Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

87.William of Canterbury, 111–12.

  88.FitzStephen, 123.

  89.FitzStephen, 123; Staunton, Lives, 186.

  90.William of Canterbury, 113, ‘Ergo diffiduciat me?’

  91.William of Canterbury, 114–19; FitzStephen, 124–6; Barlow, Becket, 230, n. 8.

  92.William of Canterbury, 118–19.

  93.William of Canterbury, 114–15.

  94.Howden, II, 14.

  95.FitzStephen, 124.

  96.Grim, MTB, II, 429; Barlow, Becket, 235.

  97.FitzStephen, 128.

  98.For these men, N. Vincent, ‘The Murderers of Thomas Becket’, Bischofsmord im Mittelalter, ed. N. Fryde and D. Reitz (Göttingen, 2003), 211–72.

  99.William of Canterbury, 127; FitzStephen, 129–30, 139, Bosham, 488.

  100.FitzStephen, 129.

  101.The fullest reconstruction of the course of events and Thomas’ murder is provided by Barlow, Becket, 237–50, on which what follows is based, and W. Urry, Thomas Becket. His Last Days (Stroud, 1999).

  102.Grim, MTB, II, 431–2.

  103.Barlow, Becket, 241–9.

  104.Henry II received the news at Argentan. Overwhelmed by a mixture of grief and fear that he would be blamed for the crime, he shut himself away for three days, refusing to eat or to see anyone; GH, I, 14; MTB, VII, no. 738.

  105.FitzStephen, 149.

  106.There is no contemporary support for the statement by Turner, Eleanor, 214, that Becket’s death ‘had already inflamed the Young King’s hostility to his father’, or that Henry II’s ‘less than whole-hearted repentance at Avranches further undermined his son’s respect for him’.

  107.A. Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status and Conscience: Henry II’s Penance for Becket’s Murder’, Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte. Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen durchgebracht, ed. K. Borchardt and E. Bünz, 2 vols (Stuttgart, 1998), 265–90, reprinted in A. J. Duggan, Thomas Becket: Friends, Networks, Texts and Cult (Aldershot, 2007), with original pagination.

  108.MTB, VII, no. 739.

  109.MTB, VII, no. 440; Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status and Conscience’, 267.

  110.Torigni, 249.

  111.GH, I, 14–19; MTB, VII, no. 735.

  112.For the embassy and its dealings, Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status and Conscience’, 268–72.

  113.GH, I, 19–22.

  114.MTB, VII, 443, 476–8.

  115.Torigni, 252; PR 17 Henry II, 19, 34, 40, 42, 47, 148; Eyton, 162. She crossed in the royal esnecca, while a separate ship transported the horses of the princess and her retinue.

  116.Warren, Henry II, 529–30, who regards as erroneous Howden’s statement that a legation had arrived in Normandy before Henry left the duchy but that he departed without seeing them, having made an appeal to Rome (GH, I, 24). Howden may be correct, however, in stating that Henry forbade the legates to enter England in his absence, and required that anyone crossing to England had first to swear an oath not to harm the king or his kingdom (GH, I, 24; Gervase, I, 234).

  117.M. T. Flanagan, ‘Strongbow, Henry II and Anglo-Norman Intervention in Ireland’, War and Government in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), 62–77; idem, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1989); and J. Gillingham, ‘The English Invasion of Ireland’, Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660, ed. B. Bradshaw, A. Hadfield and W. Maley (Cambridge, 1993), 24–42, and reprinted in Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century, 145–60.

  118.GH, I, 24.

  119.Expugnatio, 92–3.

  120.M. T. Flanagan, ‘Household Favourites: Angevin Royal Agents in Ireland under Henry II and John’, Seanchas. Studies in Early and Medieval Irish History and Literature in Honour of Francis J. Byrne, ed. A. R. Smith (Dublin, 2005), 357–80. Together with Hugh de Lacy, FitzAldelin negotiated with Ruaidri, king of Connacht, while King Henry was at Dublin receiving the submission of other Irish chiefs (Expugnatio, 94–5 and notes 156, 157). On Henry’s departure from Ireland, he was given custody of Wexford (Expugnatio, 105, 169, 336, n. 329; Howden, II, 134).

  121.GH, I, 24, n. 2, an event noticed only by the B text of the Gesta; Eyton, 158–9.

  122.Expugnatio, 90–7.

  123.Torigni, 252.

  124.M. T. Flanagan, ‘Henry II, the Council of Cashel and the Irish Bishops’, Peritia, 10 (1996), 184–211.

  125.GH, I, 28.

  126.Diceto, I, 350.

  127.Provisions, as well as silks and rich furs – perhaps intended for diplomatic gifts to Irish chiefs – were sent to Henry II in Ireland by the writ of the Young King (PR 18 Henry II, 21, 79, 84, 86, 87; Eyton, 163).

