Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  20.Il Novellino, ed. A. Conte (Rome, 2001), nos XIX and XX; Moore, The Young King, 53–55.

  21.Moore, The Young King, 54; M. Dauzier, Le Mythe de Bertran de Born du Moyen ge à nos jours (Paris, 1986), 17–32.

  22.Dante, The Divine Comedy, I: Inferno, ed. and trans. J. D. Sinclair (Oxford, 1939), Canto XXVIII, ll. 118–42: ‘… know that I am Bertran de Born, he that gave evil backing to the Young King. I made rebellion between the father and the son; Achitophel did no worse for David and Absalom with his wicked goading.’

  23.For Geoffrey, M. Aubrun, ‘Le Prieur Geoffroy du Vigeois et sa chronique’, Revue Mabillon, 58 (1974), 313–25.

  24.For the imagery of David and Absalom in views of father–son rebellion, see K. H. Krüger, ‘Herrschaftsnachfolge als Vater–Sohn-Konflikt’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 36 (2002), 225–40; and X. Storelli, ‘La Figure d’Absalon dans la famille royale anglo-normande (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, La Parenté déchirée: les luttes intrafamiliales au Moyen ge, ed. M. Aurell (Turnhout, 2010), 321–41.

  25.Walter Map, De nugis curialium (Map), ed. and trans. M. R. James, revised by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), 280–3.

  26.Map, 282–3.

  27.Opera Historica: The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London (Diceto), ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, Rolls Series, 1876), II, 19.

  28.Map, 282–3, ‘he left his brother Richard (with hate of whom his heart was withered) heir’.

  29.De principis, 173–4, where Gerald states he has taken this encomium from the Topographia. Only elements of it, however, appear in the version of it printed in the Rolls Series (Gerald, Opera, V, 193–5), though Gerald must have been drawing on a version of the first or second recension written before July 1189. For the recensions and their dating, see R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales. A Voice of the Middle Ages (new edn, Stroud, 2006), Appendix I, 174–5. Gerald repeats his verses in praise of young Henry in his Symbolum Electorum, a collection of his poems and letters, composed c.1204–1205 (Gerald, Opera, I, 355).

  30.Expugnatio, 22–3.

  31.Expugnatio, 22–3.

  32.For Howden, see D. Corner, ‘The Earliest Surviving Manuscripts of Roger of Howden’s Chronicle’, EHR, 98 (1983), 297–310; idem, ‘The Gesta regis Henrici secundi and Chronica of Roger, parson of Howden’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 56 (1983), 26–44; J. Gillingham, ‘The Travels of Roger of Howden and his View of the Irish, Scots and Welsh’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 20 (1997), 151–70, reprinted in J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000), 69–91; J. Gillingham, ‘Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King’s Clerk and Chronicler’, Writing Medieval Biography, 207–20.

  33.GH, I, 122–3; Gillingham, ‘The Travels of Roger of Howden’, 74–6; and below, 230–1.

  34.Chronica magistri Rogeri de Hoveden (Howden), ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls Series, London, 1868–1871), II, 46; J. Flori, Aliénor d’Aquitaine. La reine insoumise (Paris, 2004), trans. O. Classe as Eleanor Aquitaine (Edinburgh, 2007), 104. This passage was inserted into a later copy of the Gesta (British Library, Cotton Vitellius E. xvii) labelled MS B by Stubbs, who suggested that it might have been copied from the Chronica (GH, I, 43; Howden, II, 46, n. 2).

  35.GH, I, 292; Howden, II, 274; J. Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1999), 66 and n. 44.

  36.GH, I, 300–2.

  37.The accounts were seemingly so different in their tone and content that Stubbs regarded this as evidence that the author of the Gesta (long assumed to be Benedict, abbot of Peterborough) could not have been Roger of Howden (GH, I, 304, n. 1). As David Corner has demonstrated beyond doubt, however, Roger was indeed the author of both works (Corner, ‘The Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi’, 126–44).

  38.Howden, II, 279–80.

  39.J. Gillingham, ‘Royal Newsletters, Forgeries and English Historians: Some Links between Court and History in the Reign of Richard I’, La Cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204), ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2000), 171–86; idem, Richard I, 6–7.

  40.J. Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions: Norman and English Views of Aquitaine, c.1152–c.1204’, The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries, ed. M. Bull and C. Léglu (Woodbridge, 2005), 57–81, at 77–8.

