Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  114.MTB, VII, 331 (no. 685); Guernes, ll. 4371–90.

  115.WN, I, 172.

  116.As the author of the History of William Marshal sententiously noted from the vantage point of the 1220s, ‘I would add my opinion that the King did not act wisely when he forced all his barons to pay homage to his son. Once the deed had been done, many was the day afterwards that he readily would have undone it. But here I make a parenthesis for you: men often do many things readily, only to regret them; but no man can predict the future’ (HWM, ll. 1925–34).

  117.GH, I, 6.

  118.Torigni, 247.

  119.GH, I, 6–7, where Howden states that both Aquitaine and Brittany were ‘tenendum de rege Franciae’.

  120.GH, I, 7, ‘ad provendum et manutenendum’. In his later Chronica, Howden (II, 6) says that Henry II also granted John the county of Mortain at this time, but in reality this appears to have been a statement of wish and future intent. John was only to receive the county on Henry’s death in 1189, when Richard granted him ‘omnes terras quas dominus rex pater suus ei dederat’, including Mortain (GH, II, 73; K. Norgate, John Lackland (London, 1902), 3–4, 24–5). I am grateful to Stephen Church for this point.

  121.GH, I, 7. For Henry’s devotion to Grandmont, E. Hallam, ‘Henry II, Richard I and the Order of Grandmont’, JMH, 1 (1975), 165–86; C. A. Hutchison, The Hermit Monks of Grandmont (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1989), 57–64.

  122.GH, I, 7: Torigni, 262. N. Vincent, ‘Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’, The Church and Mary, ed. R. Swanson (Boydell, 2004), 126–46, at 130, suggests that Henry’s choice of this Marian pilgrimage site may be linked to the fact that the onset of his sickness had occurred close to the feast of the Assumption (15 August).

  123.E. Mason, ‘Rocamadour in Quercy above all other Churches: The Healing of Henry II’, The Church and Healing, ed. W. J. Sheils (Studies in Church History, 19, 1982), 39–54. For the cult of the Virgin see J. Roacher, Rocamadour et son pèlerinage: Étude historique et archéologique, 2 vols (Toulouse, 1979); and M. Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady at Rocamadour (Woodbridge, 1999), which analyses a miracle collection composed in 1172–73.

  124.Torigni, 262; Mason, ‘Rocamadour in Quercy’, 39.

  Chapter 6: The Regent and the Martyr, 1170–1172

  1.‘Vox vatis velata diu’, in P. A. Thompson, ‘An Anonymous Verse Life of Thomas Becket’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 20 (1985), 147–54, ll. 3–5; A. G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066–1422 (Oxford, 1992), 82.

  2.GH, I, 6. The Pipe Roll for 1171 records considerable expenditure for the Young King on robes and clothing of scarlet, green and coloured serge, as well as furs of ermine, while more than £27 was also spent on robes for Margaret and her household (PR 17 Henry II, 147).

  3.GH, I, 6; Smith, ‘Acta’, 305. His privy seal has not survived, but Jordan Fantosme noted that in 1173 the Young King sent King William the Lion a letter, written in French (en romanz), sealed with his ring (d’un anel) (JF, ll. 245; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1993, 219). That of his brother Richard, incorporating a classical Roman cameo depicting Mercury, is illustrated in Gillingham, Richard I, pl. 3.

  4.For Henry II’s seals, W. de Gray Birch, ‘On the Seals of King Henry the Second, and of his Son the so-called Henry the Third’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom, 2nd series, no. xi (1878), 301–37; and N. Vincent, ‘The Seals of Henry II and his Court’, Seals and their Context in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Schofield (Oxford, 2015), 7–34.

  5.For a discussion of the Young King’s seal, Smith, ‘Acta’, 304–7. Only two near-complete seals survive, though both are worn, leaving much of the detail indistinct. One is attached to a charter to Christ Church cathedral priory, Canterbury, granting rents in Barksore (Canterbury Cathedral Archive, Chartae Antiquae, B336; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 10), and the second to a charter in favour of Montjoux hospital (Oxford, New College MS Archive no. 10679; reproduced in H. E. Salter, Facsimiles of Early Charters in Oxford Muniment Rooms (Oxford, 1929), no. 37; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 24). A cast of another seal is preserved in the British Library (W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London, 1887–1900), I, no. 79 (li.4). For the reproduction of another seal of the Young King, A. B. Wyton, The Great Seals of England from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London, 1887), no. 34. A drawing of the Young King’s seal was made by F. Sandford, A Genealogical History of the Kings of England and Monarchs of Great Britain (London, 1677), 54, where he is shown bearded, while the French antiquary Roger de Gaignières recorded the seal once attached to the charter of the Young King in favour of Fontevraud abbey (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS Latin 5480, Gaignières transcripts; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 20).

