Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  9.Diceto, I, 296; Torigni, 176, who gives the date as 17 August. For other possible infant deaths during the marriage, C. N. L. Brooke, ‘The Marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine’, The Historian, 20 (1988), 3–8.

  10.Torigni, 183; Diceto, I, 30; Annales sancti Albini Andegavensis (Annales de St Aubin), in Recueil d’annales angevines et vendômoises, ed. L. Halphen (Paris, 1903), 14; Radulphi Nigri chronica (Ralph Niger, Chronicle), ed. R. Anstruther (London, 1851), 189.

  11.Torigni, 176, specifically notes that he was named William ‘quod nomen quasi proprium est comitibus Pictavorum et ducibus Aquitanorum’. Nevertheless, it equally evoked Henry II’s Norman forebears from the second Norman duke, William Longsword, to Henry I’s son William Aetheling. For Torigni, see E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Le Roi et son historien: Henri II Plantagenêt et Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel’, CCM, 37 (1994), 115–18.

  12.‘Roger of Pontigny’, 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), IV, 19, calls him ‘magnificus et potentissimus rex’; Policraticus, Bk VI: 18, trans. Dickinson, 233; Map, 440–1. Indeed, early in his reign Henry II could himself be referred to as ‘Henry the Younger’ (HH, 776–7; Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. E. Searle (Oxford, 1980), 174–5, which refers to events ‘in the third year of the reign of King Henry the Younger, daughter’s son to the great Henry’.

  13.Howden, I, 215; Warren, Henry II, 219. Earlier, in 1154, Henry II’s coronation charter had granted the Church and his vassals all customs and liberties ‘as freely and peaceably and fully in everything as King Henry, my grandfather, granted and conceded to them and confirmed by his charter’ – W. Stubbs, Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History (Oxford, edn 1913), 158; English Historical Documents, II, 1042–1189 (EHD), ed. D. C. Douglas (2nd edn, Oxford, 1961), 440, no. 23).

  14.Henry I’s widow Adeliza of Louvain had commissioned a verse history by a poet named David, and in the mid 1130s, Constance, the wife of a Lincolnshire lord, Ralph FitzGilbert, could possess a copy, ‘which she often read in her chamber’ (Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009), ll. 6483–96). The Empress Matilda commissioned a vita, also now lost, of her father from Robert of Torigni (E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200, Houndmills, 1999), 71, 74). It is likely that that similar works were available at the court of Henry II. For Brémule, Policraticus, VI: 18, trans. Dickinson, 233.

  15.J. Green, ‘Henry I and the Origins of the Court Culture of the Plantagenets’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 485–96; Turner, Eleanor, 156.

  16.Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum (RRAN), III, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davies (Oxford, 1968), no. 635; M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda. Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), 145 and n. 1; Policraticus, VI: 18; trans. Dickinson, 233.

  17.In his epilogue to the Roman de Rou, composed c.1174, the poet Wace made this link explicit: ‘I have known three King Henrys and seen them all in Normandy: all three had lordship over Normandy and England. The second Henry, about whom I am talking, was the grandson of the first Henry and born of Matilda the empress, and the third was the son of the second’ (Wace’s Roman de Rou, trans. G. S. Burgess, with the text of A. J. Holden and notes by G. S. Burgess and E. M. C. van Houts, St Helier, Jersey, 2002, ll. 11431–8, and cf. ibid., III, l. 177–80).

  18.Diceto, I, 301. Gervase, I, 161, believed he was baptized by Theobald of Canterbury, and in this is followed by Turner, Eleanor, 132. Diceto, however, is likely to have been more accurate on matters pertaining to the bishops of London, and in 1152 had been made archdeacon of Middlesex in Robert’s stead when the latter was raised to the episcopacy (Diceto, I, xxv–xxvi).

