Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  199.In addition to William, holding Meols in the Wirral, these included Richard de Lovetot and Richard de Combray (Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, c. 1071–1237, ed. G. Barraclough (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, cxxvi, 1988), nos 171, 126, 132); Thacker, ‘The Earls and their Earldom’, 10, n. 11.

  200.GH, I, 46; JF, ll. 105–8, ‘The chamberlain of Tankarville is his sworn enemy, he brings a hundred knights in armour in his train, and they all threaten to bring him [Henry II] so low that they will not leave him as much land as would suffice to buy a lady’s saddle-horse’.

  201.Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 87. In regard to the 1172 inquest, however, one should equally note the caveat of Power, ‘Henry, Duke of the Normans’, 87, that ‘the relationship between a baron’s assessed number of knights … and his power in reality, is almost impossible to gauge’. More minor figures, such as William de Falaise and Landric de Orbec, appear in Howden’s list of those who first defected with young Henry (GH, I, 46).

  202.GH, I, 48.

  203.After initial support for King Stephen, Bigod, who enjoyed virtually autonomous rule of eastern Suffolk during the civil war, remained ‘an inveterate enemy of the king’s cause’ and was rewarded by Henry II with a confirmation of the earldom of Norfolk in 1154 (Gesta Stephani, 223; A. Wareham, ‘The Motives and Politics of the Bigod Family, c.1066–1177’, ANS, 17, 1994, 223–42).

  204.Wareham, ‘Motives and Politics’, 223 and n. 3. Hugh also held considerable lands in Normandy (Power, The Norman Frontier, 91 and n. 4). Coggeshall, 19, calls him ‘vir magnificus’.

  205.W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England (London, 1987), 120.

  206.GH, I, 51–2. The later B manuscript of the Gesta also contains a fuller list of Henry II’s supporters, including a number of northern English lords such as the Stutevilles, Robert and Adam de Brus, Geoffrey Trussebut, Odinel de Umfraville, William de Vesci, Everard de Ros and Philip and Simon de Kyme (ibid., 51, n. 4).

  207.For the Norman lands of these lords, Power, The Norman Frontier, 91 and notes 3 and 4.

  208.GH, I, 51, n. 4, 106, 166; JF, ll. 1597–600. Howden’s mention (GH, I, 47) of ‘Willemus archiepiscopus’ has been taken to refer to the Englishman William, archbishop of Bordeaux (for example Norgate, Richard, 15–16; and Gillingham, Richard I, 47), but it is far more probable that he was referring to William l’Archevêque, lord of Parthenay. Similarly, it is more likely that the Roger ‘abbas de Turnai’ listed among a group of Norman dissidents (GH, I, 46) was not an ecclesiastic, but from a Norman knightly family named Abbas or Abbé, perhaps from Tournai-sur-Dives near Argentan. Likewise, the Geoffrey and Hamelin ‘abbas’ listed among those rebels captured at Dol in 1173 were not abbots but knights (GH, I, 58). I owe these points to the kindness of Dan Power.

  209.GH, I, 51, n. 4, where Howden claims he had harboured kinsmen who were rebels; J. Peltzer, ‘Henry II and the Norman Bishops’, EHR, 119 (2004), 1202–29, at 1217–18; Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 82. For Arnulf, C. P. Schriber, The Letter Collections of Arnulf of Lisieux (Lampeter, 1997), letter no. 2.17, which may hint at his involvement; and G. Teske, ‘Ein unerkanntes Zeugnis zum Sturz des Bischofs Arnulf von Lisieux?’, Francia, 16 (1989), 185–206. In his Liber Melorum (MTB, III, 548–50), Herbert of Bosham gives a lengthy account of a prophetic dream Thomas had recounted to him, in which Henry II was attacked by a multitude of birds of prey aided by one of the king’s most trusted and intimate courtiers (unus de aulicis regis familiarissimus) before Thomas miraculously came to Henry’s aid. Though Henry II had pressed Herbert to reveal the name of this person, he declined, as the person was now dead and he feared that such a revelation might undeservedly throw the suspicion of treason upon the man’s kinsmen. It seems very likely, however, that he had Arnulf in mind.