  6.Smith, ‘Acta’, 304–7.

  7.M. Dalas, Les Sceaux des rois et de la régence (Corpus de sceaux français du Moyen ge, ii, Paris, 1991), 150 and n. 1, and nos 70, 70 bis. For Louis’ seal, B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Suger and the Symbolism of Royal Power: The Seal of Louis VII’, Abbot Suger and St Denis. A Symposium, ed. P. L. Gerson (New York, 1986), 95–103. On both Young Henry and Louis’ seal, the throne with finials as lions’ heads is near identical, and on both the sceptre terminates in a fleur-de-lys.

  8.Only for the period 1137–1152, when he was duke of Aquitaine by virtue of his marriage to Eleanor, did Louis VII use a double-sided seal, with the reverse depicting him as duke as a mounted warrior. With his divorce from Eleanor, he resumed a single-sided seal.

  9.Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. H. Waquet (Paris, 1964), 86; trans. R. Cusimano and J. H. Moorhead, The Deeds of Louis the Fat (Washington, DC, 1992), 63.

  10.Smith, ‘Acta’, 305.

  11.It is possible, however, that the absence of a counter-seal depicting Young Henry as duke of Normandy may reflect limitations on his authority in the duchy, even though the legend on the single face bore the title Dux Normannorum (Smith, ‘Acta’, 307–9). Certainly there is no record of young Henry having been invested as duke in 1170, or on any subsequent occasion.

  12.HWM, ll. 1936–8.

  13.They witness three of the Young King’s administrative writs between his coronation and November 1172 when he left for Normandy (Smith, ‘Acta’, 298, and nos 7, 15, 28).

  14.On Ridel, see English Episcopal Acta, XXXI: Ely, 1109–1197, ed. N. Karn (Oxford, 2005), lxxix–lxxxii; A. J. Duggan, ‘Geoffrey Ridel (d. 1189), administrator and bishop of Ely’, ODNB; and for Richard of Ilchester, see above, 60, n. 51.

  15.William of Canterbury, 108–9; Smith, ‘Acta’, 299, n. 1. The first three also appear in the witness list to the Mandeville charter.

  16.For William, Recueil, Introduction, 500–1; CTB, II, no. 311, n. 7. He was, for example, sole witness to writs of the Young King in favour of Bury St Edmunds and Biddlesden Abbey, as well as that commanding Peter of Studely to keep an agreement with Godwin of Warwick concerning land at Enborne, Berkshire (14 June 1170 x November 1172); Smith, ‘Acta’, nos 8, 2, 33.

  17.Vincent, ‘Hugh de Gundeville’, 131–3.

  18.J. Boorman, ‘Ralph FitzStephen (d. 1202)’, ODNB. He received payments from Henry II’s chamber from 1156/7, and attests as a chamberlain in 1178. He was sheriff of Gloucestershire 1171–75, and later was one of those responsible for the upkeep of Eleanor during her captivity.

  19.Smith, ‘Acta’, nos 2 (Windsor), 3, 8 (Winchester), 7 (Newbury), 33 (Oxford). For Eleanor’s regency, Turner, Eleanor, 150–61.

  20.J. H. Round, ‘A Glimpse of the Young King’s Court (1170)’, in J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1909), 503–8, at 504.

  21.This was probably in 1171. G. H. Fowler, ‘Henry FitzHenry at Woodstock’, EHR, 39 (1924), 240–1.

  22.History of the King’s Works, II, 1009–10.

  23.PR 17 Henry II, 23.

  24.Smith, ‘Acta’, nos 8, 7.

  25.Cartulary of the Monastery of St Frideswide, ed. S. R. Wigram, 2 vols (Oxford Historical Society, xxviii, xxxi, 18
95–1896), i. 260, no. 338; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 26; ibid., no. 15; Cartularium Monasterii de Ramesia, ed. W. H. Hart and P. A. Lyons, 3 vols (Rolls Series, 1884–1893), I, 254, no. 190; Recueil, Introduction, 253; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 28.

  26.Smith, ‘Acta’, nos 4, 5 and 6.

  27.For Barre’s career, R. V. Turner, ‘Richard Barre and Michael Belet: Two Angevin Civil Servants’, Medieval Prosopography, 6 (1985), 25–49, on which what follows is largely based. From a family hailing from La Barre to the east of Lisieux, he served in the household of Robert de Chesney, bishop of Lincoln, and by 1165 had secured a position at the royal court.

  28.CTB, II, nos 227, n. 18, 229, n. 3, 244, n. 1; MTB, VII, nos 536–7, 554, 564–7.

  29.MTB, VII, 227, 440–43, 443–5, 471–5, 475–87; GH, I, 19; Howden, II, 25–8.