  19.William FitzStephen, Vita sancti Thomae Cantuarensis archiepiscopi et martyris (FitzStephen), MTB, III, 7–8, 12–13, ‘Henricus rex tertius’; trans. EHD, II, 1027, 1030.

  20.Torigni, 184; Gervase, I, 162, ‘conventus generalis’; Eyton, 9–10. Fears of William’s health are perhaps reflected in a general confirmation by Henry II to the Hospitallers of all their possessions in England, issued at Winchester ‘in concilio’ in September, given for the souls of his grandfather and his father, and ‘for my health, and that of my mother the Empress, and of my queen Eleanor and my children’ (Recueil, I, no. 6).

  21.C. F. Slade, ‘Wallingford Castle in the Reign of Stephen’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal, 58 (1960), 33–43; C. N. L. Brooke, with G. Kier, London 800–1216: The Shaping of the City (London, 1975), fig. 3 and fig. 5, for aerial view and plan of Wallingford; and see also N. Christie, O. Creighton, M. Edgeworth and H. Hamerow, Transforming Townscapes. From Burgh to Borough: The Archaeology of Wallingford, 800–1400 (Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2013).

  22.Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter, with notes by R. H. C. Davis (Oxford 1976, reprinted 2004), 236–9; J. C. Holt, ‘1153: The Treaty of Winchester’, The Anarchy of Stephen’s Reign, ed. E. King (Oxford, 1994), 291–316.

  23.As the Walden chronicler noted, he had been crowned ‘absque ullius reclamatione’ (The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 1999), 24–5).

  24.RRAN, III, no. 272; J. H. Round, Studies in Peerage and Family History (London, 1907), 147–80; and T. K. Keefe, ‘William [William of Blois], earl of Surrey [Earl Warenne] (c.1135–1159)’, ODNB.

  25.Torigni, 161, ‘heritatem suam ex parte matris’, 162–4; Gervase, I, 147; Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 188, who refers to Geoffrey as ‘Guafridus Plantagenest comes Andegaviae’.

  26.Torigni, 123, records Geoffrey’s birth as 3 June 1134; and WN, I, 112–14, for the story of Geoffrey’s deathbed testament, by which supposedly the count willed that should Henry succeed in gaining England, he was to relinquish Anjou to his brother. Some historians have accepted the story, notably T. K. Keefe, ‘Geoffrey Plantagenet’s Will’, Albion, 6 (1975), 226–74; C. W. Hollister and T. K. Keefe, ‘The Making of the Angevin Empire’, Journal of British Studies, 12 (1973); and Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 12, 17. As early as 1145, however, a charter of Duke Geoffrey suggests Henry was earmarked as heir to Anjou as well as Normandy (Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 145), and it seems improbable that a father would compel an eldest son to forgo the patrimony, especially when in 1150 King Stephen’s defeat was far from certain. As Warren, Henry II, 46–7, 64, suggests, the whole story may well have been fabricated by Geoffrey or his partisans to justify his renewed rebellion in 1156.

  27.Torigni, 165–6, 169–70.

  28.Chronicon Turonense magnum, in Recueil des chroniques de Touraine, ed. A. Salmon (Tours, 1854), 135; Turner, Eleanor, 107.

  29.Chronica de gestis consulum Andegavorum, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, 71. Helias was imprisoned at Tours from 1145 to his death in 1151 (Recueil d’annales angevines, 11, n. 2, and 71).

  30.Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, 232; Orderic, II, 104–5; L. Halphen, Le Comté d’Anjou au XIe siècle (Paris, 1906), 146; O. Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris, 1972), I, 105–15.

  31.Nevertheless, B. S. Bachrach, ‘Henry II and the Angevin Tradition of Family Hostility’, Albion, 16 (1984), 111–30, has argued that co-operation rather than conflict was the norm among members of the early Angevin dynasty, and that if Henry II and his sons had looked to a tradition of familial hostility, it was more readily to be found in the disputes of their Norman forebears. For the problems of younger brothers, K. Thompson, ‘L’Héritier et le remplaçant: le rôle du frère puîné dans la politique anglo-normande (1066–1204)’, Tinchebray, 1106–2006. Actes du colloque de Tinchebray (28–30 septembre 2006), ed. V. Gazeau and J. Green (Caen, 2009), 93–100.