  41.Howden, II, 272–3.This passage in the Chronica, though inserted s.a. 1182, was probably penned c.1200–1201 (Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions’, 77, n. 110).

  42.Vita Sancti Thomae archiepiscopi et martyris, auctore Heberto de Boseham (Bosham), in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (MTB), ed. J. C. Robertson and J. Brigstock Sheppard, 7 vols (Rolls Series, London, 1875–1885), III, 460–1. The date of the completion of the Vita is usually regarded as between 1184 and 1186, but this passage also suggests Herbert was aware of the death of Henry II in July 1189, as well as that of Count Geoffrey, whose death in 1186 was also predicted in Thomas’ vision.

  43.De principis, 302; B. S. Bachrach, ‘Henry II and the Angevin Tradition of Family Hostility’, Albion, 16 (1984), 111–30, at 112. Gerald had already begun to develop this theme in his Expugnatio Hibernica, where he noted that ‘it befell that there was never true affection felt by the father towards his sons, nor by the sons towards their father, nor harmony among the brothers themselves’ (Expugnatio, 387–8).

  44.De principis, 176; trans. J. Stevenson, The Church Historians of England, 8 vols (London, 1853–1858), V, part I, 150.

  45.For the De principis as ‘a drama of kingly hubris’, Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 64.

  46.De principis, 172, and 155, where Gerald notes that although the rebellions of Henry II’s sons were pleasing to God as instruments of his vengeance, yet ‘their private intentions were displeasing to him in every way’, and that they were themselves punished accordingly.

  47.A not untypical comment is that of Walter de Gray Birch that ‘modern historians are remarkable for their omission of this young king’s name in the fasti of England’s rulers’. But, he added, ‘fortunately, perhaps, the untimely death of Henry Junior, during the lifetime of his father, Henry II, relieved the country of many misfortunes, as it is most probable that his failure to show respect to his father indicated a want of mental character which those whose lot it is to govern others ought to make manifest’ (W. de Gray Birch, Seals, London, 1907, 35).

  48.Howden, I, lxviii.

  49.K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, 2 vols (London, 1887), II, 220–1.

  50.K. Norgate, Richard the Lionheart (London, 1924), 36, 45, a verdict drawn very largely from an uncritical reading of Gerald’s comparison of the two brothers.

  51.Norgate, Angevin Kings, II, 221.

  52.Moore, The Young King, 26–7, appears to be borrowing directly from Norgate, but without citation, in his statement that his ‘entire life was a record of the meanest ingratitude and the basest perfidy’, and that ‘his merits, so far as they existed, were of the superficial kind’.

  53.W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973, new edn) New Haven, Conn., and London, 2000), 580, and 118, ‘a charming, vain, idle spendthrift’.

  54.W. L. Warren, King John (London, 2nd edn, 1978), 31. A more restrained tone is that of Ralph Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine (New Haven, Conn., and London, 2009), 206, ‘this thoughtless, whimsical yet winning boy’. Likewise, John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1999), 63, recognizes young Henry’s chivalrous qualities and skill in the tournament, but ‘in politics and real war he was a child, incapable of concentrating for long. Unable to see beyond the short term gain he went from whim to whim, reacting without thought to whatever gossip he happened to have heard last’.

  55.D. Crouch, Tournament (London, 2005), 21–7; idem, William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219 (2nd edn, London, 2002), 45.

  56.The career of Geoffrey has been well covered by J. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins: Province and
Empire, 1158–1203 (Cambridge, 2000); The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her Family, 1171–1221, ed. J. Everard and M. Jones (Woodbridge, 1999); and see also M. Jones, ‘Geoffrey, duke of Brittany (1158–1186), prince’, ODNB.

  57.C. E. Hodgson, Jung Heinrich, König von England, Sohn König Heinrichs II (Jena, 1906); and see the review by H. W. C. Davis in EHR, 22 (1907), 826–7. Moore’s brief treatment of the Young King’s historical career, which takes up barely a quarter of a short book of some hundred pages, is drawn primarily from the narratives of Norgate.