  30.GH, I, 43, indicating that Walter was his father’s appointment. Subsequently, William ‘my chaplain’ appears as a witness to a number of the Young King’s charters, which also mention John capellanus (Smith, ‘Acta’, nos 30, 31, 32). For Walter, R. V. Turner, ‘Walter de Coutances (d. 1207), administrator and archbishop of Rouen’, ODNB. Geoffrey, the king’s chaplain, who was in the service of both the Young King and Henry II, appears as a canon of Lincoln cathedral (English Episcopal Acta, I: Lincoln, 1067–1185, ed. D. M. Smith (Oxford, 1980), nos 205 and 280).

  31.Warren, King John, 153; Foundation of Walden, 82, n. 62; PR 16 Henry II, 15.

  32.Foundation of Walden, 80–83; and below, 111, for Queen Margaret’s chapel.

  33.MTB, III, 30–1; Staunton, Lives, 56.

  34.HWM, ll. 3417–24.

  35.For a valuable discussion of the nature of the royal household in the earlier twelfth century, Dialogus de Scaccario and the Constitutio Domus Regis, ed. and trans. E. Amt and S. Church (Oxford, 2007), lv–lviii; Hollister, Henry I, 361–4; and G. H. White, ‘The Household of the Norman Kings’, TRHS, 4th series, 30 (1948), 127–55. For the household of Henry II, Warren, Henry II, 254–5.

  36.GH, I, 43, and 46, for Solomon hostiarius, listed among those fleeing with young Henry to France in 1173.

  37.D. Crouch, ‘The Court of Henry II of England in the 1180s, and the Office of King of Arms’, The Coat of Arms: The Journal of the Heraldry Society, 3rd series, 5 (2010), pt 2, 47–55.

  38.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, at 53; Facsimiles of Early Charters from Northamptonshire (Northamptonshire Charters), ed. F. M. Stenton (Northampton Record Society, 4, Northampton, 1930), nos VI and VII; Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (London, 1932), nos 96, 98, 99; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 30. Subsequently, John Malherbe, one of Earl William’s household, appears among the Young King’s retinue at Lagny in 1179 (HWM, I, 4690; HWM, III, note to line 4690; HGM, III, 60, note).

  39.HWM, ll. 1936–48.

  40.HWM, ll. 184–282; Crouch, William Marshal, 12–23. John Marshal had played a notable role in saving the Empress from capture in 1141 following the rout of Winchester.

  41.HWM, ll. 1565–758.

  42.HWM, ll. 1864–82. The relations between the queen and the Marshal are briefly examined in E. Mullally, ‘The Reciprocal Loyalty of Eleanor of Aquitaine and William Marshal’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, ed. B. Wheeler and J. C. Parsons (New York, 2003), 237–46.

  43.Recueil, I, nos 257, 258, 260, 261, 268, 269; Smith, ‘Acta’, nos 13, 14, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32; S. Painter, William Marshal. Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England (Baltimore, Md., 1933), 32; Crouch, William Marshal, 38–44.

  44.HWM, ll. 1939–34; Turner, ‘The Households of the Sons of Henry II’, 52.

  45.GH, I, 45–6.

  46.Adam’s importance in the household is indicated by the fact that he attests eight of the Young King’s known charters, one more than William Marshal (Smith, ‘Acta’, 300; HWM, III, note to l. 4685).

  47.Recueil, Introduction, 258–9, 260, 262–3, 268; HGM, III, 60 note. The family was from Troisgots, Manche, cant. Tessy-sur-Vire (HWM, III, note to l. 4693). For Coulances (Calvados, cant. Vire), HWM, III, note to line 4697; Talbot, probably from the Pays de Caux, HWM, III, note to l. 4677; and Tinténiac, HWM, III, note to line 4743.

  48.HWM, III, note to line 4623; and for possible identifications for Robert, perhaps from an Anglo-Norman marcher family in south Wales, HWM, III, note to line 4621.

  49.Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, 295–6.

  50.Smith, ‘Acta’, 298–9, 301.

  51.The Young King, for example, received a writ from his father commanding him to issue two of his own charters to confirm those Henry II had issued on behalf of Master David, who was acting on behalf of the king and the bishop of London at the papal Curia, concerning the provision of an annuity for £20 (Z. N. Brooke, ‘The Register of Master David of London and the Part he Played in the Becket Crisis’, Essays in History Presented to R. L. Poole, ed. H. W. C. Davis (Oxford, 1927), 227–45, at 240; Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 44–5).

  52.J. C. Holt, ‘The Writs of Henry II’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 89 (1996), 47–64.

  53.William of Canterbury, 84–5; FitzStephen, 112; trans. G. Greenaway, The Life and Death of Thomas Becket (London, 1961), 138; MTB, VII, no. 690; Diceto, I, 339.

  54.Barlow, Becket, 211–12.

  55.Barlow, Becket, 221; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 187–90.

