Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  67.GH, I, 133.

  68.GH, I, 83, 84; Diceto, I, 399, has 8 May.

  69.Diceto, I, 399.

  70.GH, I, 84: Diceto, I, 399. For the council and its canons, GH, I, 84–91; Councils and Synods, II (no. 168), 965–93; and for Richard’s election, Gervase, I, 239–42, 243–5, 247.

  71.Councils and Synods, II, 991; GH, I, 89; C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Aspects of Marriage Law in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Salamanca 1976 (Vatican City, 1980), 333–44, at 337 and n. 9.

  72.Diceto, I, 399–401. Remarkably, these secular proceedings were not recorded by Howden in either the Gesta Henrici or the later Chronica.

  73.Recueil, II, no. 488; Diceto, I, 400–1; trans. in Appleby, Henry II, 234–5.

  74.Appleby, Henry II, 234–5.

  75.That his homage could be regarded as having a negative impact on his regal status is strikingly shown by the marginal signum which accompanies this letter in one manuscript of Ralph’s Ymagines, showing two hands offering up a crown (Lambeth Palace Library MS 8. 90v). I am most grateful to Laura Cleaver for drawing this to my attention.

  76.JF, ll. 17–22.

  77.JF, ll. 931–40.

  78.Recueil, Introduction, 258–9, together with Henry II’s original grant of 1173 x 1174; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 13. The Young King’s charter is witnessed by a number of his own household knights, including William Marshal. This also seems the most likely occasion for the Young King’s witnessing of a charter of Henry II’s to Auger the huntsman, quitclaiming a rent of 26 shillings from the farm of Waltham (The Early Charters of Waltham Abbey, ed. R. Ransford (Woodbridge, 1989), no. 282; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 3138, issued at Westminster, May x November 1175. This is one of the very few extant charters of Henry II to be witnessed by the Young King, who heads the witness list as ‘rex Henricus filius meus’).

  79.Guernes, ll. 6141–55; trans. Short, 175.

  80.Gervase, I, 3–29; P. Draper, ‘William of Sens and the Original Design of the Choir Termination of Canterbury Cathedral, 1175–1179’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 42 (1983), 238–48; P. Kidson, ‘Gervase, Becket and William of Sens’, Speculum, 68 (1993), 969–91; M. F. Hearn, ‘Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Becket’, Art Bulletin, 76 (1994), 19–54.

  81.Gervase, I, 256: Diceto, I, 399.

  82.GH, I, 92, ‘curiam et festum regium’; Brut y Tywysogion (Peniarth), 70. The Gloucester council probably took place in the royal hall and palace just outside the city, which had long been the site of the Christmas crown-wearings of the late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman kings.

  83.Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, 6 vols (London, 1817–1830), IV, 615; Lloyd, A History of Wales, II, 547 and n. 55.

  84.GH, I, 92; Earldom of Gloucester Charters, ed. R. B. Patterson (Oxford, 1973); R. B. Patterson, ‘William, second earl of Gloucester (d. 1183)’, ODNB. Although he was the son of Robert of Gloucester, William’s relations with Henry had gradually soured after 1154, and the earl found himself increasingly an outsider at court.

  85.PR 21 Henry II, 88–9; Lloyd, A History of Wales, II, 543 and n. 33, 546 and n. 51; and for wider context, Gillingham, ‘Henry II, Richard I and the Lord Rhys’, 59–68.

  86.GH, I, 91–3.

  87.Diceto, I, 401; GH, I, 93.

  88.In this context, it is striking that, despite his key role in the suppression of the rebellion in England in 1174, Geoffrey receives no mention in Fantosme’s poem.

  89.Dialogus, 114–15.

  90.Norgate, Angevin Kings, II, 170.

  91.Warren, Henry II, 142–3.

  92.Smail, ‘Latin Syria’, 14–15.

  93.Lloyd, A History of Wales, II, 544.

  94.John of Salisbury, Policraticus, IV: 4. Thus, for example, after his return from crusade in 1192, Philip Augustus ostentatiously ‘never went abroad unless surrounded by an armed guard, contrary to the custom of his ancestors’, informing those who wondered at this novel behaviour that he feared for his life from assassins sent by Richard (WN, I, 365–6).

  95.Map, 452–3.

  96.Suger, Vie de Louis,190, adding that Henry I took to always wearing a sword indoors, and heavily fined his own men if they went out without their own swords; Gesta regum, I, 744–5.

  97.Thus William of Malmesbury (Gesta regum, I, 726–9) records how when leading a force towards Wales in 1114, Henry I had been shot at by an archer – not by a Welshman but, as the king himself had sworn, by one of his own subjects – and had only been saved from the assassin’s arrow by the quality of his hauberk.

  98.GH, I, 93; Howden, II, 78, 79.

  99.Annales de Saint Aubin, 16; trans. Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 37.

  100.Barratt, ‘Finance and Economy’, 250, 254, noting that the county farm payments brought in only £2,400, though widespread expenditure by royal officials set off against income accounted for another £21,000.

  101.GH, I, 104.

  102.V. Moss, ‘The Defence of Normandy, 1193–8’, ANS, 24 (2001), 145–61, at 150–1. By the time of the earliest surviving Norman Exchequer Rolls, those of 1179–80, loss of ducal revenue was still around 4.25 per cent, and doubtless had been considerably higher in the years immediately after the war. The first accounts for the region of Arques and Dieppe, for example, were not rendered until 1179–80, while that for Verneuil, where payment was made not only for extensive repairs to the castle but for the mills ‘burned in the time of war’, still showed a shortfall in revenue (ibid.; Magni rotuli scaccarii Normanniae, I, 66–8, 72, 84).

