Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  22.R. Folz, La Souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l’empire germanique médiéval (Paris, 1950), 197, 203–4; W. Kleinast, Deutschland und Frankreich in der Kaiserzeit, 3 vols, Stuttgart, 1974–1975, 516–20.

  23.Decem scriptores, cols 347–50, 368–70; WN, I, 76–8, 147–8; W. W. Scott, ‘Malcolm IV’, ODNB.

  24.M. L. Dutton, ‘Aelred Historian: Two Portraits in Plantagenet Myth’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 20 (1993), 113–44; L. Jones, ‘From Anglorum Basileus to Norman Saint: The Transformation of Edward the Confessor’, Haskins Society Journal, 12 (2002), 99–120; J. E. Lawyer, ‘Ailred of Rievaulx’s Life of Edward the Confessor: a Medieval Idea of Kingship’, Fides et Historia, 31 (1999), 45–65.

  25.Decem scriptores, col. 370; The Life of Edward, ed. Barlow, 161–2 and 130.

  26.Decem scriptores, cols 350–70; PL, CXCV, cols 711–38; King, ‘The Accession of Henry II’, 41–2. This genealogy was incorporated by Ralph of Diss into his chronicle, s.a. 1154 (Diceto, I, 299).

  27.E. King, ‘Henry of Blois (c.1093–1171), bishop of Winchester’, ODNB; and idem, ‘Henry of Winchester: The Bishop, the City and the Wider World’, ANS, 37 (2014), forthcoming. This reburial, which occurred soon after Bishop Henry’s return from his self-imposed exile at Cluny, was an act of political reintegration intended to win Henry II’s favour, though it also proclaimed the bishop’s own exalted ancestry and the significance of his see.

  28.The Capetians could only claim descent from Charlemagne after the marriage of Louis VII to Adela of Blois in 1160, and of Philip II to Isabella of Hainault, both of whom could trace their line to the Carolingians (E. A. Brown, ‘La Notion de la légitimité et la prophétie à la cour de Philippe Auguste’, La France de Philippe Auguste, ed. R. H. Bautier, Paris, 1982, 77–111, at 81–2).

  29.The Historia Regum Brittaniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, V. Gesta Regum Britanniae, ed. and trans. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1991); J. Gillingham, ‘The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, ANS, 13 (1991), 99–118, and reprinted in J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 19–40.

  30.Wace’s Roman de Brut. A History of the British. Text and Translation, ed. and trans. J. Weiss (Exeter, revised edn, 2002). The dedication is noted by Layamon, Brut, ed. G. L. Brook and R. F. Leslie, 2 vols (Early English Text Society, 1963, 1978), I, ll. 20–3.

  31.For the question of patronage, see J. Gillingham, ‘The Cultivation of History, Legend and Courtesy at the Court of Henry II’, Writers of the Reign of Henry II: Twelve Essays, ed. R. Kennedy and S. Meecham-Jones (New York, 2006), 25–52.

  32.A. Chauou, L’Idéologie Plantagenêt. Royauté arthurienne et monarchie politique dans l’espace Plantagenêt (XIIe–XIIIe siècles) (Rennes, 2001), especially 88–125; and M. Aurell, La Légende du roi Arthur 550–1250 (Mesnil-sur-l’Estrée, 2007), especially 210–52, ‘Henri II, ses fils et la légende authurienne’. For a valuable review of the extensive secondary literature, see also M. Aurell, ‘Henry II and Arthurian Legend’, Henry II: New Interpretations, 362–94.

  33.For the use of Arthur in anti-French propaganda, D. Crouch, ‘The Roman des Franceis of Andrew de Coutances: Significance, Text and Translation’, Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250. Essays for David Bates, ed. D. Crouch and K. Thompson (Turnhout, 2011), 175–98.