  56.LJS, II, no. 302; FitzStephen, 112–13; and for the dating of these orders, Barlow, Becket, 213 and n. 32.

  57.Barlow, Becket, 213. Ranulf, the king’s hereditary doorkeeper, had vociferously denounced the archbishop as he fled from the tumultuous council of Northampton in 1164 (ibid., 114, 225).

  58.Barlow, Becket, 213. The fact that Ranulf de Broc accounted for £1,560 5s. 5d. at the Michaelmas Exchequer, 1170, indicates the extent of the sums involved (ibid., 221).

  59.Barlow, Becket, 214–15; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 189–92.

  60.Barlow, Becket, 215.

  61.CTB, II, no. 311.

  62.Ibid., dated before 15 October 1170.

  63.CTB, II, no. 311, where Duggan notes that William FitzAldelin had accounted for the scutage of the knights of Canterbury in 1161, while it is possible that Ralph may have been related to Becket’s clerk and biographer William FitzStephen.

  64.For Reginald, see D. Crouch, ‘Reginald, earl of Cornwall (d. 1175)’, ODNB.

  65.For Walter, CTB, II, no. 311, n. 8. He had been one of the commissioners involved in the Inquest of Sheriffs early that year (PR 19 Henry II, 182).

  66.Herbert goes on to note that he had heard that the Young King and his advisors had immediately sent letters back to Henry II in Normandy, but that he was ignorant of their purport (CTB, no. 311).

  67.CTB, II, no. 311.

  68.LJS, II, no. 304.

  69.Barlow, Becket, 221.

  70.William of Canterbury, 87–8; FitzStephen, 116–18; Bosham, 471–2; Guernes, ll. 4681–700. These letters had been issued by Alexander III before news had reached him of the peace settlement of Fréteval, and on receiving them, probably in late October, Becket had initially refrained from deploying them, realizing not only that they were out of date in regard to the current political situation, but also that their tone and reference to the highly contentious ‘evil customs’ were highly inflammatory. Moreover, in late November, Thomas had received a second batch of papal letters expressing joy at the news of the peace established at Fréteval, confirming Thomas’ powers as legate and strengthening the authority of his other legates to impose an interdict on Henry II’s continental lands should he not fulfil its terms. Yet Alexander, as well as several cardinals who wrote separate letters to Becket, urged him to be conciliatory and not to seek revenge, lest the hard-won peace be ruined. Becket, however, could not bring himself to heed this wise advice. For detailed analysis of these developments, Barlow, Becket, 216–24.

  71.CTB, II, no. 311; Anon. II, MTB, IV, 123, 125–6
.

  72.Barlow, Becket, 223.

  73.As the bishops’ representatives who met with Thomas at Canterbury on 2 December had told him, the sentences were contrary to the peace at Fréteval; Barlow, Becket, 226.

  74.William of Canterbury, 99–102; FitzStephen, 118–19; Bosham, 477–8; CTB, II, no. 326.

  75.Barlow, Becket, 226.

  76.William of Canterbury, 102–5; FitzStephen, 120; Bosham, 480; Barlow, Becket, 227.

  77.FitzStephen, 121–2; Howden, II, 13. Diceto, I, 342, incorrectly has the Young King at Woodstock. Earlier, in a letter to the pope reporting his meeting with Henry II at Fréteval, Becket reports how the king had told Thomas that young Henry ‘loves you with such great affection that he refuses to see any of your enemies in a true light’ (CTB, II, no. 300).

  78.Barlow, Becket, 230.

  79.William of Canterbury, 105–8; FitzStephen, 122.

  80.FitzStephen, 122; trans. Staunton, Lives, 185. These may well have been procured by the archbishop’s agents from the horse fair held every Saturday at Smithfield, then just beyond the walls of London (FitzStephen, 6). As FitzStephen notes, Becket ‘loved him very much as his lord king, whom as a boy he had reared in his house and court when he was chancellor to his father the king’ (FitzStephen, 122; trans. Staunton, Lives, 185).

  81.William of Canterbury, 109–10.

  82.William of Canterbury, 110–11.

  83.William of Canterbury, 111.

  84.He had been made archdeacon of Canterbury at Henry II’s insistence in 1163, and continued to hold the archiepiscopal church at Otford in Kent (William of Canterbury, 111; Duggan, ‘Geoffrey Ridel’, ODNB).

  85.MTB, VII, 412; Gervase, I, 223. According to William of Canterbury, the archdeacon’s message informed young Henry that: ‘I know your father’s wishes; and never will I be a party to admitting into your presence a man who purposes to disinherit you’ (William of Canterbury, 111; Duggan, ‘Geoffrey Ridel’, ODNB).

  86.William of Canterbury, 111–12; FitzStephen, 123; Diceto, I, 342. Jocelin was the brother of Queen Adeliza, widow of Henry I.