Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  After holding a council of war with their magnates, the brothers marched into the lands of Vulgrin of Angoulême, who had refused to keep the duke’s peace. They besieged Châteauneuf, which fell to them after fifteen days, but not before at least one knight in young Henry’s contingent, Geoffrey of Saumur, had been mortally wounded.158 With the castle taken, however, the Young King refused to stay longer with Richard. Howden noted that his decision to leave had been made ‘according to ill-counsel’, though he declined to specify who gave such advice or why.159 It is likely, however, to have been the result of Poitevin barons hostile to Richard attempting to drive a wedge between the two brothers by playing on their rivalry. If so, it was the beginning of the Young King’s fateful involvement in the troubled politics of the south. Though brief, these operations could not but have fuelled Young Henry’s sense of frustration and his jealousy of his brother, for though Richard’s authority remained delegated, he now effectively commanded the resources of the duchy.160 How little the Young King’s military aid meant to Richard, moreover, was painfully underlined when, despite the departure of his elder brother, Richard pressed on with his campaign with dramatic success. After a siege of only six days, he took Angoulême itself, capturing within it many of his leading opponents, including Count William, Aimar of Limoges, and the viscounts of Ventadour and Chabanais. Richard sent them back to his father in England, where at Winchester on 21 September they submitted and implored his mercy.161 It had been a masterful campaign, and young Henry had missed out on any share of the glory.

  A Crisis of Loyalty: Adam of Churchdown

  The summer of 1176, moreover, witnessed a serious deterioration in relations between young Henry and his father. Between 1170 and 1173 the only witnesses appearing on the Young King’s acta had been those tutores appointed by his father, which reflects their effective control of his actions. From 1175 onwards, by contrast, the Young King’s own household knights and other members of his familia, such as the chaplains Nicholas and William, are found attesting his writs and charters, marking a significant step towards his greater autonomy.162 Henry II nevertheless still exercised control of key members of his son’s clerical staff. Indeed, Roger of Pont L’Évêque, archbishop of York, had purchased from Henry II the post of chancellor to the Young King for his nephew, Geoffrey, archdeacon of York and provost of Beverley, for the huge sum of 1,100 marks of silver.163 In turn, Geoffrey had appointed another of Archbishop Roger’s clerks, Adam of Churchdown, as his vice-chancellor.164 Archbishop Roger had been a staunch ally against Thomas Becket and conspicuously loyal during the rebellion of 1173–74, so that in making these appointments the Old King was clearly seeking to install men drawn from the archbishop’s circle to keep close watch on his son’s activities.

  It was inevitable, however, that young Henry, ever more sensitive concerning his own independence, should view officials selected by his father as at best a burdensome imposition, and at worst a fifth column. The invidious position in which this placed the new vice-chancellor was dramatically revealed while the Young King was at Poitiers on his return journey from the siege of Châteauneuf. According to Roger of Howden, young Henry had met with several nobles from Normandy and France, and despite the fact that these men were known enemies of his father he retained them in his household.165 Alarmed by these developments, Adam of Churchdown attempted to warn Henry II. His letters, however, were intercepted – a telling insight into the tension and suspicion that existed between the Young King’s friends and those appointed to his household by Henry II. Though Adam was acting out of a strong sense of duty to Henry II, the Young King regarded his actions as treason, and, wanting to stress the absolute loyalty he demanded from his men, he sought to make an example of the unfortunate vice-chancellor. Asked for their verdict on the matter, the Young King’s counsellors judged that Adam be put to death for such betrayal, either by hanging or flaying alive. The bishop of Poitiers, however, intervened, claiming that as a clerk Adam was immune from secular jurisdiction. Yet though this saved him from a worse fate, the Young King nevertheless ordered Adam to be scourged through all the town squares along the court’s journey to Argentan, where he was to be imprisoned. Incensed by his son’s actions, Henry II sent four of his household knights to order Adam’s immediate release and return to him.166