  210.RHF, XVI, 643–8.

  211.Diceto, I, 371; Warren, Henry II, 124; Barber, Henry Plantagenet, 169.

  212.The Normans were, indeed, in Maïté Billoré’s words, ‘une noblesse étroitement surveillée et assujettie’ (De gré ou de force, 175); and cf. M. Billoré, ‘Y a-t-il une oppression des Plantagenêts sur l’aristocratie à la veille de 1204?’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 145–61.

  213.Torigni, 179.

  214.Boussard, Le Gouvernement d’Henri II, 421–3; Warren, Henry II, 93 and n. 1. When the seneschal of Normandy, Robert of Neubourg, retired to take the habit at Bec in August 1159, Henry did not replace him, instead taking direct control himself. A new seneschal was only appointed on Henry’s departure for England in early 1163.

  215.Torigni, 209.

  216.Torigni, 211–12; Warren, Henry II, 95, 235–6; Torigni, 227.

  217.Brown, ‘A List of Castles, 1154–1216’, EHR, 74 (1959), 249–80, and reprinted in Brown, Castles, Conquest and Charters, at 91–2, indentifying over thirty such castles.

  218.K. Thompson, ‘Lords, Castellans, Constables and Dowagers: The Rape of Pevensey from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 135 (1997), at 213–14; idem, ‘The Lords of Laigle: Ambition and Insecurity on the Borders of Normandy’, ANS, 18 (1996), at 191–2.

  219.Torigni, 217; Warren, Henry II, 95.

  220.Stubbs, Select Charters, 175–8.

  221.Ibid., 177; EHD, II, no. 48, clause 8.

  222.D. Crook, ‘The Earliest Exchequer Estreat and the Forest Eyres of Henry II and Thomas FitzBernard, 1175–80’, Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society, ed. Vincent, 29–44, at 34–5.

  223.Warren, Henry II, 95–6, 121; Power, ‘Henry, duke of the Normans’, 100–2, 117–19.

  224.Wace, Roman de Rou, ll. 37–42.

  225.Guernes, ll. 6081–7; trans. Short, 173.

  226.De principis, 183–6; J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (Cambridge, 3rd edn, 2015), 85–6.

  227.Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 167–70. For Ralph, see G. B. Flahiff, ‘Ralph Niger: an Introduction to his Life and Works’, Mediaeval Studies, 2 (1940), 104–26.

  228.R. V. Turner, ‘Changing Perceptions of the New Administrative Class in Anglo-Norman and Angevin England: The Curiales and their Conservative Critics’, Journal of British Studies, 29 (1990), 93–117, at 93–5.

  229.Map, 484–5; Warren, Henry II, 214; Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 34.

  230.Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 79–95; idem, ‘Robert [Robert de Beaumont], second earl of Leicester (1104–1168)’, ODNB.

  231.Gillingham, ‘Problems of Integration’, 105, n. 99.

  232.Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 88.

  233.Vincent, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy towards the Earls?’, 1–13, noting that of twenty-three earldoms existing in 1154, there remained only twelve by 1189.

  234.D. Bates, ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 1997), 89–102; Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 85–7 and Table 3; and Gillingham, ‘Problems of Integration within the Lands Ruled by the Norman and Angevin Kings of England’, 117–18. The exception was Arnulf of Lisieux, who attests more than fifty royal charters, but the extent of his complicity in the rebellion is uncertain.

  235.Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 86, ‘une sombre séparation d’avec la cour’; idem, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy towards the Earls?’, 13.

  236.E. King, ‘William Peverel (b. c.1090, d. after 1155), baron’, ODNB; GH, I, 45; A. F. Wareham, ‘Hugh (I) Bigod, first earl of Norfolk (d. 1176/7), magnate’, ODNB.