  128.In his charters, he is typically styled ‘Henricus rex Anglorum, dux Normannorum, et comes Andegaviae Regis Henrici filius’ (see, for example, Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 23).

  129.Smith, ‘Acta’, 322–3, no. 23, and printed in Recueil, Introduction, 254. As Eyton, 159, n. 2, noted, however, Reginald and Hugh also accompany Henry II to Ireland, which may suggest a date in late July or August 1171, or after Henry II’s own return to Normandy in May 1172.

  130.Recueil, I, no. 305.

  131.HWM, ll. 1950–74.

  132.A hint that this may have been so is expenditure on a number of helmets for the Young King’s use, perhaps intended to equip him and his mesnie (PR 18 Henry II, 46).

  133.Lamberti Ardensis historia comitum Ghisnensium (History of the Counts of Guines), ed. J. Heller, MGH, Scriptores, XXIV (1879), c. 90; trans. L. Shopkow, Lambert of Ardres, The History of the Counts of Guisnes and Lords of Ardres (Philadelphia, Pa., 2007), 123.

  134.Eyton, 166; PR 18 Henry II, 84. Considerable work was being undertaken in these years on the castle, both on its walls and on the royal accommodation within (History of the King’s Works, II, 855–7).

  135.Eyton, 166–7; PR 18 Henry II, 84, 33.

  136.Expugnatio, 96–7; Howden, II, 32, 253. For the wider context of such festivals, and their prominence in the 1170s and 1180s, see L. Patterson, ‘Great Court Festivals in Southern France and Catalonia in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Medium Aevum, 51 (1982), 213–21, who at 217, compares this and Henry II’s great court feast of 1182 with the contemporary lavish festivals visible in both southern France and Germany.

  137.History of the Counts of Guines, c. 87; trans. Shopkow, 120, recounting that a feast was given in honour of William, archbishop of Rheims, who was en route to visit Becket’s shrine at Canterbury.

  138.Torigni, 253; Appleby, Henry II, 188. For William de St John, Torigni, ed. Delisle, II, 31, n. 2.

  139.HGM, note to l. 1960; M. Jones, ‘Geoffrey, duke of Brittany (1158–1186)’, ODNB.

  140.Torigni, 249–50.

  141.Diceto, I, 350; Chronicon Turonense magnum, 138; and for the lordship of St Maure, Boussard, Le Comté d’Anjou, 50, n. 5, 78, 80.

  142.Expugnatio, 220–1.

  143.Torigni, 251.

  144.Diceto, I, 350.

  145.Diceto, I, 351; GH, I, 30. Howden’s chronology of events, however, is very confused; he has Henry II arrive in Normandy on 25 May, by which time he had in fact met with the legates several times and been absolved; and he wrongly places Henry’s settlement with the legates at Avranches on 27 September, on the eve of a great ecclesiastical council (A. Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium: The Official Record of Henry II’s Reconciliation at Avranches, 21 May 1172’, EHR, 115 (2000), 643–58, at 649).

  146.MTB, VII, 518; Appleby, Henry II, 192.

  147.Expugnatio, 104–5.

  148.Though Gerald was very well informed about the expedition and its immediate aftermath, he was also writing with full hindsight of the rebellion of 1173–74 and, indeed, of Henry’s future problems with his sons until his death, reflected in a number of self-fulfilling prophecies (for example Expugnatio, 108–13).

  149.The king’s agents, however, met considerable resistance from the lay
magnates, while the ecclesiastics refused to pay anything on new enfeoffments made after 1135 (J. H. Ramsay, The Angevin Empire, or the Three Reigns of Henry II, Richard I and John (1154–1216), 2 vols, London, 1903, I, 111–13).

  150.R. A. Brown, ‘Royal Castle-Building in England, 1154–1216’, EHR, 70 (1955), 353–98, reprinted in R. A., Brown, Castles, Conquest and Charters (Woodbridge, 1989), at 46; J. Beeler, Warfare in England, 1066–1189 (Ithaca, NY, 1966), 167.

  151.GH, I, 35 and n. 2. Howden records these events as his last entry for 1172, but when in the year these charges were made is unknown. In 1166, Adam’s barony comprised some 23 knights’ fees in England; E. Cownie, ‘Adam de Port (fl. 1161–1174)’, ODNB; J. H. Round, ‘The Families of St John and of Port’, The Genealogist, new series, 16 (1899–1900), 1–13.

  152.JF, ll. 1334, 1354, 1840–47; RRS, II, 22, n. 19a. After refusing to appear at court, Adam had fled to Scotland. In 1180, he proffered 1,000 marks to gain his lands and the inheritance of his second wife, Matilda d’Orval, to remit the king’s anger and for Henry II to accept his homage (PR 26 Henry II, 135; GH, I, 35, n. 2).