  58.A. Duggan, ‘The Coronation of the Young King in 1170’, Studies in Church History, 2, ed. G. J. Cumming (London, 1968), 165–78; T. M. Jones, ‘The Generation Gap of 1173–1174: The War of the Two Henries’, Albion, 5 (1973), 24–40; idem, The War of the Generations. The Revolt of 1173–4 (Medieval Text Association, University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, 1980); R. V. Turner, ‘The Households of the Sons of Henry II’, La Cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204). Actes du Colloque tenu à Thouars du 30 avril au 2 mai 1999, ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2000), 49–62; and see also M. J. Strickland, ‘On the Instruction of a Prince: The Upbringing of Henry, the Young King’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 184–214.

  59.R. J. Smith, ‘Henry II’s Heir: The Acta and Seal of Henry the Young King, 1170–1183’ (Smith, ‘Acta’), EHR, 116 (2001), 297–326. Much valuable analysis of the Young King is also contained in Roger Smith’s unpublished thesis ‘The Royal Family in the Reign of Henry II’ (Master of Arts Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1961), especially 50–119, and 120–63.

  60.V. L. Puccetti, Un fantasma letterario. Il «Re Giovane» del Novellino (Bologna, 2008). I am indebted to Martin Aurell for drawing this book to my attention.

  61.It is thus remarkable that in his classic study J. E. A. Joliffe, Angevin Kingship (London, 1955) makes only fleeting reference to the Young King (‘Henry FitzRoy’, at 20, n. 2, 176, n. 3, and 260) and does not discuss his associative status.

  62.R. V. Turner, ‘The Problem of Survival for the Angevin Empire: Henry II’s and his Sons’ Vision compared to late Twelfth-Century Realities’, American Historical Review, 100 (1995), 78–95.

  63.For approaches to the genre, see W. L. Warren, ‘Biography and the Medieval Historian’, Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, ed. D. O. Morgan (London, 1982), 5–18, and the studies collected in Writing Medieval Biography.

  64.N. Vincent, ‘The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet Kings of England, 1154–1272’, Writing Medieval Biography, 237–58.

  65.The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of Richard the First, ed. J. T. Appleby (1963), 2–3.

  66.A. Grandsen, Historical Writing in England, c. 550–c. 1307 (London, 1982), 220–1.

  67.J. C. Holt and R. Mortimer, Acta of Henry II and Richard I (List and Index Society, Special Series, 21, Gateshead, 1986); N. Vincent, Acta of Henry II and Richard I. Part Two (List and Index Society, Special Series, 27, Kew, 1996); J. C. Holt, ‘The Acta of Henry II and Richard I of England, 1154–1189: The Archive and its Historical Implications’, Fotographische Sammlungen Mittelältischer Urkunden in Europa, ed. P. Rück (Sigmaringen, 1989), 137–40; The Letters and Charters of Henry II King of England (1154–1189), ed. N. Vincent et al., 5 vols (Oxford, forthcoming). This paucity for young Henry is despite the explosion in the number of charters issued under Henry II, which may be compared to the 180 known acta of his father Count Geoffrey for Anjou and Normandy (K. Dutton, ‘Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, 1129–51’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011), Appendices I–VI).

  68.Smith, ‘Acta’, 297.

  69.GH, I, 77, 83, and 286. An exception is probably his confirmation of the grant by the count of Eu of privileges to the burgesses of Eu, likely to have been issued in 1173 during or shortly after the siege of Drincourt (Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 18).

  70.Smith, ‘Acta’, 297–314.

  71.For these authors, M. Staunton, Thomas Becket and his Biographers (Woodbridge, 2006), and idem, The Lives of Thomas Becket (Manchester, 2001).

  72.Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle (JF), ed. and trans. R. C. Johnston (Oxford, 1981); and for the author, I. Macdonald, ‘The Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme: Manuscripts, Author and Versification’, Studies in Medieval French presented to Alfred Ewart (1961), 242–58.

  73.Jordan himself does not give his work a title. That ascribed to it by P. A. Becker, ‘Jordan Fantosme, la guerre d’Ecosse, 1173–14’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 64 (1944), 449–556, reflects its principal focus, but the poem is more wide ranging. For interpretations of the poem and its purpose, R. C. Johnston, ‘The Historicity of Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, JMH, 2 (1976), 159–68; M. J. Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men: War, Loyalty and Lordship in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, Medieval Knighthood, IV: Papers from the Fifth Strawberry Hill Conference 1990, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (1992), 187–220; A. Lodge, ‘Literature and History in the Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme’, French Studies, 44 (1992), 257–70; J. Blacker, ‘Oez veraie estoire; History as Mediation in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, The Formation of Culture in Medieval Britain, ed. F. H. M. Le Saux (Lampeter, 1995), 27–35; P. Damian-Grint, ‘Truth, Trust and Evidence in the Anglo-Norman Estoire’, ANS, 18 (1995), 63–78; P. Bennett, ‘La Chronique de Jordan Fantosme’, CCM, 40 (1997), 35–56; L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2007), 81–120; and G. Rector, ‘“Faites le mien desir”: Studious Persuasion and Baronial Desire in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, JMH (2008), 311–46.