  237.Annales Cestrienses (Chester Annals), ed. R. C. Christie (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, vol. 14, 1886), 24–5; T. F. Tout and T. K. Keefe, ‘Hugh, fifth earl of Chester (1147–1181)’, ODNB; B. E. Harris, ‘The Earldom of Chester, 1070–1301’, A History of the County of Chester, II, ed. B. E. Harris (Oxford, 1979), 1–6; J. W. Alexander, ‘New Evidence on the Palatinate of Chester’, EHR, 85 (1970), 717–27; and idem, ‘The Alleged Palatinates of Norman England’, Speculum, 56 (1981), 17–27.

 
238.RRAN, III, no. 180.

  239.Thacker, ‘The Earls and their Earldom’, 11; P. Dalton, ‘Aiming at the Impossible: Ranulf II Earl of Chester and Lincolnshire in the Reign of King Stephen’, The Earldom of Chester and its Charters, ed. A. T. Thacker (Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 71, 1991), 109–34.

  240.A. T. Thacker, ‘The Cult of King Harold at Chester’, The Middle Ages in the North West, ed. T. Scott and P. Starkey (Oxford, 1995), 155–76; V. C. H. Cheshire, V, part 1, 26. For the rumour that both Harold and his brother Gyrth had survived Hastings and were living as hermits at Chester until Henry II’s reign, Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 161.

  241.For the influence of the Stutevilles, see H. Docherty, ‘Robert de Vaux and Roger de Stuteville, Sheriffs of Cumberland and Northumberland, 1170–1185’, ANS, 28 (2005), 65–102.

  242.Diceto, I, 374.

  243.Thus, for example, Saher de Quincy ‘the younger’, Geoffrey de Lavardin, son of the count of Vendôme, and Baudry, son of Goel de Baudemont supported the Young King while their fathers took the side of Henry II (Power, The Norman Frontier, 400–1).

  244.GH, I, 56–7, 48.

  Chapter 8: ‘The Cubs of the Roaring Lion Shall Awaken’

  1.JF, ll. 70–76.

  2.Diceto, I, 355; Hallam, Plantagenet Chronicles, 124.

  3.GH, I, 47; Howden, II, 47. Easter fell on 15 April that year. Fantosme, l. 63, says that the French host was summoned in April, but it is more likely that this is when the summons went out for a muster in late June or early July, in readiness for Louis’ investment of Verneuil.

  4.For a useful contextual overview of strategy, see J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (2nd edn, Woodbridge, 1997), 276–350.

  5.Neveux, La Normandie, 528–30.

  6.B. Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen capétien? Développements comparés de Rouen et Paris sous les règnes de Henri II et Philippe Auguste’, ANS, 16 (1993), 117–36, at 123; Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 27; Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 78–9, including a valuable table of the location of charter issues, which also highlights the significance of Argentan and Caen. Henry’s two-year stay in England from January 1163 to February 1165 was his longest absence from the duchy (ibid., 79–81).

  7.Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery, 193. It was little wonder that by far the longest of all Henry’s stays in the duchy was the period between April 1173 and April 1175 (Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 78, 87).

  8.Warren, Henry II, 124–36, remains the best overview of the war, and has a number of valuable maps. Other accounts include F. Michel, ‘Deux années du règne de Henri II (1173–1174)’, Revue Anglo-Française, 2nd series, 2 (Paris, 1841), 5–44; Norgate, Angevin Kings, II, 135–67; Boussard, Le Gouvernement d’Henri II, 471–88; Beeler, Warfare in England, 166–86, which concentrates only on the warfare within the kingdom; Jones, ‘The Generation Gap of 1173–1174’, 24–40; idem, War of the Generations; Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery, 223–7; J. Hosler, Henry II. A Medieval Soldier at War, 1147–1189 (Leiden, 2007), 195–220.

  9.A. Baume, ‘Le Document et le terrain: la trace du système défensif normand au XIIième siècle’, 1204. La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens, 93–112, at 104.