  32.W. M. Aird, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (c. 1050–1134) (Woodbridge, 2008), 245–81.

  33.Y. Sassier, Louis VII (Paris, 1991), 196–8; L. Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis (Harlow, 1998), 172�
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  34.He probably adopted the sobriquet from the second duke of Normandy, William Longsword (d. 942). In turn, Henry II’s illegitimate son William, who became earl of Salisbury, took the name Longsword, as did William, the third son of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and Matilda, Henry II’s daughter (Gervase, Otia imperialia, 488–9).

  35.Torigni, 186.

  36.E. Amt, ‘William FitzEmpress (1136–1164)’, ODNB, who notes that by 1162 he was receiving geld exemption of over £500 on lands in fifteen counties; Amt, The Accession of Henry II, 75–6, 127, 153.

  37.Torigni, 186–7; WN, I, 113–14; Recueil, I, nos 13, 14 and 16. Torigni, 163, noted that Count Geoffrey had granted Geoffrey four castles, three of which are named by Newburgh (WN, I, 113), as Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau.

  38.Torigni, 186, n. 4; Recueil d’annales angevines, 14, 102.

  39.Torigni, 187, who estimated the county of Nantes to be worth 60,000 shillings angevin; WN, I, 114; Chronicon Britannicum, RHF, XII, 560; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford, 2000), 330–3; J. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins. Province and Empire, 1158–1203 (Cambridge, 2000), 38–40.

  40.Torigni, 189; and for the moving simile, Gervase, Otia imperialia, 486–7. It is possible that Henry II and Eleanor later had a second son who died in infancy, perhaps between the birth of Geoffrey (1158) and Eleanor (1161), or between 1161 and the birth of Joanna (1165); Diceto, II, 16–17, 269–70; A. W. Lewis, ‘The Birth and Childhood of King John: Some Revisions’, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, 159–75, at 161.

  41.Torigni, 189; J. M. Luxford, ‘The Tomb of King Henry I in Reading Abbey: New Evidence Concerning its Appearance and the Date of its Effigy’, Reading Medieval Studies, 30 (2004), 15–31. Matthew Paris provides the date of his burial, and speaks of him as ‘infirmatus Willelmus’ (Matthaei Parisiensis monachi sancti Albani, Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols, Rolls Series, London, 1865–1869, I, 307).

  42.F. T. Wethered, St Mary’s Hurley in the Middle Ages (London, 1898), no. 15; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 231; C. R. Cheney, ‘A Monastic Letter of Fraternity to Eleanor of Aquitaine’, EHR, 51 (1936), 488–93; Turner, Eleanor, 130; N. Vincent, ‘Patronage, Politics and Piety in the Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 17–60, at 22, n. 30.

  43.WN, I, 106.

  44.R. V. Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Children: an Inquiry into Medieval Family Attachment’, JMH, xiv (1988), 325–6; H. Vollrath, ‘Aliénor d’Aquitaine et ses enfants: une relation affective?’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 113–24; and C. M. Bowie, The Daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Turnhout, 2014), 55–63.

  45.Eyton, 16; Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Children: an Inquiry into Medieval Family Attachment’, 325–6; idem, Eleanor, 150–74. For a valuable comparative study, R. V. Turner, ‘The Children of Anglo-Norman Royalty and their Upbringing’, Medieval Prosopography, 11 (1990), 17–52; M. Goodrich, ‘Bartholemeus Anglicus on Child-rearing’, History of Childhood Quarterly/Journal of Psychohistory, 3 (1975), 75–84.

  46.Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Children’, 326; N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of English Kings and the Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London, 1984), 11–12.