  34.La Vie d’Édouard le Confesseur, ed. O. Södergard (Uppsala, 1948), ll. 4969–5006, ll. 105–30; D. M. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963), 60–3, points out the close connection between the abbesses of Barking and the crown, as does Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 136–7. The abbess at the time of writing was probably Adeliza, sister of Eustace and Payn FitzJohn.

  35.Torigni, 212–13; Torigni, ed Delisle, I, 336 and n. 5; and Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 137–9, also noting the significance of the relic of the Holy Blood kept there. For the ducal complex at Fécamp, A. Renoux, Fécamp. Du palais ducal aux palais de Dieu (Paris, 1991), and for its significance J. A. Green, ‘Fécamp et les rois anglo-normands’, Tabularia. Sources écrites de la Normandie médiévale, 2 (2002), 9–18.

  36.F. H. M. Le Saux, A Companion to Wace (Cambridge, 2005), 160–208; A. Scaglioni, Knights at Court. Courtliness, Chivalry and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1991), 74–5; P. Damien-Grint, ‘Benoît de Sainte-Maure et l’idéologie Plantagenêt’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 413–28.

  37.J. Martindale, ‘“Cavalaria et Orgueill”. Duke William IX and the Historian’, Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, II. Papers from the Third Strawberry Hill Conference, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1988), 87–116; idem, ‘Secular Propaganda and Aristocratic Values: The Autobiographies of Count Fulk le Réchin of Anjou and William of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine’, Writing Medieval Biography, 143–59.

  38.Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Ambroise, ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris, 1913); J. Bradbury, ‘Geoffrey V of Anjou, Count and Knight’, The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, III, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Boydell, 1990), 21–38. John dedicated his text to William Passavant, bishop of Le Mans, rather than to Henry II himself.

  39.J. Chartrou, L’Anjou de 1109 à 1151: Foulques de Jérusalem et Geoffreoi Plantagenêt (Paris, 1928), 86–8. Its inscription runs ‘Ense tuo, princeps, praedonum turba fugature; Ecclesiisque quies, pace vigente, datur’. See D. Christophe, ‘La Plaque de Geoffroy Plantagenêt dans la cathédrale du Mans’, Hortus Artium Medievalium, 10 (2004), 74–80.

  40.Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe legentium, ed. G. Busson and A. Lédru (Le Mans, 1901), 416–17; and on the importance of the cult of St Julian to the projection of Angevin power, K. Dutton, ‘The Assertion of Identity, Authority and Legitimacy: Angevin Religious Patronage in the County of Maine, 1110–1151’, Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction, ed. E. Jamroziak and K. Stöber (Turnhout, 2014), 211–36.

  41.Actus pontificum Cenomannis, 432. Geoffrey’s burial in the cathedral in 1151 was an honour not even accorded to the bishops (Torigni, 163; Chartrou, L’Anjou, 86).

  42.De principis, 283. A charter of Henry II (1154 x 1158), provided 40 livres angevins for two priests to say Masses daily at the altar before his father’s tomb (Recueil, no. 70; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 1514, and cf. no. 1695; Nécrologie-Obituaire de la cathédrale du Mans, ed. G. Busson and A. Ledru (1906), 155–6.

  43.Below, 312.

  44.Eyton, 77–8. There is no indication that young Henry had joined Eleanor, Matilda and Richard in Normandy when they met the king during negotiations for Matilda’s marriage to Henry of Saxony, and that of her sister Eleanor to a younger son of Frederick Barbarossa (ibid.). Henry II was back in England by mid May 1165, to launch an expedition against the Welsh. William FitzJohn appears in charge of both young Henry and Geoffrey, and he escorted Henry II’s natural sister Emma to Wales to marry David ap Owen (PR 11 Henry II, 73; 12 Henry II, 71, 96, 100–1; PR 13 Henry II, 169; PR 20 Henry II, 16).

