Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  78.Vincent, ‘Hugh de Gundeville’, 131–2. He later became sheriff of Hampshire and keeper of the city of Winchester from 1170 to 1179 (ibid., 132).

  79.The Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, ed. E. Tremp, MGH SRG, 44 (Hanover, 1995), 294. For such military training, J. Le Jan, ‘Apprentissages militaires, rites de passage, et remises d’armes au haut Moyen ge’, Éducation, apprentissages, inititiation au Moyen ge. Actes du premier colloque international de Montpellier, Cahiers du CRISIMANO, 1 (1993), 214–22.

  80.PR 6 Henry II, 13; M. T. Flanagan, ‘William fiz Aldelin [William Fitzaldhelm], (d. before 1198), administrator’, ODNB.

  81.PR 6 Henry II, 49.

  82.PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 115, 175.

  83.PR 5 Henry II, 45.

  84.Recueil, I, no. 62; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 2381.

  85.Eyton, 49.

  86.J. Dunbabin, ‘Henry II and Louis VII’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 47–62.

  87.For the extent of the Vexin ceded by Geoffrey, see J.-F. Lemarignier, Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontieres féodales (Lille, 1945), 45 and n. 53.

  88.FitzStephen, 29–31.

  89.L. Diggelmann, ‘Marriage as a Tactical Response: Henry II and the Royal Wedding of 1160’, EHR, 119 (2004), 954–64, at 956, n. 13.

  90.Dunbabin, ‘Henry II and Louis VII’, 50.

  91.Torigni, 196; Continuatio Beccensis, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. H. Howlett, 4 vols (Rolls Series, London, 1884–1889), IV, 318.

  92.Continuatio Beccensis, 319.

  93.Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 10–12.

  94.WN, I, 123–4; T. M. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon (Oxford, 1986), 27–35.

  95.Diceto, I, 303. For the political symbolism of such conduct, and of Henry’s lavish hospitality to Louis during the king’s return visit to Normandy that November, J. Gillingham, ‘The Meeting of the Kings of France and England, 1066–1204’, Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250. Essays for David Bates, ed. D. Crouch and K. Thompson (Turnhout, 2011), 17–42, at 34–6. For the relations between Henry II and Louis, I. Wolff, Heinrich II von England als Vasall Ludwigs VII (Breslau, 1936); and Y. Sassier, ‘Reverentia Regis; Henri II face à Louis VII’, 1204. La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens, ed. A.-M. Flambard-Héricher and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2007), 23–35.

  96.Torigni, 196–7.

  97.LJS, II, no. 288, p. 639; J. Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage to the King of France’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 63–84, at 74.

  98.For the near-contemporary case of Agnes, the daughter of Henry of Essex, betrothed aged only three to Aubrey de Vere, earl of Oxford, in the mid 1150s and placed in the charge of Aubrey’s brother, Geoffrey de Vere, see R. C. DeAragon, ‘The Child-Bride, the Earl and the Pope: The Marital Fortunes of Agnes of Essex’, Haskins Society Journal, 17 (2007), 200–16. Adam of Eynsham noted that in the early 1190s, Adam de Neville, brother of the chief forester, Hugh de Neville, married Grace, the supposed heiress of the Lincolnshire knight Thomas of Saleby, when she was only four (Adam of Eynsham, The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. D. L. Douie and H. Farmer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1961–1962), II, 20–7.

  99.Torigni, 197 and 203; Continuatio Beccensis, 324, noting that Robert, ‘vir magnae prudentiae et bonitatis’, fell ill, took the habit at Bec and died soon after on 30 August 1159; The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162– 1170 (CTB), ed. A. J. Duggan, 2 vols (Oxford, 2000), I, no. 24.

  100.Continuatio Beccensis, 320; Torigni, 198; Gervase, I, 166.

  101.R. Benjamin, ‘A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156–1196’, Historical Research, 61 (1988), 270–85; J. Martindale, ‘“An Unfinished Business”: Angevin Politics and the Siege of Toulouse, 1159’, ANS, 23 (2000), 115–54.

  102.Torigni, 200.

  103.Torigni, 203.

  104.FitzStephen, 33; WN, I, 125; Stephen of Rouen, Draco Normannicus, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, II, 608–9; Vigeois, 310; and Diceto, I, 303.

  105.In 1151, Henry had withdrawn from the siege of Torigni on Louis’ approach, and when later that year Louis had aided Stephen’s son Eustace in besieging Arques, Henry had moved to attack him but was prevented by his senior Norman, Breton and Angevin magnates (Torigni, 161; Sassier, ‘Reverentia regis’, 26–8, 31.

  106.FitzStephen, 34; Grim, MTB, II, 365; Bosham, 176; Continuatio Beccensis, 323; Torigni, 205.

  107.Diceto, I, 303. For this reverse as a turning point in the reign, Warren, Henry II, 9.

