A War against Nature
The conflict which had broken out in 1173 had shaken the stability of Henry’s lands to the core. It also deeply troubled contemporary writers, who struggled to make sense of a war begun by the king’s own sons. For Gerald of Wales, quoting Lucan’s famous description of the bitter struggle between Caesar and Pompey, it was bella plus quam civilia – ‘a worse than civil war’.222 It appeared not only as illict and treasonous but as unnatural.223 The Melrose chronicler saw the conflict in terms of warring members of the body politic: ‘A dispute and a war, which may almost be styled inexorable, arose between the belly and the bowels, between the parent and the child.’224 Such a rebellion of son against father, noted Peter of Blois, ran contrary to the law of Moses, the law of the Gospels, the censure of the canons, the strictures of the apostles, the imperial laws, the condition of men and natural law itself.225 Howden agreed, arguing that at Breteuil in 1173 Henry II would have been fully justified in attacking Louis and the French because they had so corrupted Henry’s sons that they rebelled against their parent and progenitor, ‘forgetful of the dictates of humanity and unrestrained by natural law’.226 Such an act could only be one of insane folly, bestial because it flew in the face of reason and duty to one’s natural lord; the Young King’s rebellion was ‘the wicked madness of traitors’, ‘bestial madness’, and a furor waged with ‘diabolical fury’.227 When Ralph of Diss compiled his lengthy list of examples of earlier filial revolts, he did so less for a historical than for a didactic purpose. For, as he noted, in many of these cases the rebellious son met with divinely ordained punishment, whether by death, demonic possession, exile, imprisonment, deposition as heir or lack of offspring.228 ‘You will be able to frighten whoever you wish away from parricide,’ Ralph remarked with vehemence, ‘if the Book of Judges, the Book of Kings and the Book of Isaiah are diligently studied concerning the extermination of sons rising up against their parents. Read books, study the scriptures, consult more prudent men, and have before your eyes this little collection.’229 By contrast, it was little surprise that the Young King’s rebellion came to be regarded by some as divine punishment on Henry II for Becket’s murder.230
Plagued as he was by fears of treachery, Henry II was particularly sensitive to interpretations of the ‘Prophecies of Merlin’, the supposed utterances of one Merlin Sylvester at the time of King Vortigern. Contained in the seventh book of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, they were a heady mixture of Geoffrey’s own invention with an earlier Welsh genre, and they were highly influential.231 Writing in late 1174, Guernes of Pont-Sainte-Maxence noted of the king how the Prophecies ‘really alarmed him, and the fools who interpret them have been no help to him’.232 Just as the rebellious Eleanor was linked to ‘the eagle of the broken covenant’ in the Prophecies, so too Roger of Howden saw the Young King’s war as being foretold:
Then indeed was fulfilled the prophecy of Merlin, who spoke thus: ‘Then the cubs of the roaring lion shall awaken and coming out of the forests … will live again the days of their forefathers’. Merlin made this prophecy about the sons of King Henry, son of the Empress Matilda. When he called them ‘the cubs of the roaring lion’, he meant they would rise against their father and their lord to make war on him.233
Gerald of Wales, who had a deep interest in these prophecies and regarded the rebellion of 1173–74 as preordained retribution for Henry II’s supposed crimes and oppression of the Church, similarly recited a prophecy of Merlin which he considered had been fulfilled by young Henry’s revolt:
Because of their father’s sin, sons sin against him who begot them, and an earlier crime becomes the cause of subsequent ones. Sons will rise against their parent, and to avenge a crime the bowels will conspire against the belly. His own flesh and blood will rise up against a man of blood, and he will suffer terrible affliction …234
For the present, however, Henry II had weathered the storm. He and Louis agreed a truce to last from 13 January until 31 March, the close of Easter. He held his Christmas court at Caen, but there can have been little joy in the festivities.235 His own queen was now his captive, while all of his sons, save John, still remained at the court of the king of France, and had rejected his offer of peace on generous terms. To steady his supporters, Henry II acted with studied sangfroid, being careful to be seen hawking and hunting as if he was unperturbed by the dangers of the situation, and to this end he had hawks and even fallow deer shipped to the duchy from England.236 Yet fear of betrayal and desertion was ever present. Ralph of Diss claimed that among the defectors were some of his ‘household men … most intimate in his counsels’. Henry knew well that many nobles secretly favoured the Young King and were merely biding their time for the fortunes of war to turn in the younger Henry’s favour.237