  153.MTB, VII, no. 771. For the so-called ‘Compromise of Avranches’, Foreville, L’Eglise et la royauté, 330–67; Warren, Henry II, 532–4.

  154.MTB, VII, nos 774, 771. As Henry was a major benefactor to Savigny, the venue seems to have been mutually agreed upon as a fitting place for the king’s public reconciliation; F. R. Swietek, ‘King Henry II and Savigny’, Cîteaux, 38 (1987), 14–23.

  155.Recueil, Introduction, 256–7; Torigni, ed. Deslisle, II, 303–6.

  156.MTB, VII, no. 771; Councils and Synods, I, ii, 942–4; Foreville, L’Eglise et la royauté, 335ff.

  157.MTB, VII, no. 771.

  158.Ibid., nos 771, 774. The version of Henry’s purgation in the Lambeth Anonymous has Henry swear that ‘he had been no less alarmed by his [Becket’s] unexpected death than if it had been his own son’ (MTB, IV, 173–4; Staunton, Lives, 216).

  159.Duggan, ‘Diplomacy, Status and Conscience’, 265–90.

  160.A. Forey, ‘Henry II’s Crusading Penances for Becket’s Murder’, Crusades, 7 (2008), 153–64.

  161.MTB, VII, no. 771; Diceto, I, 352.

  162.MTB, VII, no. 771: EHD, II, no. 156.

  163.MTB, VII, no. 771. For the formal agreement, Ne in dubium, recording the terms of Henry’s oath, penance and absolution, sealed by the king and the legates on 21 May, MTB, VII, no. 772; Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 643–58. The full oath is also given by Gervase, I, 238–9.

  164.MTB, VII, no. 772; GH, I, 33; Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 650, noting the corrected reading supplied from the letters of Herbert of Bosham (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 123, f. 59r–v); ‘juravit et filius vester, excepto eo quod personam vestram contingebat’. A version of the oath at Caen was included in the Life of Alexander III by Boso (Liber pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, 3 vols (2nd edn, Paris, 1955–1957), II, 425; Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 566–67).

  165.MTB, VII, no. 771: EHD, II, no. 156; Diceto, I, 352; MTB, II, no. 772, 518; Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 651, and 653 for the subsequent papal bull ratifying the Avranches agreement, which reminded Henry II that ‘your eldest son who was crowned as king also swore to remove the new customs’.

  166.MTB, VII, no. 772; Duggan, ‘Ne in dubium’, 658. A later interpolation into the Vita Alexandrini, probably written after King John’s quarrel with Innocent III, makes Henry II and the Young King receive back and hold their kingdom from the pope (Foreville, L’Église et la royauté, 342–56; Councils and Synods, I, ii, 950 and n. 2).

  167.Torigni, 254; GH, I, 31; Diceto, I, 352; Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 178; PR 19 Henry II, 51.

  168.‘Upon entering into this pact of peace,’ wrote Gerald of Wales, ‘the malicious plotting of his sons and their accomplices, plotting so monstrous in its conception and so furtive, fell into abeyance until the following year’ (Expugnatio, 108–9).

  169.GH, I, 31, noted of Margaret that Rotrou ‘unxit in reginam et consecravit et coronavit’; the Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 174, records that Margaret was anointed ‘juxta morem patriae’; Diceto, I, 35 misdating the coronation to 21 August. For the coronation of the queen, Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 41–2; J. L. Nelson, ‘Early Medieval Rites of Queen-making and the Shaping of Medieval Queenship’, in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), 301–15; and L. Gathagan, ‘The Trappings of Power: The Coronation of Matilda of Flanders’, Haskins Society Journal, 13 (2000), 21–39.

  170.PR 19 Henry II, 152, 184, the latter recording the sum of £42 12s. 6d. ‘for the purchase of robes for the king, the son of the king, for the queen his mother, and for the queen his wife’; and PR 18 Henry II, 144, for the swords.

  171.In 1174, an Exchequer clerk could refer to her as ‘Regina Juniora’ (PR 20 Henry II, 21). In the only extant charter issued by Margaret, her agreement with Henry II in 1186 concerning her dower, she styles herself ‘Dei gratia regina Anglorum, soror Philippi regis Francie’ (Recueil, I, no. 660; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 1755). Howden refers in 1183 to Margaret ‘quae regina Angliae existerat’ (GH, I, 306). Her seal is recorded as having depicted a queen with a sceptre in one hand and a bird on the other (Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 1755). For the wider context, B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Women, Seals and Power in Medieval France, 1150–1350’, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Erhler and M. Kowalaski (Athens, Ga, 1988), 61–82.

