Henry the Young King, 1155-1183
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162.In addition to Howden’s summary (GH, I, 59), details of the king’s offers were set out in a letter of Giles, bishop of Evreux, to Pope Alexander reporting on the unsuccessful peace negations (London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 96, f. 1r). I am most grateful to Nicholas Vincent for generously providing the text of this and the shorter summary of the proceedings (ibid., f. 1v), in advance of their publication by him in a forthcoming article in EHR. This notes that the moiety of demesne revenues were to be ‘in burgis et maneriis atque nemoribus’, but excluding any sums already granted in alms or by existing charters (ibid., f. 1r).
163.London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 96, f. 1r.
164.Ibid. Howden records different terms, namely half the revenues of Normandy, all the revenue of the lands that Count Geoffrey had held, and three castles in Normandy (GH, I, 59) and in his Chronica, II, 53, adds the offer of one castle in Anjou, Maine and Touraine respectively. It is possible that this latter clause, clearly echoing the grant to John, was an additional demand made by the Young King in the negotiations.
165.Bishop Giles regarded it as ‘paterne mansuetudinis largitas’ (London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 96, f. 1r).
166.GH, I, 59.
167.GH, I, 59.
168.GH, I, 58; London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 96, f. 1r.
169.For example Norgate, Richard the Lionheart, 16, could state that ‘throughout the rebellion of 1173–4 the young king was a mere tool – and a very inefficient one at that – in the hands of Louis’, in contrast to Richard’s independent actions in Aquitaine.
170.London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 96, f. 1r. Giles here quotes Psalm 149: 7–9.
171.Howden, II, 54.
172.GH, I, 60.
173.GH, I, 60; Diceto, I, 377.
174.Diceto, I, 377, notes that the earl’s return to England was also motivated by the fact that the funds he had taken to France were now almost exhausted.
175.GH, I, 60; Diceto, I, 377, ‘tam Normannorum quam Flandrensium, tam equitum quam peditum, plurima comitante caterva’. Hugh III was the son of Hugh II and Albereda de Meulan, the aunt of Earl Robert III of Leicester. Torigni calls him Leicester’s consobrinus, or maternal cousin (Torigni, ed. Delisle, II, 45, n. 2; Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 16–17; Power, The Norman Frontier, 260–1).
176.Diceto, I, 377.
177.VCH, Suffolk, ii, 166.
178.GH, I, 60; Diceto, I, 377.
179.For Bungay, guarding a strategic crossing of the river Waveney, see H. Braun, ‘Some Notes on Bungay Castle’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xxii (1947) 109–19. Ironically, Bungay may have originally been conceived, together with Walton and the royal castle of Orford, as a defence against threatened invasion from France or Boulogne, and was begun by Hugh in 1165 with royal consent. The large fine of £1,000 paid by Bigod may have been for licence to do so, but once he had paid the initial instalments the Exchequer noted he was not to be summoned to pay more of the remaining 500 marks debt unless the king ordered it (Wareham, ‘Motives and Politics’, 239–40, idem, ‘Hugh (I) Bigod’, ODNB).
180.Beeler, Warfare in England, 174. If Bungay was indeed begun with royal licence, the view that the royal castle of Orford, constructed between 1165 and 1168, was part of an arms race against Earl Hugh’s own castle-building must be substantially qualified (R. A. Brown, ‘Framlingham Castle and Bigod 1154–1216’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Natural History and Archaeology, 25 (1950), 127–48, and reprinted in Castles, Conquest and Charters, 187–208. Nevertheless, it is surely indicative of Orford’s strength that there is no record of the rebels making any attempt to attack it. This crisis, or the earlier invasion scares in the 1160s, may well be the context for the massively reinforced earthwork defences at Castle Rising in Norfolk, then held by the royalist earl of Arundel, William d’Albini.
181.GH, I, 60.
182.Diceto, I, 377, notes that Robert quickly sent his fleet back to Flanders, probably to facilitate the sending of further troops as much as to discourage any premature departure by the Flemish troops.
183.Diceto, I, 377. The garrison comprised four knights, all from local Suffolk families, two mounted serjeants and twenty infantry (The Victoria History of the County of Suffolk, II, ed. W. Page (London, 1907), 166). The significance of Walton to the king is indicated by the fact that the sum of £96 12s. 8d. spent in the fiscal year 1158–59 on maintaining a garrison there was the highest sum recorded for such wages since the beginning of the Pipe Rolls for the reign (PR 5 Henry II, 9; PR 6 Henry II, 2; Beeler, Warfare in England, 165). Walton, however, was destroyed by Henry after the war.
184.JF, ll. 839–80.