CHAPTER 9
Invasion
THE ONSLAUGHT RENEWED, 1174
OVER THE WINTER, the Young King and his brothers remained at Louis’ court. The campaigns of 1173 had gone badly for the allies, but they still held the strategic initiative. The fires of rebellion in Henry II’s dominions were far from extinguished, and the Old King, plagued by fears of disloyalty as yet concealed, was forced to remain on the defensive. Save for some of the younger hotheads, few of the Young King’s supporters can have expected that Henry II’s position would crumble in the space of only one campaigning season. As in the previous year, the allies sought to keep up military pressure on a number of fronts, to keep Henry guessing and to prevent him concentrating his forces. Philip of Flanders was now fully committed to the war once again, and plans were laid for an invasion of England.
A January Offensive in the Séois
In January, young Henry showed his eagerness to renew hostilities by striking through the county of Perche to attack Sées. He clearly did not regard himself bound by the truce which his father had established with King Louis, that was to last until after Easter 1174, and while the Capetian king himself refrained from taking the field, Count Theobald of Blois, aided by Count Rotrou of Perche and John, count of Sées, provided the bulk of the Young King’s forces.1 As the reverse at Verneuil had starkly shown, the Norman defences on the line of the Avre still remained too strong. But the support of Count Rotrou, who was married to the count of Blois’ sister, and of Count John, allowed an allied strike further west on the border of the duchy with Maine.2 This was a daring move: if Sées fell, the allies could drive up the valley of the Orne to Argentan and from there push deep into central Normandy, threatening Falaise, Caen or Lisieux.3 Indeed, this strategic potential had long been recognized by Louis VII, who had himself attacked Sées in 1151 in his war against Count Geoffrey le Bel, exploiting the fact that his own brother Robert was then count of Perche.4 It was also why in 1166 Henry II had constructed defensive earthworks on the borders of Perche, built the castle of Beauvoir in north-east Maine, and taken into his own hands the key castles of this vital yet turbulent frontier, including removing Alençon and La Roche Mabile from the Bellême family.5 Count John, son of William Talvas, was thus anxious to reassert Bellême influence in the Alençonnais and regain control of his comital seat at Sées. By supporting the Young King, moreover, he hoped to recover the extensive lands in England that had come to him through marriage to a niece of Geoffrey le Bel but had been seized by Henry II in 1166.6 To the east of Alençon, John held the castles of Essay, Saint-Rémy-du-Val and Mamers, and it may well have been from Essay, due south of Sées, that the allies launched their attack.7 Sées itself comprised two separate bourgs: on the north bank of the Orne, the Bourg l’Évêque contained the cathedral, while south of the river was the Bourg-le-Comte with its castle.8 The Young King once again led a powerful force of some 500 knights, indicating that the attack was far more than a reconnaissance in force.9 The garrison and townspeople of Sées, however, put up a spirited resistance, and, lacking a siege train, young Henry and Count John were forced to withdraw in frustration.10
For the rest of the winter months, the allies
bided their time. Pope Alexander III sent a delegation, headed once more by Peter, the saintly archbishop of Tarentaise, and Alexander, abbot of Cîteaux, to King Louis to establish peace between Henry II and his sons.11 Their efforts, however, were fruitless, for Louis was already planning a joint offensive, and at Easter, when the truce agreed with Henry II was set to end, the French king summoned his nobles to a great council at Paris.12 Here, the counts of Flanders, Blois and Clermont, as well as many others, swore on relics that they would sail with the Young King around 24 June, the Feast of St John, to invade England and subjugate it to his rule. Other lords, who were to remain with Louis, pledged that they would enter Normandy with his army, take whatever castles they could and lay waste the land, or that they would lay siege to Rouen.13 Meanwhile, William the Lion was to invade northern England once more and to join forces there with a group of committed rebels headed by Roger de Mowbray. This campaign would prepare the way for the invasion by the Young King, Philip and their allies, who would sail from Flanders: the young Henry’s presence in England would bring over the waverers to his cause and decisively tip the balance against the Old King.
