Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  CHAPTER 12

  Keeping the Balance of Power

  FRANCE, 1178–1182

  Gracious heaven! If such brothers would have regarded the fraternal compact between each other, if they would have looked towards their father with filial affection … how great, how inestimable, how renowned, how incomparable to all future time would have been the glory of their father and the victory of his offspring! … For what valour could resist these powers, what kings could stand against these kings, or what kingdoms could successfully oppose such leaders in war?1

  – Gerald of Wales, De principis instructione, II: 11

  FROM THE HISTORY of William Marshal alone, it would be easy to gain the impression that the Young King did little else but frequent the tournament circuit of northern France between 1178 and 1182.2 In reality, young Henry continued to play a significant role in the military and political affairs of the Angevin territories during these years. In the aftermath of the major confrontation with Louis VII in 1177, the ageing Capetian monarch had accepted an entente based on the acceptance of Plantagenet supremacy. The accession of his heir Philip in 1180, however, resulted in a period of political destabilization in northern France, as rival factions vied for control of the young ruler, pitting Philip of Flanders against the queen mother Adela and the house of Blois. Such divisions only served to strengthen the Plantagenets’ hegemony, but in marked contrast to the years of bitter conflict with Louis, the early 1180s witnessed Henry II acting as peacemaker and the young Henry as a protector of the youthful Philip, his brother-in-law and overlord.

  Little can be traced of the Young King’s movements during 1178, not least because Roger of Howden’s narrative for this year is notably scanty, even in regard to Henry II.3 Nevertheless, he is found on 19 March 1178 with his father and his youngest brother John at a great ceremony to consecrate the magnificent new abbey church of Bec, which Robert of Torigni, who had been a monk there, claimed ‘had no equal for its beauty in the whole of Normandy’.4 The ties between the ducal house and Bec, one of greatest monasteries in Normandy, were as close as they were long-standing, and young Henry’s grandmother, a particularly generous patron, was buried there.5 During the service, performed by Archbishop Rotrou and the bishops of Bayeux, Avranches and Evreux,6 King Henry II granted the house 100 livres ‘in the money of Normandy’ annually, by placing his hat on the main altar, while the Young King confirmed his father’s gift by likewise placing a ring on it.7 Young Henry himself may have had no landed endowment from which to make his own territorial grants to religious foundations, but he regularly confirmed those of his father.8 Following the re-foundation of Waltham abbey as a college of secular canons by Henry II in 1177, for example, the Young King issued his own charter at Argentan, which follows the list of the abbey’s possessions in Henry II’s initial grant almost verbatim but adds a lengthy preamble in which he propounds the merits of confirming and supporting religious establishments as greatly befitting the royal majesty.9 Such confirmations also reflected his authority to grant exemptions from tolls, such as the freedom from prisage of wine and other levies throughout his dominions which he granted to the monks of the abbey of Le Valasse in the Pays de Caux.10 Likewise, in a charter to the great abbey of Fontevraud by which he confirmed a number of Henry II’s earlier grants as well as those of other donors, the Young King conceded to the abbess and the community a range of tolls, revenues and jurisdictional rights linked to lands at Ponts-de-Cé, near Angers, which formerly had pertained to the count of Anjou and his local agents or baillis. These included the right to levy minagium or a tax on wheat and salt, and the profits of justice from an extensive range of pleas. He reserved to himself the power to punish ‘in life and limb’, only because, as he explained, it was not appropriate for clergy and the religious to be involved in judgments resulting in the shedding of blood.11 The Young King not only confirmed the charters of other donors but can be glimpsed urging others to make charitable bequests, as in his notification of the grant of the church of Nointot made ‘at my beseeching’ by John de Mara to the leper house of Sainte Catherine de Monte in Rouen.12

  After holding his Christmas court in Normandy, the Young King sailed from Wissant to Dover on 26 February 1179, after a three-year absence from the kingdom. Riding high on the reputation he had gained on the tournament circuit, he was received with honour by his father.13 Ralph of Diss noted that ‘although the Young King was still under age his father restored in full his possessions which he had taken away’.14 That Dean Ralph could regard young Henry, who was now twenty-five, as still being in some form of minority is striking, and though no details of exactly what was restored to him are known, it seems that his return was marked by some kind of formal political rehabilitation. The two kings made a progress to Gloucestershire, hunting at Bicknore on the Wye, and the Young King probably also visited Worcestershire before father and son returned to Winchester to celebrate the feast of Easter on 1 April.15 Among the reasons for the Young King’s return was the need to consult with his father over important reforms to the system of the general eyre by itinerant royal justices, and jointly to preside over a great council at Windsor on 10 April in which the new arrangements were set out.16 These changes had been prompted by the retirement from public life of Richard de Lucy, the king’s eminent and long-serving chief justiciar, but also by the results of an inquiry into the conduct of the royal justices which Henry II had held on his own return from the continent in July 1178.17 Revising the provision of justices set out in the assize of Northampton, Henry and his counsellors devised a new system by which the kingdom was divided into four circuits, with a group of six itinerant justices assigned to each.18 In addition, a panel of five justices, comprising three laymen and two clerks and based in the curia regis, were to hear all the clamores or legal appeals of the kingdom. If they encountered a question they could not resolve among themselves, they could refer the cases to the king and other councillors.19 It is likely that the council’s deliberations also involved the introduction of the ‘grand assize’, a crucial reform which for the first time offered men engaged in a dispute over seisin of land the chance to avoid a judicial duel and instead have the case decided by a jury of twelve law-worthy knights of the neighbourhood.20 How far young Henry was an active participant in these legal reforms is unknown, though Henry II clearly regarded his consent and presence at Windsor as important. We should be wary of assuming that his passion for the tournament necessarily excluded a concern for the development of judicial procedures, and from the time of his early training in the operation of justice under the tutelage of William FitzJohn he had been made fully aware of the great significance of these processes for the exercise of royal power.