  45.Between 1158 and 1160, he tried land pleas in Yorkshire, Devon, Gloucestershire and Somerset; Warren, Henry II, 285, and n. 3, 325; White, Restoration and Reform, 153, and n. 105, 184, 187.

  46.Historia Ecclesia Abbendonensis, ed. J. G. Hudson, 2 vols (Oxford, 2002, 2007), II, 242–3, in describing the abbot’s case against Turstin FitzSimon. William’s role was probably analogous to that of Ranulf de Glanville, who served as John’s magister from 1182 and doubtless was tasked with instilling in him a knowledge of the law and the functioning of the courts (GH, I, 7, 304–5, 307–8). Henry II himself had been associated with his father’s rule in Anjou and Normandy from 1145, when he likewise had been introduced ‘to the practical work of government in England and Normandy’ (Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 144–5).

  47.Warren, Henry II, 93, 97.

  48.J. Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law (Harlow, 1996), 146–56.

  49.Dialogus de Scaccario and
the Constitutio Domus Regis, ed. E. Amt and S. Church (Oxford, 2007), 114–15.

  50.Dialogus, 4–5.

  51.Dialogus, 40–1, and for Thomas Brown, ibid., 52–5; R. C. Van Caenegem, English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, 2 vols (London, 1990–1991), II. no. 446. On Ilchester see C. Duggan, ‘Richard of Ilchester, Royal Servant and Bishop’, TRHS, 5th series, 16 (1966), 1–21; and J. G. Hudson, ‘Ilchester, Richard of’, ODNB, 29, 195–8.

  52.He is found commanding units of the king’s knights in the 1165 Welsh campaign (Eyton, 80).

  53.Smith, ‘Royal Family’, 52; Red Book of the Exchequer, I, 408, where he is described as ‘pincerna domini Henrici filii domini regis’; Eyton, 86; and see also Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 5272. By 1170, payments were made to Ailward as camerarius for the expenses of young Henry, rex filius Regis (e.g. PR 16 Henry II, 61, 111, 112, 118, 128, 162).

  54.LJS, II, no. 136.

  55.CTB, I, 262–3.

  56.For Hugh, see CTB, II, 1376.

  57.MTB, V, no. 169.

  58.Red Book of the Exchequer, I, 412–13; EHD, II, 971. On the inquest of 1166, see T. K. Keefe, Feudal Assessments and the Political Community under Henry II and his Sons (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1983), 6–19. The fiscal intentions behind the survey are demonstrated by the fact that whereas before 1166, annual audited revenue from England was £13,300, it rose thereafter to £20,000 (N. Barratt, ‘Finance and the Economy in the Reign of Henry II’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 242–56, at 249–50, 253). The aid was levied in 1168 for the marriage of Matilda, and raised £4,300 in 1167/8 alone (ibid., 253).

  59.Red Book of the Exchequer, I, 442; Smith, ‘Royal Family’, 54.

  60.Red Book of the Exchequer, I, 400; E. King, Medieval England, 1066–1485 (Oxford, 1988), 74.

  61.On the performance of homage and the ritual gesture of the immixtio manuum, J. Le Goff, ‘The Symbolic Ritual of Vassalage’, in idem, Time, Work and Culture (Chicago, 1980), 237–87.

  62.Eyton, 103. Queen Eleanor, however, returned to England where, at Oxford, she gave birth to John, Henry and Eleanor’s last child.

  63.Eyton, 137; Smith, ‘Royal Family’, 52–3.

  64.Torigni, 235–6; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. E. King and trans. K. Potter (2nd edn, Oxford, 1998), 126–31; Warren, Henry II, 29.

  65.Torigni, 235–6; HWM, ll. 1565–1651.

  66.Peter of Blois, Epistolae, no. 67 (PL, CCVII, col. 211); J. Appleby, Henry II, the Vanquished King (London, 1962), 70.

  67.Epistolae, no. 67 (PL, CCVII, cols 210–13).