The Second Invasion of William the Lion
Although William the Lion had been forced into a precipitous withdrawal from the north of England in 1173, the earl of Leicester’s invasion in East Anglia had prevented the justiciar Richard de Lucy from pressing home his punitive counter-attack. Indeed, King William’s position remained strong enough for him to be able to demand the stiff price of 300 marks of silver for granting a truce, brokered by Hugh, bishop of Durham, to the nobles of Northumberland for the same period as Henry II had agreed with Louis – from 13 January, the feast of St Hilary, up to the close of Easter.14 The very moment the truce expired, William again led his army across the border into Northumberland and, as in the previous year, commenced by attacking Wark.15 With the Scots controlling Berwick and Roxburgh, Wark alone held out in a salient, which left any Scottish advance to the south-east vulnerable to an attack in its rear. The castle’s defences had not been tested in 1173, but Roger de Stuteville was an experienced commander and had made good use of the intervening respite to further strengthen the fortifications. While William made preparations for a major assault, he dispatched a strong force of knights, including some of his Flemish mercenaries, on a surprise dawn raid on the town of Belford.16 Pillaging the countryside around Bamburgh, they returned to Berwick-upon-Tweed laden with spoils and livestock to help provision the army during the impending siege.17 Jordan Fantosme gives a vivid impression of what such a raid entailed:
Some speed into the farms to wreak havoc, some take sheep from their folds, and some set fire to farmsteads … You could have seen Flemings tying up peasants and leading them off roped together like heathens. Women flee to the church, only to be snatched away naked, leaving behind their garments and their valuables … They burned the countryside: but God showed his love for these goodly peasants who had no protection, in that their mortal enemies, the Scots, were not there, for they would have beaten and killed and ill-treated them. The king of Scotland’s men took off an enormous quantity of booty … they have any number of animals, oxen, horses, fine cows, ewes, lambs, clothes, money, brooches and rings.18
William now ordered the attack on Wark with ‘his archers, with his catapults and sturdy siege engines, and his slingers and his crossbowmen’.19 The well-armed Flemings broke through the outer palisades and stormed the ditches, but were repeatedly thrown back from the walls with heavy losses. Attempts to deploy a stone-throwing engine against the gate of the bailey and to set fire to the defences proved equally ineffectual.20 The following day, acknowledging he could not take the castle by force, William ordered the Scottish army to strike camp, burn their temporary huts and retreat across the Tweed to Roxburgh. It is Jordan Fantosme who again captures the noise and commotion of an army on the move:
Map 4 Northern England, 1173–74
Then you would have seen the marshals going hither and thither, taking down the pavilions and folding up the tents and making a tremendous racket throughout the camp of the army of Scotland … they set fire to their huts and left them ablaze: the hubbub was enormous … that the serving men and the esquires make throughout the camp.21
Roger de Stuteville wisely counselled his men not to push their luck by making insulting remarks or jeering at the retreating Scots, but once the enemy were at a safe distance the garrison sounded a fanfare and broke into song to celebrate their victory.22 It had been a stark demonstration of the great superiority of the art of defence over attack: Roger’s garrison of some ten knights and forty serjeants and archers had successfully repulsed William’s entire army.23
The attack on Wark, however, was only the first stage of William’s campaign. As the allies had planned, the powerful Yorkshire magnate Roger de Mowbray now came out openly in revolt. During the time of truce in early 1174, Mowbray had re-fortified the ruined castle of Kinnard Ferry on the Isle of Axholme,24 and, leaving this and his two other castles of Thirsk and Kirkby Malzeard in the charge of his two eldest sons, he had come north to join William the Lion.25 He was accompanied by Adam de Port, who had been implicated in a plot to murder Henry II in 1172, with a strong force.26 The Young King hoped that Mowbray’s defection would begin a landslide. According to William of Newburgh, he repeatedly sent secret letters