185.Hugh had earlier enjoyed substantial customs from Dunwich, while the honour of Eye included the commendation of many of its burgesses (Wareham, ‘Motives and Politics’, 241). Bigod had been forced to surrender Ipswich castle to Stephen in 1153.
186.Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, I, 364; PR 21 Henry II, 126, which also records works strengthening the castle of Eye; VCH, Suffolk, ii, 166.
187.Beeler, Warfare in England, 176.
188.The garrison of thirty knights was ransomed, and the castle fired (Diceto, I, 377; GH, I, 61; WN, 178–9; Florentii Wigorniensis monachi chronicon ex chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols, London, 1848–1849, II, 153). For the castle, E. Martin, ‘Haughley Castle’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology ad History, 42 (2012), 543–9. I am indebted to David Sherlock for this reference.
189.For this three-part conductus, which must have been composed between Thomas’ canonization in February 1173 and Leicester’s capture at Fornham on 17 October, see S. D. Stevens, Music in Honour of St Thomas (Sevenoaks, 1975), 10–11; A. Duggan, ‘The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Thirteenth Century’, St Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford. Essays in His Honour, ed. M. Jancey (Hereford, 1982), 32 and n. 73. It is recorded by Gothic Voices, Music for the Lionhearted King (Hyperion, 1989), directed by Christopher Page, from whose programme notes, 6–7 (no. 2), the translation is taken.
190.GH, I, 61; R. J. Eaglen, The Abbey and Mint of Bury St Edmunds to 1279 (British Numismatic Society Special Publication, no. 5; London, Spink, 2006), 110–11. Bury had no castle, but the town was well fortified with a wall and gates, built, probably in response to the unrest of Stephen’s reign, by Henry the Sacrist during the rule of Abbot Anselm (1121–48) (Gesta Sacristarum, in Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, II, 290); and for a map of the medieval town, M. D. Lobel, The Borough of Bury St Edmunds (Oxford, 1935).
191.Diceto, I, 377. He may well have been forced to move west, as suggested by Barber, Henry Plantagenet, 177, before he could be reinforced by contingents from other dissident lords, but these forces would have had to run the gauntlet of the royalist castles, and they ran the risk of being defeated in detail.
192.GH, I, 61.
193.GH, I, 61; Howden, II, 54; Diceto, I, 376; JF, ll. 766–829.
194.GH, I, 61; JF, ll. 1012–15, who also mentions the presence of Hugh de Cressy; The Song of Dermot and the Earl, ed. G. H. Orpen (Oxford, 1892), ll. 2946–79. For Robert FitzBernard, who had been given charge of Wexford and Waterford by Henry II in 1172 see Expugnatio, 94–5 and n. 155, 318 and n. 193; G. H. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1333, 4 vols (Oxford, 1911–1920), I, 256, 263, 281, 327; and JF, ll. 1051–2, and ll. 1554–6, where he and his brother Thomas are mentioned as loyal supporters of Henry II.
195.GH, I, 61; JF, ll. 1008–13.
196.JF, ll. 1029–31.
197.Diceto, I, 377.
198.Diceto, I, 377.
199.The Vita et passio cum miraculis Sancti Edmundi believed the earl intended to seize Bury, but this is unlikely, given its defences and the strong royalist presence there (Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, I, 364–5).
200.Diceto, I, 378; GH, I, 61–2, which has the date as 16 October and notes that the earl was hoping to cross ‘a certain marsh, not far from the church of St Genevieve’ without impediment; Beeler, Warfare in England, 177–8.
202.The chroniclers were, however, eager to exaggerate the extent of the carnage, with Howden giving the impossibly inflated figure of 10,000 slain (GH, I, 62). For a tantalizing description of the discovery of what is taken to be a mass grave of the fallen Flemings, J. G. Rokewood, Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda (Camden Society, London, 1840), 105–6.
203.JF, ll. 1032–9; Diceto, I, 378; Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, I, 365.
204.Norgate, Angevin Kings, II, 150.
205.Diceto, I, 378, who names Walter de Wahelle among the captives. For Petronilla’s Amazonian context, J. A. Truax, ‘Anglo-Norman Woman at War: Valiant Soldiers, Prudent Strategists or Charismatic Leaders?’, The Circle of War in the Middle Ages, ed. D. J. Kagay and L. J. Villalon (Woodbridge, 1999), 111–26.
206.GH, I, 62; Melrose, 40.
207.Annales Cestrienses, 24–5. The chronicler Jocelin of Brakelond noted that his chronicle begins ‘from the year in which the Flemings were taken prisoner outside the town, that being the year in which I assumed the religious habit’ (Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. H. E. Butler, London, 1949, 1).