  74.G. Gouiran, ‘Bertran de Born, troubadour de la violence?’, La Violence dans le monde médiéval (Aix-en-Provence, 1994), 237–51.

  75.Poésies complètes de Bertran de Born, ed. A. Thomas (Toulouse, 1888), vida no. 1; Norgate, Richard, 40–1.

  76.On the poet and his work, HGM, III, iv–xiv; HWM, III, 3–9; Crouch, ‘Construction and Composition of the History of William Marshal’, 221–35; idem, ‘The Hidden History of the Twelfth Century’, Haskins Society Journal, 5 (1993), 111–30.

  77.Crouch, ‘Hidden History’, 122, who points to the influence not only of Chrétien’s romances, but of gestes such as Feurres de Gadres or possibly Guy of Warwick. See also L. D. Benson, ‘The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal’, Chivalric Literature. Essays on Relations between Literature and Life in the later Middle Ages, ed. L. D. Benson and J. Leyerle (Toronto, 1980), 1–24, 147–51; and the important studies of R. W. Kaeuper, ‘William Marshal, Lancelot and the Issue of Chivalric Identity’, Essays in Medieval Studies. Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, 22 (2005), 1–19; and L. Ashe, ‘William Marshal, Lancelot and Arthur: Chivalry and Kingship’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 30 (2008), 19–40.

  Chapter 2: Born in the Purple

  1.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A Collaborative Edition, ed. D. Dumville and S. Keynes (Cambridge, 1983), vol. 7. MS E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), 1154; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (HH), ed. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), 774–5; WN, I, 95–6; The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury (Gervase), ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls Series, London, 1879–1880), I, 159–60.

  2.For the opening of Henry II’s reign see M. Chibnall, ‘L’Avènement au pouvoir d’Henri II’, CCM, 37 (1994), 41–8; E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England. Royal Government Restored, 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993); G. J. White, Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165. Recovery from Civil War in England (Cambridge, 2000); and E. King, ‘The Accession of Henry II’, Henry II. New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), 24–46.

  3.Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘E’, 1137. In the weeks between Stephen’s death and Henry’s arrival in England on 7 December, Henry of Huntingdon was moved to write a poem of relief and joy, though he failed to realize his intention that ‘a new book must be devoted to a new king’ (HH, 776–7).

  4.Sir Roger Twysden, Historiae Anglicanae decem scriptores (Lo
ndon, 1652), col. 347; Aelred of Rievaulx: The Historical Works, ed. M. L. Dutton and trans. J. P. Freeland (Kalamazoo, 2005), 42.

  5.HH, 772–3; WN, I, 101; William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs, Book II, ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh and M. J. Kennedy (Oxford, 2007), 15. For his military reputation, Policraticus, ed. C. C. J. Webb, 2 vols (Oxford, 1909), Bk VI: 18; The Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury, trans. J. Dickinson (New York, 1963), 236–7.

  6.WN, I, 93.

  7.The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (London, 1956), 52–3; P. McCracken, ‘Scandalizing Desire: Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Chroniclers’, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, ed. B. Wheeler and J. C. Parsons (New York, 2003), 247–64; M. Aurell, ‘Aux origines de la légende noire d’Aliénor d’ Aquitaine’, Royautés imaginaires (XIIe–XIVe siècles), ed. A.-H. Allirot, G. Lecuppre and L. Scordia (Turnhout, 2005), 89–102; Flori, Eleanor, 209; R. V. Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine, Twelfth-Century English Chroniclers and her “Black Legend”’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 52 (2008), 17–42; R. V. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Yale, 2009), 87–92.

  8.Torigni, 214. See J. A. Brundage, ‘The Canon Law of Divorce in the Mid-Twelfth Century: Louis VII c. Eleanor of Aquitaine’, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, 213–22; and C. B. Bouchard, ‘Eleanor’s Divorce from Louis VII: The Uses of Consanguinity’, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, 223–36.