infringe the peace, whether in open country or in woodland, he is not shamed through mutilation if he can be caught, or who does not leave his body or soul behind as a hostage.224

  In a still more revealing passage, Guernes acknowledged that the king needed to rule his unruly subjects firmly for ‘he has an insolent people to rule over’, but urged Henry II in the wake of the war to seize the opportunity to reform: ‘The advice I now give the king is to restore the rights and liberties of Holy Church, as he promised, cherish his noblemen, be moderate in justice, not to avenge a few game animals by taking a human life, to grant each individual their rights, to shun covetousness.’225 Guernes’ words find an echo in Gerald of Wales’ account of how in the 1170s a Lincolnshire knight, Roger of Asterby, was commanded by St Peter and the archangel Gabriel to present King Henry with a series of commandments, including to adhere to his coronation oath, uphold the laws of the kingdom, not to put anyone to death without judgment, even if guilty, to ensure that inheritances were restored to their lawful owners, to give justice freely and without payment, and to expel the Jews after restoring bonds to their debtors.226 The last demand was explained by Roger’s own indebtedness to the financier Aaron of Lincoln, but hi
s other points of grievance provide a valuable glimpse of the dissatisfaction of the local nobility with the abuses of Angevin government. Ralph Niger, who had suffered exile at the hands of Henry II and was subsequently attached to the Young King’s household, gave such a lengthy and damning indictment of Henry’s misgovernment that the continuator of his chronicle felt obliged to offer an apology for so immoderate an attack upon a king.227 There can be little doubt that such issues were being raised by Henry II’s opponents in the years leading up to the outbreak of rebellion in 1173, and that they looked to the Young King to remedy them once he came to power.

  Beyond the oppressive nature of Henry II’s rule, many of the leading rebels felt excluded from the king’s counsels and patronage. The alienation of nobles who felt ever more distanced from mechanisms of power by increasingly specialist bureaucracies was to be a widespread phenomenon in later twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Europe, and the precocious development of Angevin government had been accompanied by growing resentment of the undue influence of such administrative experts.228 The later 1160s had seen the deaths of a number of Henry II’s key counsellors, as well as his mother the Empress Matilda, who together had been influential in shaping the nature of his early government, and thereafter the king was perceived as relying increasingly on a small group of curiales, notably men such as the two archdeacons, Geoffrey Ridel and Richard of Ilchester. Even the loyal Walter Map criticized Henry for cutting himself off from everyone but his closest friends.229 The principal cause of Robert III of Leicester’s support for the Young King is likely to have been resentment that he had never achieved the prominence in the king’s counsels enjoyed by his father Robert, who had been justiciar and a pillar of Henry II’s regime between 1154 and his death in 1168.230 Though Henry II had granted the hereditary stewardship of England and Normandy to his father in 1153, Robert himself may well not have held this office.231 Henry II made few grants in Normandy save to members of his own family, such as his brother William and his half-brother Hamelin de Warenne, who received lands in the duchy on his marriage of the Warenne heiress.232 Unlike King Stephen, moreover, he created no new earldoms, refused to recognize the hereditary nature of most of them, allowed several to lapse and failed to win the close attachment of a number of his earls.233 While there are evident methodological problems in using witness lists of charters as indices of a particular magnate’s standing at court or his relationship with the king, it nonetheless remains striking that none of the leading Norman rebels in 1173–74 appear among the regular witnesses to Henry II’s surviving charters.234 These lords, together with the earls of Lincoln and Devon, apparently kept their distance from the court, while nobles from Poitou and Aquitaine were conspicuous by their absence.235