  Yet if Henry II had been angered by the manner in which the Young King treated one of his own clerks, he was still more troubled by the news that Adam had attempted to convey. Was the Young King seeking to rekindle rebellion? How gravely Henry II took the situation is shown by his actions at Michaelmas when, following a great council at Windsor, he ordered that all castles in England were to be taken into royal hands; those in the hands of earls or barons were now to receive royal garrisons.167 Even his loyal justiciar, Richard de Lucy, described by Howden as the king’s familiarissimus, was forced to surrender his castle of Chipping Ongar, which was the centre or caput of his estates.168 It was a remarkable display of force, but also of deep insecurity. Measures to ensure the demolition of castles were speeded up, and it was now, in the autumn of 1176 rather than in the immediate aftermath of the war, that Henry ordered the destruction of some of the castles of leading rebels of 1173–74. The castle at Leicester was demolished by the king’s engineers, together with what remained of the town walls, while the earl’s castle at Groby was razed. Roger de Mowbray’s castles of Thirsk and Malzeard, and those of Hugh Bigod at Framlingham and Bungay, suffered a similar fate.169 Similar measures were taken in Normandy, where Richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester, was made effectively the justiciar of Normandy, and took into Henry II’s control the castles of all the Norman counts and barons, installing ducal garrisons in them.170 Nor does it seem coincidental that in 1176 a number of erstwhile rebels, including Hugh Bigod and Hasculf of St Hilaire – the same man whom Henry II had expelled as a troublemaker from his son’s household in 1173 – left on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.171 Their decision to journey east is unlikely to have been a voluntary one, and the elderly Hugh was to die en route to Jerusalem.

  Henry also now pressured Earl William of Gloucester into making John his principal heir. John was to marry the earl’s daughter Isabella and to inherit the great honour of Gloucester. If Earl William should have a son by his wife, the honour was to be divided between this heir and John. The earl’s other daughters were simply to receive an annuity from the revenues of England.172 Like the settlement on John in the Treaty of Montlouis in 1174, Henry’s lavish endowment of John appears in part to have been a further reaction to his eldest son’s disloyalty, and Henry II may have been intending increasingly to establish his youngest son John as a check on the Young King’s position in England.

  By the late summer, however, relations between Heny II and the Young King had been patched up sufficiently for young Henry to obey his father’s command to meet his sister Joanna as she crossed from England to Normandy in the company of Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey, bishop of Ely, and the Sicilian ambassadors who had negotiated her marriage to King William II.173 Their ultimate destination was Saint-Gilles, where the Sicilian galleys were waiting. The dictates of security as well as state required a powerful escort, for the party bore rich gifts including horses, clothes, and gold and silver plate from Henry II. Young Henry received his sister and the ambassadors with the utmost honour and escorted them as far as Poitou, where he entrusted them to Richard for their onward journey to the lands of Toulouse.174

  Châteauroux, Berry and the Reckoning with Louis

  While Henry II celebrated Christmas at Nottingham, the Young King and Margaret held their own court at Argentan.175 Early in the new year of 1177, however, young Henry received an urgent mandate from his father. Ralph de Déols, the most important baron in Berry, had died, leaving a three-year-old daughter, Denise, as the heiress to a wealthy and strategically crucial lordship centred on the castle of Châteauroux.176 Controlling a major crossing of the river Indre, Châteauroux lay on the borders of both the Tourai
ne and Poitou, within striking distance of Poitiers and of the heartlands of Anjou alike. As overlord, Henry II claimed the right of wardship over the girl and thus the opportunity to marry her to one of his own leading supporters. Resisting this imposition that went against local custom and family interest, Ralph’s kinsmen refused to hand over Denise, carried her off and fortified their castles in expectation of the Angevin retaliation they knew must come.177 In their defiance, they may have received the support of Louis VII, who directly controlled the viscounty of Bourges in eastern Berry and had long been seeking to expand Capetian power westward.178 Angevin claims to control stemmed from the fact that Berry had long been regarded as part of the duchy of Aquitaine, but in January 1177, Richard was preoccupied by a major campaign against Dax and Bigorre which had taken him as far south as St Pierre-de-Cize and to the foothills of the Pyrenees.179 The crisis in Berry demand a swift response, so Henry II ordered the Young King immediately to raise an army and take control of the lands of Ralph de Déols.180 The Old King’s mandate added a revealing comment that when he alone had been in control of the kingdom he had never lost anything pertaining to his right, and so in the same way it would be dishonourable, now that several were involved in the rule of the land, to lose anything from it: the prestige and honour of the Angevins as a family were at stake.181 Glad of the commission and eager to make his own military showing, the Young King summoned the host of Normandy and Anjou and marched into Berry. No chronicler records any details of his ensuing siege of Châteauroux, but its defenders evidently regarded his forces as overwhelming, for the castle was surrendered to him. Capture of the heiress Denise, however, eluded him, for she remained securely in the custody of her kinsman, the lord of La Châtre.182