  10.Power, The Norman Frontier, 4; and A. Lemoine-Descourtieux, La Frontière normande de l’Avre. De la fondation de la Normandie à sa réunion au domaine royal (911–1204) (Mont-Saint-Aignan, 2011).

  11.Torigni, 175. In 1167, Louis had attacked the Vexin while the counts of Flanders, Boulogne and Ponthieu invaded at Eu, though they were repulsed at Drincourt; Torigni, 227; HWM, ll. 805–1106, and for the date, ibid., III, 61–2, note to l. 805.

  12.Wace, Roman de Rou, ll. 59–61.

  13.GH, I, 44.

  14.JF, ll. 51–4.

  15.Diceto, I, 367; Torigni, 175, noting that it had been granted to Robert II de Beaumont by Henry II in 1153. His son Robert III probably held this and other of the Norman lands of Leicester from this date; Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 89, 175–6, 193. For the castlery of Pacy, Power, The Norman Frontier, 28–9, 209 and 259.

  16.Diceto, I, 367. This reverse supposedly prompted King Louis’ lugubrious remark, ‘The elements themselves are fighting for the Normans. When I invaded Normandy last time, a large part of my army died from thirst, and now we can complain of too much water!’ (ibid; Hallam, Plantagenet Chronicles, 124).

  17.Diceto, I, 355.

  18.For Gournay, which owed distinctive services ‘ad marchiam’ to the Norman dukes, see Power, The Norman Frontier, 27.

  19.Diceto, I, 369, says they were taken by guile.

  20.For the lords of Gournay and their allegiances, Power, The Norman Frontier, 355–7. Henry II had punished Hugh II for his support for Stephen and had deprived him of the manor of Wendover in Buckinghamshire in 1156–57 (Recueil, I, no. 325; PR 2, 3, 4 Henry II, 21, 24; Calendar of. Charter Rolls, 6 vols (Public Record Office, 1903–27), II, 34; Diceto, I, 369; Vincent, ‘Les Normands’, 86, n. 37. In England, some of Hugh’s men plundered royal estates in Suffolk, presumably as part of the rebel forces of the earls of Leicester and Norfolk, leading to Henry II’s confiscation of Hugh II’s manor of Houghton Regis (Diceto, I, 369; PR 20 Henry II, 39, 86; PR 21 Henry II, 108, 110; Power, The Norman Frontier, 356).

  21.HGM, III, 30, n. 2, for the identification with Trôo (Loir-et-Cher, cant. Montoire-sur-le Loir); HWM, ll. 2023–40.

  22.HWM, ll. 2023–70.

  23.HWM, ll. 2071–7.

  24.HWM, ll. 2097–103.

  25.HWM, ll. 2079–95.

  26.Keen, Chivalry, 79–80.

  27.Above, 82–4. The event as related by the History is difficult to locate within the known chronology of either the Young King or Henry II’s movements (Eyton, 177; HWM, III, 69, note to line 2025). Henry II is known to have been at Vendôme in late November 1173, but the Young King had seen action well before then at Gournay in May, then again at the siege of Drincourt in June. If he had indeed been knighted in the field, it is more likely to have occurred during these earlier campaigns, not as late as November.

  28.HWM, ll. 2123–43; HGM, III, 31, n. 3.

  29.Orderic, VI, 236–7. It is probable, moreover, that many of these knights would have brought squires, serjeants or other retainers with them, thereby considerably increasing the overall fighting force under the Young King’s command.

  30.A. Luchaire, Études sur les actes de Louis VII (Paris, 1885), 51; HWM, III, 70, note to line 2130. See, however, HWM, III, 70, note to line 2135, suggesting that as there is no known reference to William des Barres (the Elder) in the royal household before the 1180s, the History may be anachronistic here.

  31.HWM, III, 71, note to l. 2153 and l. 2159.

  32.Gervase, I, 245.