  172.‘Henricus III coronam portavit apud Wintoniam’ (Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 174). As K. Leyser, ‘Ritual, Ceremony and Gesture: Ottonian Germany’, in K. Leyser, In Communications and Power in Medieval Europe. The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1994), 189–213, at 190, notes, ‘a crown-wearing was only a ceremony which solemnly presented this charismatic persona to his followers and fideles’.

  173.For Richard’s crown-wearing in 1194, likewise held at Winchester, and similar confirmatory or ‘strengthening coronations’ (Befestigungskrönung) as a response to damaged honour and status see K. Görich, ‘Verletzte Ehre. König Richard der Löwenhertz als gefangener Kaiser Heinrichs VI’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 123 (2003), 65–91, at 89–91; and J. Gillingham, ‘Coeur de Lion in Captivity’, Quaestiones medii aevi novae, 18 (2013), 59–83, at 73–5. John’s magnificent crown-wearing at Christmas 1204, following Philip’s invasion of Normandy and the loss of the Angevin heartlands, may well have a served a similar function (Church, King John, 129–31).

  174.Predictably, however, the Canterbury monks, jealous of all their prerogatives, regarded the second coronation as another affront to Canterbury’s rights, as it was performed by an archbishop from another kingdom (Gervase, I, 237–8).

  175.Diceto, I, 352–3; Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 175.

  176.GH, I, 31.

  177.Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 176.

  178.On his return to Canterbury, Becket had intended to depose Odo. His popularity with the chapter, however, is shown by the fact that in 1184 the monks again put him forward as their candidate for the archbishopric (Barlow, Becket, 248, 271).

  179.Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 178. The more sceptical Gervase of Canterbury stressed the hostile agency of Henry’s tutores in controlling the ‘election’, referring to them as ‘more his masters than his ministers (magistros magis quam ministros)’ (Gervase, I, 239–40).

  180.Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 179–80.

  181.Ibid., 178; RHF, XVI, 644; Councils and Synods, I, 958, n. 2.

  182.For the remarkable growth of the cult, Barlow, Becket, 264–70; and G. Oppitz-Trotman, ‘Penance, Mercy and Saintly Authority in the Miracles of St Thomas Becket’, Studies in Church History, 47 (2011), 136–47.

  183.Barlow, Becket, 249–50. This was the form of the shrine between 1171 and 1220, and is depicted in a thirteenth-century stained-glass roundel from the south aisle of the Trinity chapel in Canterbury cathedral (Barlow, Becket, pl. 36).

  184.Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 178–9.<
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  185.Ibid., 179. It may have been at this time that young Henry also confirmed some grants made by Thomas, including that of the chapel of Penshurst to William, a poor curate of Chiddingstone, who was reported to have given Becket a number of relics shortly before the archbishop’s martyrdom, on the insistence of none other than St Laurence (FitzStephen, 124–5, 131).

  186.Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 179.

  Chapter 7: ‘A King Without a Kingdom’

  1.JF, ll. 17–20, ‘Après icest curunement, e après caste baillie,/Surportastes a vostre fiz auques de seignurie,/Tolistes lui ses voluntés, n’en pot aver baillie./La crut guerre senz amur: Damnesdeus la maladie!’

  2.GH, I, 34, ‘multum tamen invitus’; Gervase, I, 242. Some time between August and October 1172, the Young King commanded the monks of Ely to send six representatives to his father the king in Normandy in order to elect the new bishop of Ely, a position intended for Geoffrey Ridel (Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 16; EEA, Ely, 32 (E), 132–3 (F), and nos 97 and 130–3; and for the text of the writ, The Memoranda Roll for the Michaelmas Term of the First Year of the Reign of King John (1199–1200), ed. H. G. Richardson (Pipe Roll Society, 59, new series xxi, 1943), lxx).

  3.Smith, ‘Acta’, 298.

  4.GH, I, 34.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Walter Map noted that while he was ‘a man of such kindliness and simple mindedness (tam simplicis mansuetudinis), showing himself affable to any poor man, to his own or to strangers, that he might have been thought imbecile, he was the strictest of judges … stiff to the proud and to the meek not unfair’ (Map, 442–3).

  7.To Ralph Niger, for example, he was ‘by nature most mild, the father of clerics and a lover of peace, a zealot for justice, the model of liberality, the protector of the church, a consoler of the poor, a raiser up of the oppressed – and a drinker of wine’ (Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 166).

  8.GH, I, 34.

  9.Torigni, 250; GH, I, 35.

  10.GH, I, 35.

  11.Diceto, I, 353.

  12.F. L. Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca, NY, 2001), 269.

  13.Torigni, 250, 255; C. W. Previté Orton, The Early History of the House of Savoy (1000–1233) (Cambridge, 1912), 337–8, 339–41 for the proposals, and for the rule of Humbert III, 316–52. Alice’s mother was Clementia of Zähringen.