  Map 6 The Loire Valley

  Such a forceful reassertion of Plantagenet suzerainty in Berry was a direct challenge to King Louis, and Henry II doubtless intended the Young King’s agency as an indicator of his son’s political realignment. Moreover, whereas Henry II had been reconciled with his sons and their supporters by the Treaty of Montlouis, no formal peace had been drawn up with the French king following the end of hostilities in 1174. With his position within his own domains now reasserted, Henry II was determined on a showdown with Louis and to take revenge for his leading role in the war.183 In late February, he ordered his English tenants-in-chief to muster at London on 8 May to cross to Normandy and be prepared to serve in the defence of his continental lands for a whole year.184 Meanwhile, Henry II prepared his ground carefully, aiming to detach Louis from his most powerful allies, and to neutralize as far as possible support for any renewed rebellion by his eldest son. In January, he had pressurized the count of Flanders into turning down Louis’ request for the marriage of the late Count Matthew’s daughters to Louis’ son Philip and to the son of Theobald of Blois.185 Although in 1175 Henry had persuaded Philip to defer his planned pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he now provided him with funds for his journey, and in a gesture symbolizing their reconciliation, the king and count jointly undertook a pilgrimage to Becket’s tomb in April.186 Philip, accompanied by a number of French and Anglo-Norman barons, including William de Mandeville, left for the Holy Land in early May.187 The Young King was still on the continent, and it seems likely that he met Count Philip before his friend and erstwhile ally departed. Whether he expressed any desire to accompany him on his eastern expedition is not known, but his father needed him in France. By early 1177, moreover, it was clear that his queen, Margaret, was pregnant.188

  Philip’s absence considerably strengthened Henry II’s position in regard to King Louis, but the king also took care to seek a rapprochement with the leading former rebels within his realm. At a great council at Northampton in mid January he had restored their lands in England and in Normandy to the earls of Leicester and Chester, though he retained Mountsorrel and Pacy, the only castles of Earl Robert left standing, and the castle of Chester.189 Earl Robert had shown himself to be obedient and humbled, and Henry had no wish to foment further enmity by dispossessing him. In a masterly move, Henry subsequently dispatched Earl Hugh to Ireland, suitably shadowed by William FitzAdelin, with orders to subdue it on behalf of John, whom Henry was planning to make king of Ireland.190 A further indication of the rebels’ political rehabilitation was the fact that the earls of Leicester, Chester and Ferrers, as well as Roger de Mowbray, were among the witnesses to the agreement between the kings of Navarre and Castile brokered by Henry II and ratified at Windsor on 9 March.191 Nevertheless, when news reached him of the death of Hugh Bigod on pilgrimage in Palestine, Henry II moved to weaken Bigod power; his agents seized all of the earl’s treasure and, despite the fact that his eldest son Roger had been a loyal supporter in the war of 1173–74, the king exploited a challenge by Hugh Bigod’s second wife Gundreda in favour of her own son Hugh to take a significant number of Bigod lands into royal control and to withhold from Roger the grant of the earldom itself.192