either to entice by promises or to assail with threats the English nobles who seemed to be standing by his father so as to bring them over to his faction by any means possible. So it is said that at that time there were in England only a few nobles whose support for the king did not waver, and who would not be ready to abandon him at an opportune moment if their intentions were not countered in good time.27
Mowbray’s alliance opened up important strategic possibilities for the Young King’s coalition. His castle of Kinnard Ferry lay between York and Lincoln, and its position on the river Trent, close to its confluence with the Humber, made it a potential landing base for ships from Flanders, while his other castles threatened York and provided a rebel enclave between the northern counties and the concentration of rebel strongholds in the Midlands. Indeed, the Scots’ invasion at Easter had been the signal for these Midlands rebels to mount a sustained series of raids,28 and William the Lion assisted them by sending his younger brother David to reinforce the garrisons of Leicester castle and Huntingdon.29
David’s role in the invasion of 1173 is unrecorded, but now, in return for his assistance in the war, King William offered him the earldom of Lennox, as well as confirming the grant made to him by the Young King the previous year of the great honour of Huntingdon for his service.30 This already included widespread holdings in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, but young Henry had added all the county of Cambridgeshire for good measure.31 The powerful castle of Huntingdon not only controlled the passage of Ermine Street between Stamford and Hertford but also one of the main routes out of Norfolk skirting the Fens.32 Whatever scruples he may have felt in taking up arms against Henry II, the man who had knighted him in 1170, David now threw his energies into supporting the Young King. The new earl was quickly able to draw on a groundswell of support among the lesser tenants of the honour of Huntingdon, which had close links to Scotland.33 Earl David ‘fortified Huntingdon sufficiently with knights, and with supplies of food’ before joining forces with the men of Leicester, then ‘molested the whole province with sword and fire, with spoiling and plunderings’.34 From these two bases, Earl David and Ansketil Mallory launched a successful raid on Northampton, the linchpin of royalist defences in the Midlands.35 The garrison under Bertram de Verdun, the sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, sallied out, together with a force of the burgesses, to engage with the rebels but in the ensuing clash many of the townsmen were killed and over 200 captured. The castle and the town were too heavily defended to take, but David and the knights of the earl of Leicester returned in triumph with much booty.36
This success may have prom
pted another leading Midlands rebel, William, Earl Ferrers,37 to lead the knights of Leicester in a daring dawn attack on Nottingham, which was held by Reginald de Lucy. Achieving complete surprise, the rebels broke into the town with ease, killing and taking prisoner many of the citizens before plundering and putting it to the torch.38 As at Northampton, Ferrers and his men did not attempt to attack the heavily fortified castle,39 but the booty and ransoms gained from these attacks, as well no doubt as many smaller raids that went unnoticed by the chroniclers, were vital in sustaining the rebel war effort.40 As had happened so often in the troubled years of Stephen’s reign, churches were plundered of their treasures to provide money for knights’ wages. After the end of the war, in late 1175, Abbot William of Peterborough was deposed by the archbishop of Canterbury for having violently entered his own church at the head of a body of knights and wounded the monks who attempted to prevent his seizure of the relics of the saints, including the arm of St Oswald, which, it was alleged, he intended to hand over to the Jews in return for cash.41 The abbot was also arraigned by the king for having received Ralph de Waterville, his brother, who was an inimicus regis and one of the rebel garrison of Huntingdon.42 The abbot was attempting, or so his accusers must have claimed, to support the rebels with the moveable wealth of his own abbey.43
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