208.See, for example, Gervase, I, 110–11. To the chronicler of Bury St Edmunds, they were ‘viros bellatores, praedatores, rapaces et maleficos’ (Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, I, 364). For praise of Henry II’s expulsion of the Flemings in 1155, Torigni, 183; Gervase, I, 161; FitzStephen, 18–19.
209.JF, ll. 994–9, 1054–61; and for a discussion of Fantosme’s depiction of the Flemings, Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 234–41.
210.JF, ll. 1000–1, ‘de Deu la grant venjance/Qu’il fist descendre sur Flamens e sur la gent de France’. ‘Blessed be God who has destroyed the wicked’, noted the Melrose chronicle, ‘so that they should not destroy the good!’ (Melrose, 40).
211.Torigni, 261. Men remembered too how the saint had struck down Eustace, son of King Stephen, for his depredations against the abbey’s lands only twenty years before (Torigni, 176; Gervase, I, 155).
212.GH, I, 62; and cf. JF ll. 1086–91.
213.Diceto, I, 378.
214.Even though not actively hostile, so large a force caused considerable damage: the sheriff of Kent and Surrey recorded a default of 40 shillings because of the Flemings’ depredations and their seizure of grain (PR 20 Henry II, 2).
215.GH, I, 62 (now La Haye-Descartes, Indre et Loire, arr. Loches); Boussard, Le Comté d’Anjou, 48–9.
216.GH, I, 62, and 47. For Preuilly-sur-Claire (Indre et Loire, arr. Loches), see Boussard, Le Comté d’Anjou, 11–12; idem, Le Gouvernement d’Henri II, 21, 102, 483, 226–7. Peter de Montrabei subsequently appears as one of Henry II’s commissioners for the inquiry in 1177 into the respective rights of Henry and Louis in the Auvergne (Recueil, II, 61, no. 506).
217.GH, I, 62–3. No mention is made of Henry II attacking Saint Maure, the seat of Hugh, one of the leading conspirators in the revolt, and it may well have been an early target once the Young King’s defection had become clear. For Saint Maure, Boussard, Le Comté d’Anjou, 49–51.
218.GH, I, 63.
219.A. Richard, Histoire des comtes de Poitou, 778–1204, 2 vols (Paris, 1903) II, 169–73; Boussard, Le Gouvernement d’Henri II, 483.
220.Gervase, I, 242; WN, I, 170–1, Torigni, 255–6, Diceto, I, 355, GH, I, 42.
221.Gervase, I, 242–3.
222.Expugnatio, 120–3; Lucan, Bellum civile, I: 1.
223.To Howden, the attack on Henry was treason (proditio), and he describes the rebels as ‘the wicked authors of treason (nefandae proditionis auctores)’ (GH, I, 42, 47).
224.Melrose, 40.
225.Peter of Blois, Epistolae, no. 33 (PL, CCVII, cols 109–10).
226.GH, I, 52–3.
227.GH, I, 45, 47, ‘nefanda proditorum rabies’. Newburgh, who drew much from Howden, similarly speaks of ‘the unfilial madness (infilialis vesania) of the son against his father’ (WN, I, 180). For a discussion of such imagery, D. Power, ‘“La Rage méchante des traiîtres prit feu”. Le discours sur la révolte sous les rois Plantagenêts (1144–1224)’, La Trahison au Moyen ge: de la monstruosité au crime politique (Ve–XVe siècles), ed. M. Billoré and M. Soria (Rennes, 2009), 53–65.
228.Diceto, I, 355–66.
229.Diceto, I, 355.
230.Thus, for example, The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, 276–7, noted, ‘the Lord’s martyr, or rather the Lord, for His martyr, seemed to seek vengeance for the innocent blood. For the king, the king’s son, rebelled against his father, bent on expelling him from the throne, and many of the magnates sided with him, and helped him’.
231.On these, see J. Crick, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophecy and History’, JMH, 18 (1992), 357–71; C. Daniel, ‘The Merlin Prophecies: A Propaganda Tool of the XII and XIII Centuries’, Convaincre et persuader: communication et propagande au XII et XIIIe siècles, ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2007), 211–34; and G. Ashe, ‘The Prophecies of Merlin: Their Originality and Importance’, Magistra Doctissima. Essays in Honour of Bonnie Wheeler, ed. D. Armstrong, A. W. Armstrong and H. Chickering (Kalamazoo, Mich., 2013), 71–9.
232.Guernes, ll. 6128–6130; Garnier’s Becket, 163. As early as 1155, the potential political sensitivity of the prophecies of Merlin, not least in regard to Welsh resistance to Anglo-Norman domination, had caused the poet Wace to omit them from his Roman de Rou (J. Blacker, ‘Where Wace Feared to Tread: Latin Commentaries on Merlin’s Prophecies in the Reign of Henry II’, Arthuriana, 6 (1996), 36–52).