  108.Torigni, 205–6; Warren, Henry II, 87–8.

  109.Torigni, 206. They reached England on 31 December 1159 (Eyton, 51).

  110.Torigni, 207; Recueil, I, no. 141; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 1666; Eyton, 50.

  111.Torigni, 207–8; Howden, I, 218; RHF, XVI, 21–2; Recueil, I, no. 141; and Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 1666. For discussion of whether the pact should be dated to May or October, Diggelmann, ‘Marriage as a Tactical Response’, 957, n. 15.

  112.Torigni, 207.

  113.RHF, XVI, 700–1, for the text, issued at Beauvais in July 1160. For Henry’s recognition of Alexander, M. Cheney, ‘The Recognition of Pope Alexander III: Some Neglected Evidence’, EHR, 84 (1969), 474–97, which takes issue on the date with F. Barlow, ‘The English, Norman and French Councils called to deal with the Papal Schism of 1159’, EHR, 51 (1936), 264–8. Cf. Councils and Synods, I, vol. 2, 835–41; and for Henry II’s control over ecclesiastical recognition of the pope within his lands, A. Duggan, ‘Henry II, the English Church and the Papacy, 1154–76’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 154–83, at 168–70.

  114.Diggelmann, ‘Marriage as a Tactical Response’, 958.

  115.Torigni, 208, ‘de ducatu Normanniae, qui est de regno Franciae’.

  116.Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage’, 63–84, at 77; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum, I, 758–9; HH, 708; Torigni, 132; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (Orderic), ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–1980), VI, 482. Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage’, 66–7, shows that Gervase, I, 112, was mistaken in noting that Eustace performed homage to Louis VII in 1140.

  117.Torigni, 162 Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage’, 63–77; K. van Eickels, Vom inszenierten Konsens zum systematisierten Konflikt: Die englische–französischen Beziehungen und ihre Wahrnehmung und der Wende vom Hoch-zum Spätmittelalter (Stuttgart, 2002), 318; and idem, ‘L’Hommage des rois anglais et de leurs héritiers aux rois français au XIIe siècle: subordination imposée ou reconnaissance souhaitée?’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 377–85. It is probable that Geoffrey le Bel never performed homage for Normandy (Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage’, 69).

  118.Torigni, 207; Gervase, 167; Historia gloriosi regis Ludovici, ed. A. Molinier (Paris, 1887), 129.

  119.Diceto, I, 303. Louis thus became the brother-in-law of his two sons-in-law.

  120.RHF, XIII, 517–18; Diggelmann, ‘Marriage as a Tactical Response’, 957.

  121.Howden, I, 218, ‘pueruli in cunis vagienties’; Torigni, 208; Diceto, I, 304; Diggelmann, ‘Marriage as a Tactical Response’, 960.

  122.Torigni, 208; Diceto, I, 303–4.

  123.For Gisors, see J. Mesqui and P. Toussaint, ‘Le Château de Gisors aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Archéologie médiévale, 20 (1990), 253–317; and A. Baume, ‘Le Document et le terrain: la trace du système défensif normand au XIIe siècle’, in 1204: la Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens, ed. A.-M. Flambard-Héricher and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2007), 93–112.

  124.Diceto, I, 304.

  125.Diceto, I, 303; Diggelmann, ‘Marriage as a Tactical Response’, 960–1.

  126.Howden, I, 218, who notes that the Templars were welcomed by Henry II; Diceto, I, 304.

  127.Torigni, 208–9; Diceto, I, 303–4; Recueil, I, no. 201. Henry entrusted it to Hugh of Amboise, a mortal enemy of Count Theobald, because his father Sulpitius had perished in his prison (Torigni, 208–9).

  128.Torigni, 209–11; Diceto, I, 305.

>   129.In 1165, for example, not only was Henry II’s daughter Matilda, then aged eight, betrothed to the thirty-six-year-old Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, but her three-year-old sister Eleanor was betrothed to Frederick Barbarossa’s son Henry, who was not yet a year old (Torigni, 224).

  130.John’s birth may have been in late 1166 or early 1167 (Lewis, ‘The Birth and Childhood of King John’, 159–65).

  131.G. Duby, ‘Youth in Aristocratic Society’, in G. Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan (London, 1977), 112–22; and idem, Medieval Marriage (Baltimore, 1979), 10–13; D. Bates, ‘The Conqueror’s Adolescence’, ANS, 25 (2002), 1–18.

  132.Below, 316.

  133.GH, I, 177. Margaret appears to have had no children with her second husband, King Béla III of Hungary. For this marriage, below, 317 and n. 98. For wider context, J. Gillingham, ‘Love, Marriage and Politics in the Twelfth Century’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 25 (1989), 292–303, reprinted in idem, Richard Coeur de Lion. Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London, 1994), 243–55.