  33.Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 11; Gervase, I, 245, who inserts the full text of the Young King’s letter; Councils and Synods, I, 961–3.

  34.Gervase, I, 245, ‘qui ratione regiae unctionis regnum et totius regni curam sucipimus’.

  35.Gervase, I, 245; Letters of Gilbert Foliot, no. 221 (soon after 10 June).

  36.Diceto, I, 368. For discussion of these elections and the councils of late April and June, Councils and Synods, I, no. 167, 956–60; Foreville, L’Église, 373ff.; H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Henry II and the Papacy, 1170–1189’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 16 (1965), 39–53, at 50–3.

  37.Gervase, I, 245.

  38.Melrose, 40.

  39.Gervase, I, 245.

  40.Letters of Gilbert Foliot, nos 223, 224, 225.

  41.Letters of Gilbert Foliot, no. 221. For the lengthy discussions of the appeal at the Curia, Diceto, I, 388.

  42.GH, I, 69. Howden seemingly takes the phrase from the letter of Reginald to Henry II reporting on their mission, ‘nos in curia domini papae duros de regno Francorum, et de terra vestra duriores adversarios invenisse’ (ibid., I, 70).

  43.Howden, II, 58–9. Whether Berter was attached to the Young King’s household is uncertain, but he is best known for the lament he composed, among other ver
ses for the loss of the Holy Land to Saladin in 1187, which Howden included in his Gesta Henrici (GH, II, 27–8).

  44.For Ralph’s hostility to ‘iste Henricus’, Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 92–3, and 95

  45.Printed in RHF, XVI, 643–8, from Paris, BN MS. Lat. 14876, a group of letters attached to a fifteenth-century collection of works by St Bernard from St Victor; and calendared in Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 1. For comment, Councils and Synods, I, ii., 958, n. 2, where it is noted that while ‘not perhaps above suspicion … it seems probable that it is a contemporary broadside’ created within the Young King’s court.

  46.H. Prentout, De l’origine de la formule ‘Dei gratia’ dans les chartes d’Henri II (Caen, 1926), 26–7; Smith, ‘Acta’, 303.

  47.RHF, XVI, 644.

  48.See above.

  49.Namely clauses 3, 7, 8 and 12; Councils and Synods, I, ii, 946–9.

  50.Councils and Synods, I, ii, 958, n. 2. As Arnulf of Lisieux informed the pope, however, the election of Richard of Dover had taken place without any interference by Henry II, and he told Alexander that he should be wary of the Young King’s attempts to exercise such control (Letter Collections of Arnulf, ed. Scriber, no. 2.28).

  51.Recueil, II, no. 460; Warren, Henry II, 536.

  52.Howden, II, 47–8: GH, I, 54, n. 6.

  53.Peter of Blois, Epistolae, nos 33, 154 (PL, CCVII, cols 109–10, 448–9).

  54.Peter of Blois, Epistolae, no. 33 (PL, CCVII, cols 109–10); Schluntz, ‘Archbishop Rotrou’, 125. Peter was a canon of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Rouen, between 1173 and 1181, and as a number of letters in Rotrou’s name exist among his letter collection, he may have acted as secretary to the archbishop. For his reflections on the rebellions of sons, see R. R. Bezzola, La Cour d’Angleterre comme centre littéraire sous les rois Angevins (1154–1199) (Paris, 1963), 134.

  55.Torigni, 258.

  56.GH, I, 47; Diceto, I, 372.

  57.Torigni, 257. One of the greatest barons of Yorkshire, William had during Stephen’s reign been ‘more truly the king, beyond the Humber’, but soon after 1154 Henry II had compelled him to yield much of his autonomy. Despite this, however, the two men appeared to have remained, superficially at least, on reasonable terms (P. Dalton, ‘William le Gros, count of Aumale and earl of York (c. 1110–1179)’, ODNB). For Henry II’s granting of the daughter of Robert, earl of Gloucester, to Simon’s son Amaury in 1170, Torigni, 247.