  The extent to which Henry II still feared a potential uprising in England during his projected campaign against Louis is starkly indicated by the fact that at a council at Windsor in May, convened to deliberate ‘the peace and stability of the realm’, the king – ostensibly on the advice of the assembled magnates – ‘removed the custodians of the castles of England’ and replaced them with knights from his own household.193 Similarly, in a bid to prevent the Scots from attempting to regain the key strongholds of Lothian, Henry II entrusted them to the very men who had proved so steadfast in the defence of the north against William the Lion in 1173–74: William de Stuteville was installed at Roxburgh, hitherto in the custody of Archbishop Roger, who was instead granted control of the great Yorkshire stronghold of Scarborough, while Roger de Stuteville held Edinburgh and Geoffrey de Neville Berwick.194 The defection of Hugh of Durham, who had served the king ‘badly and deceitfully’ in the recent war, had pointed up the Achilles heel of the defences of the north-east. The bishop had proffered the huge fine of 2,000 marks to have the king’s goodwill, to save his castles from demolition, and to secure the manor of Wicton for his son Henry de Puiset. Nevertheless, King Henry now had his castle of Northallerton demolished, and the keep of Durham castle placed in the custody of Robert de Conyers, while the episcopal castle of Norham was committed to William de Neville.195 Henry looked equally to the security of his western borders. At Oxford, he met with a great assembly of Welsh princes, who, after suitable grants, swore homage and fealty to him and pledged to keep peace with him.196

  With the chances of renewed Scottish aggression or insurrection in England thus diminished, Henry II embarked on an aggressive game of brinksmanship with Louis. The muster of the English host was pushed back to early June but it was to take place at Winchester, while a great fleet of ships from the ports of England and Normandy were assembled at Portsmouth and Southampton to carry the army across to Normandy.197 Then, with his intentions of deploying massive force made clear, Henry II announced the postponement of the expedition until 1 July, while he sent a high-powered delegation, led by Geoffrey Ridel, bishop of Ely, Richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester, and Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen to King Louis, to whom they presented an astonishing ultimatum. In order to ratify the terms of the marriage agreements made with his sons, the French king was to cede to the Young King ‘the whole of that territory which is called the Vexin, that is to say all the land which is between Gisors and Pontoise’, which had been promised when young Henry married Margaret. Louis was also to cede the city of Bourges and its appurtenances, which he had purportedly granted as her dower when Richard should marry Alice.198 These were extraordinary claims, to which Henry II cannot seriously have expected Louis to accede. Margaret’s dowry had only been the contested Norman Vexin, not the French half of it, while the agreement of Montmirail had explicitly stated that the marriage of Richard and Alice was not to entail a territorial dowry. Henry II’s actions have been seen as a flagrant pretext for premeditated aggression, or as a means by which he sought to achieve his primary goa
l of securing fuller recognition of his rights in Berry and the Auvergne and to obtain a promise that the French would not intervene while he pursued these aims.199 Yet while his authority in these regions and the issue of the honour of Châteauroux were a cause of contention,200 there was a more immediate and alarming reason for the heightened tension between the kings of France and England. For Margaret, the Young King’s wife, who was heavily pregnant, had left the Angevin lands without consulting Henry II and without his permission, and gone to her father, King Louis.201 When Henry’s ambassadors demanded the French Vexin and Bourges from Louis, they also demanded that he send back his daughter to Normandy immediately.202 If the child of Margaret and young Henry was born in the Île-de-France, the Capetians would have control over the future heir of the heartlands of the Angevin empire. This was an acute danger that Henry II was not prepared to tolerate.

  Roger of Howden, the only chronicler to mention Margaret’s flight to Louis’ court, gives no explanation of the circumstances which lay behind it, nor of the Young King’s role in this drama. Yet it is hard to believe that Queen Margaret could have withdrawn to Paris without young Henry’s knowledge or consent. He must have viewed his father’s aggressive stance towards King Louis, his father-in-law and erstwhile ally, with deep ambivalence, and perhaps saw the refuge of his wife and future child in the Île-de-France as safeguarding his own position. Henry II had sent Geoffrey of Ely and Walter of Coutances, the archdeacon of Oxford, as messengers to the Young King, but when they brought his response to his father’s mandates back to the Old King at Woodstock, ‘it did not please him in any respect’.203 This suggests more than merely a report that the French had refused Henry II’s ultimatum. Had young Henry opposed his father’s demands on Louis, or refused to assist him in any campaign against the French king? Henry II’s response was to summon the bishops of the realm to be ready to cross to Normandy with him on 1 July, but once again he postponed transferring his assembled army to the duchy while he waited for news of his envoys to France.204