  After holding a joint court with his father at Pentecost, 20 April, the Young King immediately sailed back to Flanders with his father’s blessing.21 His speedy return may well have been prompted by a desire not to miss a great tournament between Maintenon and Nogent-le-Roi on the river Eure on the south-east border of Normandy held in late May, but also by the preparations being made by King Louis for the coronation of his son Philip, who was now approaching fifteen.22 The great lords and ecclesiastics had been summoned to Rheims, the great coronation church of the kings of France, for the feast of the Assumption, 15 August, and as seneschal of France young Henry would have a leading part to play in the ceremony.23 But then events took a sudden and dramatic turn. When out hunting near Compiègne, Philip had become separated from his companions; disorientated and increasingly terrified, he had spent the night in the forest, and was later discovered in a state of shock by a charcoal burner. As a result of this trauma, he fell dangerously ill.24 Were he to die, the succession to the throne of France would again be thrown into question and the Young King, as the husband of Louis’ daughter Margaret, would have a strong claim. Not only that, but the Angevins, reunited and dominant within France, had the power to make such a claim good. In desperation, Louis sought the intercession of St Thomas by making a pilgrimage
to Canterbury, where a flood of miracles had already proclaimed him as one of the most potent of saints.25 So spontaneous was his visit that Henry II was caught unawares and had to ride through the night to greet Louis, the first king of France ever to set foot in England.26 After being warmly welcomed at Dover by King Henry ‘as his most dearly loved liege lord and friend’, Louis journeyed in the company of Count Philip of Flanders to the martyr’s shrine, where he prayed and then offered lavish gifts, including a great cup of gold, 100 tuns of wine yearly in perpetuity to the monks, and freedom from tolls and customs for whatever was purchased in his domains for the use of the convent.27 On his return to France, Louis found his son restored to health, and amidst general rejoicings, he ordered that Philip’s coronation should proceed. Yet the strain had been too much for Louis. At St Denis, where he had gone to give thanks, he suffered a severe stroke that left his right side paralysed and prevented him from attending the coronation.28

  Philip was duly anointed and consecrated by his uncle William, archbishop of Rheims, on 1 November 1179. In the procession from the palace to the cathedral, Count Philip of Flanders bore the coronation sword, said to be that of Charlemagne,29 while the Young King also walked before the future monarch, carrying the crown of gold. During the ceremony itself he helped support its great weight when it was placed on the boy Philip’s head.30 Henry evidently regarded his role in the coronation as a high honour, and it is possible that he performed it in his office as seneschal of France, as a prerogative claimed by the counts of Anjou.31 Yet his participation raised a crucial question concerning the status of Angevin kingship. When, in 1169, young Henry had as seneschal of France served Louis at table in Paris he had not yet been crowned, but in 1179, by contrast, he was an anointed monarch in his own right. Did not his performance of duties at Philip’s coronation imply the subordination of the kings of England to the kings of France? Was it not directly analogous to the position of the kings of Scots or Welsh princes at the crown-wearings of English monarchs? Such was the inference readily seized upon by Capetian chroniclers from the 1190s. Thus Rigord, who had completed the first recension of his Gesta Philippi by 1196, noted of the coronation that: ‘Henry king of England was present and in due dependence (ex debita subjectione) humbly supported the crown on the head of the king of France, while all the princes of the realm and the whole of the clergy and people shouted “Long live the king! Long live the king!”’32 For the Minstrel of Rheims, writing in the 1260s, it was the Young King’s role as seneschal at the coronation banquet which demonstrated his subordinate status to Philip, for he noted how ‘at the dinner, King Henry of England, on his knees, served him, and cut his food for him’.33 The Angevin chroniclers were equally aware of the possible implications of the Young King’s participation. When in the mid 1190s Roger of Howden came to revise his Gesta Henrici, he was careful to add the statement that the Young King had borne the crown as the prerogative of the duke of Normandy.34 Ralph of Diss was more explicit in his rejection of any implication of subordination of the crown of England:

  Henry, son of Henry II, king of England, the husband of the French king’s sister, attended the coronation because he was a close relation and because he was invited to observe. Although Britain almost deserves to be called another world and you will often hear that Britons are divided among themselves, it remains clear that no king of Britain or England ever acknowledged the king of France as a superior, rather they were more accustomed to be friends. In the letters passing between them, they decided that they would call each other brothers, a custom which even Charlemagne had observed after he had been made emperor by the Romans. The young King Henry, realizing that he had an interest in the solemnities, exercised his prerogative and talked with all the nobles in his presence, and thus from the mouths of the French people, he learned of future events. King Henry of England held the crown on the new king’s head, lest, since he was still young, it injure him, the claims of those more suited to this duty being rejected. This implied that if ever the French needed help they could safely ask it from one who had helped the king at his coronation.35

  Dean Ralph’s studied refutation of any claims to Capetian suzerainty over the kingship of England, however, reflected the attitude of the Angevin court after the Young King’s death and a dramatic deterioration in Plantagenet–Capetian relations. The atmosphere in the first years of Philip’s reign was very different, as the Plantagenets’ support for young Philip between 1179 and 1182 was to show. Had Henry II feared for the prestige and independence of the kingship of England in 1179, he would have forbidden the Young King’s participation rather than lavishly funding it.

  Indeed, rather than an act which damaged their royal prestige, both father and son regarded the Young King’s presence at the coronation as a great opportunity to display Angevin power and wealth. The Old King sent Philip great gifts in gold and silver, but also game from England.36 On learning that Philip had ordered the construction of a wall to enclose his hunting park at Vincennes, Henry II had a large number of roe deer, small fallow deer and forest goats collected from all parts of England and Normandy to help him stock it. The beasts were carefully shipped down the Seine to Paris and presented as a magnificent gift.37 On his father’s orders Young Henry himself brought such a bountiful supply of provisions with him that he had no need to receive hospitality either on the journey to Rheims or during the festivities.38 At the magnificent tournament held in celebration of the coronation at Lagny, some ten miles from Paris, his dazzling retinue of over 200 knights, and the presence in it of nineteen counts, was intended as a clear statement of Angevin power and influence. In its size and composition and in the generous wages he paid, the Young King was directly vying with Count Philip, who had in turn a powerful retinue drawn from Flanders, Hainault and lands of the empire, for, as the History noted, ‘there was no doughty knight anywhere between here and the mountains of Great Saint Bernard whom he did not seek out for his company’.39

  On 1 April 1180, the Young King crossed from Normandy ‘and was received with great honour’ by his father.40 The two kings had come together to consult over a rapidly developing political crisis in France. King Louis’ paralysis and removal from active government had been increasingly exploited by Count Philip of Flanders to assert influence over the boy king Philip, undermining the previously dominant influence at court of Louis’ queen, Adela of Blois, and her brothers, Counts Henry of Champagne, Theobald of Blois, Stephen of Sancerre and William, archbishop of Rheims.41 Count Philip may have been recognized as young Philip’s guardian, and King Louis had agreed that his son should marry Philip of Flanders’ niece, Isabella of Hainault.42 The match promised to significantly enhance Capetian power, since Count Philip provided as her dowry the wealthy lands of Artois, including the towns of Arras, St Omer, Bapaume and Aire, on condition that he continued to hold them during his lifetime.43 It would also place Count Philip in a position of great influence, and for this reason the marriage had been opposed by Adela and her brothers. But in April 1180, the count of Flanders had quickly moved to have the marriage solemnized at Bapaume.44 Then, in order to circumvent any opposition by Archbishop William, he had Isabella crowned queen and had Philip re-crowned by a rival metropolitan, the archbishop of Sens, at a dawn ceremony at St Denis on 29 May.45 King Philip, who had seized the opportunity to break free from his mother’s dominance, had removed Louis’ seal from the ailing king to prevent its use by the Champagne faction, and when Adela began fortifying her dower lands, Philip confiscated them, forcing her to flee for refuge to her brother Count Theobald.46

  In this crisis, the queen mother, Count Theobald and former councillors of Louis appealed to Henry II for assistance.47 While it might have been in Angevin interest to see the Capetians weakened by infighting, King Henry was justly concerned by the potential destabilization the looming civil war might bring. Equally, he saw the threat posed by an overmighty Flanders should Count Philip succeed in dominating King Philip. Accordingly, Henry II and the Young
King prepared to cross to Normandy. Before they did so, however, the two kings visited Reading, where King Henry required his son to swear in the presence of relics – no doubt including the hand of St James – that he would faithfully observe his father’s disposition in all matters, and would inviolably observe his grants, whether in respect of castles, manors or benefices, as set out in the king’s charters.48 The reasons for this striking and public reassertion of the Young King’s compliance with his father’s wishes are nowhere recorded. Though it suggests a continuing anxiety on the part of the Old King regarding his eldest son, no chronicler mentions renewed requests by young Henry for lands to rule directly or any open tension between the two. It may be that Henry II was attempting to ensure his son’s absolute loyalty during the forthcoming negotiations in France, which would involve a number of the Young King’s former allies. The kings proceeded to cross to Normandy, where they were met by Adela, Theobald and other French nobles; as Roger of Howden noted pointedly, those who formerly hated Henry II were now imploring him for aid.49