  134.CTB, I, no. 24.

  135.Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste (Rigord), ed. É. Charpentier, G. Pon and Y. Chauvin (Paris, 2006), 120; De principis, 292.

  136.Gillingham, ‘The Meeting of the Kings of France and England’, 17–42, and especially 23, noting that the marriage of the young Henry to Margaret and the betrothal of Alice to Richard in 1169 ‘ensured that these meetings of kings retained the character of family conferences to a degree not seen since the many meetings of Carolingian kings in the ninth century’.

  137.Gillingham, ‘Doing Homage’, 78. For the status of the Vexin and its place in Anglo-French diplomacy, L. Landon, The Itinerary of Richard I (Pipe Roll Society, new series, xiii, London, 1935), 219–34, Appendix H, ‘The Vexin’.

  Chapter 3: Rex Puer

  1.Raoul de Hodenc: Le Roman des Eles, ed. and trans. K. Busby (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, Pa., 1983), 163.

  2.Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, I, 315.

  3.F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London, 1986), 69.

  4.W. H. Hutton, Thomas Becket (Cambridge, 1926), 51.

  5.FitzStephen, 104, ‘prima elementa morum et litterarum’; M. G. Cheney, Roger Bishop of Worcester, 1164–1179 (Oxford, 1980), 7; A. L. Poole, ‘Henry Plantagenet’s Early Visits to England’, EHR, 47 (1932), 447–51; Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 144. He also spent some time with his mother the Empress at Devizes (M. Chibnall, ‘The Empress Matilda and her Sons’, Medieval Mothering, 279–94, at 284).

  6.M. Innes, ‘“A Place of Discipline”: Carolingian Courts and Aristocratic Youth’, Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages. Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, ed. C. Cubitt (Turnhout, 2003), 59–76; and C. Dette, ‘Kinder und Jungendliche in der Adelsgesellschaft des frühen Mittelalters’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 76 (1994), 1–34.

  7.Henry I’s natural son Richard, for example, was brought up in the household of Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, which was famed for its magnificence; another of that king’s illegitimate sons, Robert of Gloucester, had also received schooling there at some stage in his youth (HH, 594–5).

  8.HWM, ll. 743–804, ‘pris e … onor’; Map, 488–9; Crouch, William Marshal, 22–8. William, however, joined the Tancarville household at the rather later age of about twelve (HWM, III, 61, note to line 773).

  9.One of Henry II’s closest companions, William de Mandeville, had as a second son been brought up from his youth in the court of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, and had been knighted by him (Foundation of Walden, 44–5, 80–1). His father Earl Geoffrey had Flemish knights in his service, and William may have been sent to Flanders for safety around 1143, when Geoffrey’s political position in England was under attack (ibid., xxiv).

  10.J. R. Lyon, ‘Fathers and Sons: Preparing Noble Youths to be Lords in Twelfth-Century Germany’, JMH, 34 (2008), 291–310.

  11.Henry I’s only legitimate son, William Aetheling, had grown up at the royal court, together with the king’s nephew Stephen of Blois and sons of the greatest nobles such as Waleran and Robert, heirs to Robert, count of Meulan. King Stephen’s son Eustace was probably also raised in his father’s court after 1135. Henry FitzEmpress’ fosterage with his uncle Robert of Gloucester had in this respect been unusual, motivated as much by political expediency as by the desire for education at a court renowned for its cultural patronage, for it was hoped the presence of the Matilda’s son and heir in England would bolster the beleaguered Angevin cause there.

  12.CTB, II, no. 243, ‘ut ei alendum et instiuendum’. By contrast, the future Louis VI was said to have come with a group of followers to the court of Henry I early in the latter’s reign ‘to attend him as a distinguished young knight’ (Orderic, VI, 50–1).

  13.These included the sons of several earls: N. Vincent, ‘Did Henry II have a Policy towards the Earls?’, War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500. Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. C. Given-Wilson, A. Kettle and L. Scales (Woodbridge, 2008), 1–26, at 11. Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing c.1139, reflected the practice at the court of Henry I when he described King Arthur’s reception of young nobles: ‘during that time the youthful sons of noble families come to him from the remotest parts; gladly the king honours them and makes them his young warriors (neoptolomos), ennobling them with horses and armour and enriching them with gifts’: The Historia Regum Brittaniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, V. Gesta Regum Britanniae, ed. and trans. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1991), 190–1 (VII: 154).

  14.The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. F. Barlow (Camden Society, 3rd series, lxi, 1939), 18–20.

  15.M. Keen, Chivalry (New York and London, 1984), 66–9; Le Jan, ‘Apprentissages militaires’, 211–32.