  68.Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, 140–1. The tag was already familiar: William of Malmesbury tells the (implausible) story of how the Conqueror’s son Henry made play of the proverb ‘a king unlettered is a donkey crowned’ even in the hearing of his father (Gesta regum, II, 710–11).

  69.J. Bradbury, ‘Fulk le Réchin and the Origin of the Plantagenets’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. Holdsworth and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), 27–42.

  70.William of Conches, Opera omnia, I. Dragmaticon philosophiae, ed. I. Ronca (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio mediaevalis, 152, Turnhout, 1997); idem, A Dialogue on Natural Philosophy, trans. I. Ronca and M. Curr (Notre Dame, Indi., 1997); Warren, Henry II, 38–9.

  71.Map, 476–7; Gerald, Opera, V, 302–3; W. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History (3rd edn, Oxford, 1900), nos 6 and 7.

  72.Epistolae, no. 66 (PL, CCVII, col. 198).

  73.Gerald of Wales only joined Henry II’s court in 1184, the year after the Young King’s death.

  74.Map, 278–9, with the translation slightly adapted. The quote is from the Aeneid, v. 79. Henry I could be considered ‘literatus’ by Orderic Vitalis (Orderic, II, 214, III, 120, and cf. Gesta regum, I, 710; Green, Henry I, 22–3).

  75.Bk XIV: 21; M. Aurell, Le Chevalier lettré: savoir et conduite de l’aristocratie au XII et XIIIe siècles (Paris, 2011), 96–8.

  76.Walter Map famously noted that Henry II ‘had a knowledge of all the tongues used from the French sea to the Jordan, but spoke only Latin and French’ (Map, 476–7). For the extent of literacy among the nobility, see M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England, 1066–1307 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1993), and Aurell, Le Chevalier lettré, especially 47–114.

  77.Gerald of Wales, Liber de invectionibus, I: 5 (Opera, III, 30), where Gerald’s concern was more to belittle Hubert Walter’s education than praise Richard’s, although his disparaging view was shared by the scholarly Ralph Niger, a member of the Young King’s court, who noted that Hubert ‘parum … literatus fuit’ (Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 101); S. Church, King John, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant (London, 2015), 15, and 5–6 for John’s ‘privileged education, the best his world could give’.

  78.For books owned by John, Church, King John, 14–15, and for Gervase, below, 257.

  79.Map, 280–1.

  80.Expugnatio, 196–7, where Gerald also notes of Henry II that ‘he was a prince of great eloquence’; John of Marmoutier, Historia Gaufridi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, 218.

  81.Policraticus, IV: 8, trans. Dickinson, 38.

  82.Map, 102–3; and see Gillingham, ‘The Cultivation of History, Legend and Courtesy’, 39–40; and idem, ‘From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England’, TRHS, (2002) 267–89.

  83.Etienne de Fougères, Le Livre des manières, ed. J. T. E. Thomas (Paris and Louvain, 2013). The work was written some time during Stephen’s episcopacy, between 1168 and 1178 (ibid., 10).

  84.C. S. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness. Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia, Pa., 1985), 127–75. For the inculcation of manners in dress, hygiene and at table, see Aurell, Le Chevalier lettré, 312–64.

  85.Expugnatio, 172–3, though Gerald, who harboured a particular animus against him, alleged that in reality he ‘was full of guile, a flatterer and a coward, addicted to wine and lust’.

  86.Gervase, Otia imperialia, 486–7.

  87.Cited in Keen, Chivalry, 42; L. Paterson, ‘Knights and the Concept of Knighthood in Twelfth-Century Occitan Epic’, Forum of Modern Language Studies, 17 (1981), 117–30; and see W. M. Hackett, ‘Knights and Knighthood in Girart de Roussillon’, Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, II, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1988), 40–5.