  47.Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Children’, 325–6. To cover his expenses, Mainard received £6 per annum from the vill of Tarentford, Kent (The Great Rolls of the Pipe for the Second, Third and Fourth Years of the Reign of Henry II, 1155–1158 (PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II), ed. J. Hunter (Record Commission, 1844), 66, 101, 180; PR 5 Henry II, 58).

  48.Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Children’, 325–6.

  49.PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 66, 101, 180; PR 5 Henry II, 58; K. Dutton, ‘Ad erudiendum tradidit: The Upbringing of Angevin Comital Children’, ANS, 32 (2010), 24–39. Some of Fulk V’s charters are witnessed by one Richard, styled pedagogus or nutritor to the count’s brother Philip (Grand Cartulaire de Fontevraud, ed. J.-M. Bienvenue, R. Favreau and G. Pon, 2 vols (Poitiers, 2000, 2005), I, nos 139, 153, 204, II, no. 850).

  50.Turner, Eleanor, 161–7; J. Dor, ‘Langues françaises et anglaises, et multilinguisme à l’époque d’Henri II Plantagenet’, CCM, 29, 61–72; Turner, Eleanor, 127.

  51.Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 151.

  52.Chibnall, ‘The Empress Matilda and her Sons’, Medieval Mothering, ed. J. C. Parsons and B. Wheeler (New York and London, 1996), 279–94, at 285–9; Turner, Eleanor, 132.

  53.Diceto, I, 302; PR 2, 3, 4 Henry, 4; Eyton, 18, for corrodies for the queen and subsequent payments for prince Henry, his new sister and his aunt.

  54.PR 2 Henry II, 5: Eyton, 18.

  55.RHF, XII, 121; Recueil, IV, 66; Eyton, 19–20; PR 2 Henry II, 5; PR 3 Henry II, 71, 107; R. Smith, ‘The Royal Family in the Reign of Henry II’, 50, n. 2. Payments to the queen and her children from the Pipe Rolls included 44 shillings ‘for rushes’ for young Henry’s use, presumably for a mattress or floor covering.

  56.J. H. Le Patourel, ‘Le Gouvernement de Henri II Plantagenêt et la mer de la Manche’, Recueil d’études offerts au Doyen M. de Bouärd (Annales de Normandie extra, Caen, 1982), II, 323–33, noting that between 1154 and 1189 Henry II crossed the Channel at least twenty-six times. For the esnecca, FitzStephen, 26; C. H, Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), 121–2; R. H. F. Lindemann, ‘The English Esnecca in Northern European Sources’, Mariner’s Mirror, 74 (1988), 75–82; D. Gilmour, ‘Bekesbourne and the King’s Esnecca, 1110–1445’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 132 (2012), 315–27.

  57.J. H. Round, The King’s Serjeants and Officers of State (London, 1911), 18.

  58.William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998–1999), I, 760–1.

  59.The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, 3 vols (Oxford, 1995–), III, 202–3.

  60.K. Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa, Henry II and the Hand of St James’, EHR, 90 (1975), 481–506; N. Vincent, ‘King Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’, The Church and Mary, ed. R. Swanson (Boydell, 2004), 126–46, at 129. In 1154, for example, he crossed to England on the eve of the Conception of the Virgin (7 December), and in 1158 he crossed to Normandy on the vigil of the feast of the Assumption (14 August) (ibid.; Torigni, 186, 196; Eyton, 15–16, 40–1). It may well have been anxieties about the Channel crossing after a period of rough weather that led Henry II to make his will just before sailing to Normandy in March, 1182 (J. Gillingham, ‘At the Deathbeds of the Kings of England’, Herrscher- und Fürstentestamente im westeuropäischen Mittelalter, ed. B. Kasten (Vienna, 2008), 509–30, at 517–18; and below, 269).