  16.FitzStephen, 35; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum, I, 542–3, noting that Lanfranc ‘reared him and made him knight (eum nutrierat et militem fecerat)’; F. Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), 22. I am grateful to John Gillingham for this point. Lanfranc also knighted the future Henry I, though he may have been educated in the household of Bishop Osmund of Salisbury rather than that of the archbishop (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E, 1086; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum, I, 710; Green, Henry I, 22–3).

  17.FitzStephen, 18. The most extensive discussion of Becket’s role as chancellor remains L. B. Radford, Thomas of London before his Consecration (Cambridge, 1984), especially 57–152.

  18.Gervase of Canterbury, I, 169, could later claim that by 1161 Thomas was said to be ‘in Anglia potentissimus’, and that he ‘was also the king’s guide, and, as it were, his master (sed et regis rector et quasi magister)’.

  19.N. Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 278–34, at 288–92.

  20.L. Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis (Harlow, 1998), 124–5; E. Bournazel, Le Gouvernement capétien, 1108–1180 (Paris, 1975), 104; F. Funck-Bretano, The Middle Ages (London, 1922), 130. His role equally echoed that of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, in the government of Henry I (E. J. Kealey, Roger of Salisbury, Viceroy of England, Berkeley and London, 1972).

  21.FitzStephen, 25; and cf. Howden, I, 216. As John of Salisbury informed Becket himself in 1160, ‘common report and rumour seems to indicate that you are so strongly of heart and mind, that in view of such intimate friendship your desires and dislikes must coincide’ (LJS, I, no. 128, 221).

  22.FitzStephen, 22; Staunton, Lives, 50–1.

  23.Ibid.

  24.Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, I, 315, ‘unde postea idem Thomas ipsum Henricum jocose filium suum adoptivum appellavit’; Thómas Saga Erkibyskups, ed. and trans. E. Magnusson, 2 vols (Rolls Series, London, 1875–1883), I, 120–1, similarly says he regarded young Henry as his foster son.

  25.In a like manner, the Englishman Ralph, bishop of Bethlehem and chancellor of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, had been prominent in the regency of Queen Melisende, widow of Henry II’s grandfather Fulk V, who from 1143 acted as co-ruler with her son Baldwin III (B. Hamilton, ‘Ralph (d. 1174), administrator a
nd bishop of Bethlehem’, ODNB.

  26.In addition to his archdeaconry of Canterbury, the provostship of Beverley and several other livings, Becket held the castles and honour of Eye, with its service of 140 knights, Berkhamsted and the Tower of London ‘with knight service provided’ (FitzStephen, 20).

  27.FitzStephen, 22; Staunton, Lives, 50.

  28.Bosham, 176. He even had his own fleet of six or more ships, and once presented the king with three fully equipped vessels (FitzStephen, 22, 26). Becket’s near-contemporary, the Englishman Roger of Selby, had, as chancellor to King Roger II of Sicily, a similar reputation for splendour and extravagance (D. H. S. Abulafia, ‘Robert of Selby [Salesby], Robert of (fl. 1137–1151), administrator’, ODNB).

  29.La Vie de Saint Thomas le Martyr par Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence (Guernes) ed. E. Wahlberg (Lund, 1922), ll. 341–3; Garnier’s Becket, trans. J. Shirley (Chichester, 1975), 10.

  30.FitzStephen, 20–1; Staunton, Lives, 50. For the rebuke of an anonymous French scholar, writing c. 1156 x 1164 but probably before Becket’s elevation to the archbishopric, B. Ross, ‘Audi Thoma … Henriciani Nota: a French Scholar Appeals to Thomas Becket?’, EHR, 89 (1974), 333–8, especially 336, ‘Listen, Thomas! With that which you spend to buy beasts, ransom prisoners; whence you feed wild beasts, nourish the poor; whence you arm men, bury the innocent dead!’

  31.For Thomas’ sense of the magnificent, Barlow, Becket, 219.

  32.FitzStephen, 20–1; Staunton, Lives, 50.

  33.FitzStephen, 36. As a youth, Becket himself had been captivated by the knightly lifestyle of one of his father’s friends, Richer de Laigle, who had taught him horsemanship and hunting, the essential prerequisites of the aristocratic life for which Becket yearned (Grim, MTB, II, 359–61; Guernes, ll. 206–13; Thómas Saga Erikibiskups, I, 30–5; and for Richer himself, Barlow, Becket, 19–20).

  34.These included Baldwin, son of Count Arnold of Guines, who as count himself later obtained relics of St Thomas to place in his chapel of St Catherine at La Montoire, and showed the saint particular devotion, ‘because Thomas had administered the oath of knighthood to him and granted and bestowed on him the name and duty of a knight’ (Lamberti Ardensis historia comitum Ghisnensium, ed. J. Heller, MGH SS, 24: 550–642, cc. 75, 87; Lambert of Ardres, The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres, trans. L. Shopkow, University of Pennsylvania, 2001, 110, 121).