  88.A. Luchaire, Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus (New York, 1912), 315–21. John of Salisbury informed Becket in 1164 that when he came to Count Philip of Flanders at the castle of Lécluse, ‘in the manner of the wealthy, who love this way of wasting time, he was hawking; and with this in view he was scouring rivers and pools and marshes and springs’ (LJS, II, no. 136, at 2–5).

  89.PR 8 Henry II, 39: Eyton, 139.

  90.PR 16 Henry II, 15. Though the exact circumstances are unknown, in 1164 Henry II was so enraged with Robert Belet, one of the king’s hereditary butlers, ‘on account of a sparrow-hawk’, that he fined him £100 and confiscated most of his lands (Curia Regis Rolls, ix, 332).

  91.Dialogus, 30–1; and the Constitutio Domus Regis, 212–14, which clearly indicates the number, diversity and significance of the various royal huntsmen. See G. H. White, ‘The Constitutio Domus Regis and the King’s Sport’, Antiquaries Journal, 30 (1950), 52–63, and more generally J. Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk. The Art of Medieval Hunting (London, 1988).

  92.Map, 476–7; Gerald, Opera, V, 302; WN, I, 280; Warren, Henry II, 393. For Thomas’ love of hunting ‘with dogs and birds, his hawks and falcons’, FitzStephen, 20.

  93.Duggan, Thomas Becket, 163–4 and 162–72 for these two men and their legation. The meetings took place at Argentan (15–16 August), Domfront (23–24 August), Bayeux (31 August) and Bur-le-Roi (1–2 September).

  94.CTB, II, 980–1 and n. 6, c.3 September 1169.

  95.J. Jarnut, ‘Die Frühmittelalterlische Jagd unter Rechts- und sozialge
schichtlichen Aspekten’, L’uomo di fronte al mondo animale nell’alto medioevo (XXXI Settimana, Spoleto, 1985), 765–98; J. L. Nelson, ‘Carolingian Royal Ritual’, in Rituals of Royalty. Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. D. Cannadine and S. Price (Cambridge, 1987), 137–80.

  96.Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, 196–8.

  97.R. Almond, Medieval Hunting (Stroud, 2003), 17.

  98.Thus Orderic, III, 114–15, noted the death of William the Conqueror’s second son Richard, ‘who had not yet received the belt of knighthood’, struck by a branch while hunting in the New Forest. Fulk V was fatally injured by a fall from his horse while hunting a hare outside Acre in 1142 (William of Tyre, Bk 15: 27).

  99.Sassier, Louis VII, 468, and below, 264.

  100.FitzStephen, 11; trans. EHD, II, 1029.

  101.Gottfried von Strasbourg, Tristan, trans. A. Hatto (Harmondsworth, 1974), 69, where Tristan is said to have ‘often sought recreation in fencing, wrestling, running, jumping and throwing the javelin’.

  102.Gerald, De rebus a se gestis, Opera, I, 50; The Autobiography of Gerald of Wales, trans. H. E. Butler (new edn, Woodbridge, 2005), 70. The chanson Girart de Roussillon similarly describes how newly dubbed knights ran courses at the quintain, which in this instance was a manikin ‘equipped with a new shield and a strong and glittering hauberk’ (Luchaire, Social France, 321).

  103.FitzStephen, 11–12; trans. EHD, II, 1028–9.

  104.Ibid.

  105.Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 41–7. Conan was, however, allowed to retain the lordship of Guingamp and the honour of Richmond during his lifetime.

  106.Lloyd, A History of Wales, II, 518–22.

  107.For discussion of the threats posed to Henry in 1166–1168, Warren, Henry II, 102–8, on which this summary is based.

  108.LJS, II, no. 288, stating that they discussed the ‘secret undertakings’ that Henry was giving Louis; Warren, Henry II, 108–10. For the broader context, L. Halphen, ‘Les Entrevues des rois Louis VII et Henri II durant l’exil de Thomas Becket en France’, in idem, A travers l’histoire du Moyen ge (Paris, 1950), 266–74.