  61.William of Canterbury, Vita, Passio et Miracula Sancti Thomae, ed. J. C. Robertson, MTB, I, no. 90; and for wider context L. Musset, ‘Un Empire à cheval sur la mer: les périls de la mer dans l’Ètat anglo-normand d’après les chartes, les chroniques et les miracles’, Les Hommes et la mer dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. A. Lottin, J.-C. Hoquet and S. Lebecq (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 1986), 413–24. William of Canterbury seems to have compiled the Miracula after May 1172, but probably before completing his Vita of Becket. The monks of Christ Church presented Henry II with a copy, apparently at his request (MTB, I, xxx, 137).

  62.GH, I, 4, 30.

  63.GH, I, 195; Diceto, I, 422.

  64.PR 2, 3, 4 Henry, 171; PR 5 Henry II, 45.

  65.Torigni, 195.

  66.Eyton, 21–5; Warren, Henry II, 66–8.

  67.For the ambush and the campaign, D. J. Cathcart-King, ‘The Fight at Coleshill’, Welsh Historical Review, 2 (1965), 367–73; J. G. Edwards, ‘Henry II and the Fight at Coleshill: Some Further Reflections’, Welsh Historical Review, 3 (1967), 253–61; J. Hosler, ‘Henry II’s Military Campaigns in Wales, 1157–1165’, Journal of Medieval Military History, 2 (2004), 53–71.

  68.The Letters of John of Salisbury (LJS) ed. W. J. Millor, H. E. Butler and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols (Oxford, 1979, 1986), I, 32.
r />   69.Eyton, 32.

  70.Chronique de Robert de Torigni (Torigni, ed. Delisle), ed. L. Delisle, 2 vols (Rouen, 1872–1873), I, 298, and cf. II, 166. Earlier, Henry had named his favoured natural son Geoffrey, born probably in 1151 and before Henry’s marriage to Eleanor, after his own father (Gerald of Wales, De vita Galfridi Eboracensis archiepiscopi, in Gerald, Opera, IV, 363). Yet it is striking that, thereafter, it was only Henry’s fourth legitimate son who received the name of Geoffrey, and equally that Henry II was to call none of his children Fulk. This was despite the prominence of the name among his Angevin comital ancestors, and the fact that his paternal grandfather Fulk V had raised the dynasty to new heights of prestige by becoming the third Latin king of Jerusalem in 1131 (Diceto, II, 15; William of Tyre, Chronique (William of Tyre), ed. R. B. C. Huygens, 2 vols (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio medievalis 63–63a, Turnhout, 1986), XIV: 1). This reticence may well have reflected Henry’s sensitivity to the fact that the Angevins had long been a traditional enemy of the Normans, and that, despite Count Geoffrey’s marriage to Henry I’s daughter Matilda, he had only wrested Normandy from King Stephen by force of arms and a prolonged war of attrition, still etched in recent memory.

  71.Eyton, 40.

  72.PR 26 Henry II, xxviii; M. Biddle and B. Clayre, Winchester Castle and the Great Hall (Winchester, 1983), 7. Stephen’s crown had been kept at Winchester, from whence Matilda took it in 1141 (Gesta Stephani, 118–19), while at Michaelmas 1157, 2 shillings was paid to transport the new king’s crown from Winchester to Bury St Edmunds (PR 3 Henry II, 107).

  73.The History of the King’s Works, ed. H. M. Colvin, 8 vols (London, HMSO, 1963–1982), II, 855–7.

  74.JW, III, 294–5, 298–9; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. K. Potter and E. King (Oxford, 1998), 102–3 and n. 245; JW, III, 298–301, and 300, n. 10.

  75.Turner, Eleanor, 125–6.

  76.PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 115.

  77.J. Boorman, ‘Hugh de Gundeville’, ODNB; N. Vincent, ‘Hugh de Gundeville (fl.1147–81)’, Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm. Papers Commemorating the 800th Anniversary of King John’s Loss of Normandy, ed. N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2009), 125–52.