233.GH, I, 42–3.
234.Expugnatio, 124–5. The concluding phrase of this passage, that the father would suffer ‘until Scotland bewails the penitence of a pilgrim’, was read by Gerald as foretelling the capture of William the Lion in 1174 on the very day Henry II had completed a public act of penance at Becket’s shrine. For Gerald’s interest in the prophecies and his belief in the existence of a second Merlin, Merlin Ambrosius, Expugnatio, 313, n. 161; and R. Bartlett, ‘Political Prophecy in Gerald of Wales’, Culture politique des Plantagenêt (1154–1224), ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2003), 303–11.
235.GH, I, 63–4; Torigni, 262, has Henry II spend Christmas at Bur-le-Roi.
236.Diceto, I, 373, 374; JF, ll. 115–18; Expugnatio, 120–1; Eyton, 173; and see S. Isaac, ‘Cowardice and Fear Management: The 1173–74 Conflict as a Case Study’, Journal of Medieval Military History, 4 (2006), 50–64.
237.Diceto, I, 374.
Chapter 9: Invasion
1.Diceto, I, 379.
2.GH, I, 45. The counts of Perche had been increasingly drawn into the orbit of Blois during the 1150s and 1160s; see K. Thompson, Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of the Perche, c. 1000–1226 (Woodbridge, 2002), 91–6. Rotrou aimed to recover the castles of Moulins and Bonsmoulins, which Henry had taken in 1158 at the time he had confirmed Bellême to Rotrou, and he had joined the war against Henry II in 1167–68 (Roger of Wendover, The Flowers of History, ed. H. G. Hewlett, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 1886–1889, I. 47; Torigni, 239; Power, The Norman Frontier, 125).
3.Warren, Henry II, 132.
4.Torigni, 161–2: RHF, XV, 461, 520–2: M. Chibnall, ‘Normandy’, The Anarchy of Stephen’s Reign, ed. E. King (Oxford, 1994), 93–115, at 109–10; L. Grant, ‘Suger and the Anglo-Norman World’, ANS, 19 (1997), 51–68, at 63–4; Power, The Norman Frontier, 239, 360–1, 395. Earlier, in 1136, Geoffrey himself had struck at Lisieux in his first major campaign of invasion, and had only been prevented from a major success by being wounded and because his army was decimated by dysentry.
5.Torigni, 242–3; Thompson, Power and Border Lordship, 96.
6
.Torigni, 227; Thompson, Power and Border Lordship, 169; Power, The Norman Frontier, 350–1.
7.GH, I, 45 and n. 14, noting that he also held the castle of ‘Muscecuard’; Power, The Norman Frontier, 351.
8.F. Neveux, ‘La Ville de Sées du haut Moyen ge à l’époque ducale’, ANS, 17 (1994), 2145–63; idem, ‘L’Urbanisme au Moyen ge dans quelques villes de Normandie’, L’Architecture normande au Moyen ge, ed. M. Baylé (Caen, 1997), I, 271–87, at 274, with a plan of later medieval Sées at 280.
9.Diecto, I, 379.
10.Diceto, I, 379, noted that the townsmen’s success was the more remarkable because they were ‘without a prince, even without a duke’ to lead them. Henry II, however, must have looked to its defences and garrison, appreciating Sées’ strategic significance as much as his son did.
11.Torigni, 263; Sassier, Louis VII, 455.
12.Torigni, 263; Diceto, I, 381.
13.Torigni, 263.
14.GH, I, 64, where Howden notes that the money was raised by a levy on their lands.
15.The castle’s strategic importance had been increased by the fact that the defensive role of Norham, the other great border fortress on the lower reaches of the Tweed, as well as that of Durham, had been neutralized by Bishop Hugh of Durham’s complicity with the Scots. Hugh’s neutrality is advocated by G. V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956), 36–43, but contemporaries, including Henry II, clearly saw him as a rebel.
16.JF, ll. 1143–50, 1153–4. Jordan strongly implies that they were led by a rebel lord, whom he knew well, but refrained from naming ‘because his reputation suffered there’.
17.JF, ll. 1151–62.
18.JF, ll. 1163–84.
19.JF, ll. 1188–90; H. Van Werke, Een Vlaamse Graaf van Europees formaat: Filips van de Elzas (Haarlem, 1976), 20–5, who refers to an invasion of England from Scotland by one ‘Jordan the Fleming’; Varenbergh, Relations diplomatiques, 81–2.
20.JF, ll. 1201–17, 1242–5.
21.JF, ll. 1279–86.
22.JF, ll. 1287–306.