  103.Diceto, II, 148; Concilia Rothomagensis provinciae, ed. G. Bessin, 2 vols in 1 (Rouen, 1717), II, 30–1; Peter of Blois, Epistolae, no. 28 (misdated 1172), and 33 (PL CCVII, cols 96–8, 109–10); Schluntz, ‘Archbishop Rotrou’, 130–4.

  104.A number of justices had probably already begun a major series of eyres throughout the country to hear both civil and criminal cases: Pleas before the King and his Justices, 1198–1212, ed. D. Stenton, 3 vols (Selden Society, 83, 1966), III, lvi–lvii, where it is suggested that the eyres began before the king’s return to England in May. Ranulf de Glanville and Hugh de Cressy visited fifteen counties, and Thomas Basset and William de Lanvaley another fourteen, in what appears to have been ‘the very first countrywide visitation’ by royal justices (P. Brand, ‘Multis Vigiliis Excogitatam et Inventam: Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 197–222, reprinted in P. Brand, The Making of the Common Law (London, 1992), 79–102, at 82–3 and n. 26).

  105.GH, I, 94. The circumstances of Gilbert’s killing are reconstructed in detail by H. Docherty, ‘The Murder of Gilbert the Forester’, Haskins Society Journal 23 (2011), 155–204.

  106.GH, I, 94, and ibid., 92. It was on this occasion that the Young King witnessed a confirmation by his father of lands and rights to St Mary’s cathedral priory, Carlisle (Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, 6 vols (London, 1817–1830), VI, 144; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 3039).

  107.GH, I, 94. This action was indignantly condemned by J. H. Round ‘as a gross breach of faith’ (PR 22 Henry II, xiii).

  108.On the forest law, Dialogus, 90–3; Warren, Henry II, 390–5.

  109.GH, I, 97; and for a map of the royal forests, Warren, Henry II, 392. Fines were also levied from the citizens of York (PR 21 Henry II, 182–3).

  110.GH, I, 92, 94; Howden, II, 79; Diceto, I, 402; Warren, Henry II, 391; Crook, ‘The Earliest Exchequer Estreat’, 32–4.

  111.PR 22 Henry II, xxiv. Fines of £100 or 100 marks, however, were not uncommon, and even lesser sums appear considerably heavier than average forest amercements. In Buckinghamshire, for example, four men were amerced £100 and two 100 marks, while in Oxfordshire three were fined 200 marks, and another four £100 each (PR 22 Henry II, xxiv, 22–4, 30–3).

  112.GH, I, 94; PR 22 Henry II, 93–7, 112–18; Crook, ‘The Ea
rliest Exchequer Estreat’, 34, noting that the sum raised by the whole forest eyre amounted to almost £14, 644. This was an enormous sum, at a time when annual income recorded on the Pipe Rolls before 1173 was c.£21,000. In the financial year of 1176/7, audited revenue gained from the eyres, forest offences and the profits of justice greatly boosted total revenue to £30,000, of which only 14 per cent was receipts from the county farms (Barratt, ‘Finance and Economy’, 253). Robert of Torigni admitted that by such measures against his barons the king ‘defrauded them of a large amount of silver’ (Torigni, 267). Fines of £100 or 100 marks were not uncommon, and even lesser sums appear considerably heavier than average forest amercements. In Buckinghamshire, for example, four men are amerced £100 and two 100 marks, while in Oxfordshire, three were fined 200 marks, and another four £100 each (PR 22 Henry II, xxiv, 22–4, 30–3).

  113.GH, I, 95–9; Howden, II, 80–82; Diceto, I, 397.

  114.GH, I, 96–9. Earl David had remained in Henry’s custody as a hostage, presumably since his capitulation in July 1174 at Northampton (Diceto, I, 398).

  115.Such at least was the tradition reported by Edward I to Pope Boniface in 1301, when it was noted that these items ‘remain and are kept in that church up to the present day’ (Anglo-Scottish Relations, ed. Stones, 204–5, no. 102).

  116.As surety, William had to surrender the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, Roxburgh, Berwick and Jedburgh (GH, I, 97; cf. PR 21 Henry II, 16). As Barrow notes, ‘It was … the Young King’s promise to restore the northern counties that finally brought the king of Scots into the war; but whether, or for how long, young Henry or his successors would have kept these promises is another matter’ (RRS, II, 7).

  117.De principis, 156; trans. Stevenson, 137–8. William of Canterbury, 491, drawing on Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historia Regum Britanniae, I: xi. c. 7), noted that Henry II, without even setting foot there, had subjugated Scotland in a manner unseen since King Malgo, the fourth to rule after King Arthur.

  118.In 1185, he restored to William the honour of Huntingdon ‘as honourably and as fully as he had had it before the war’, and returned Edinburgh castle so that it could form part of the dower which the king of Scots could bestow on his bride, Ermengard of Beaumont (GH, II, 44–5). Other key castles, however, remained in Angevin hands at Henry II’s death in 1189 (Warren, Henry II, 186–7).

  119.GH, I, 101–3; Howden, II, 30; Diceto, I, 348; Gervase, I, 235. As Warren, Henry II, 201–2, notes, Ruaidhrí does not seem to have performed homage to Henry II but only to have sworn a personal oath of fealty. The Young King neither appears among the witness list of the treaty nor is known to have issued a charter of confirmation.

  120.GH, I, 104–5; Gervase, I, 256–7.

  121.GH, I, 107; Diceto, I, 404, ‘juxta consilium filii sui regis’. The Young King and his father had held their joint Christmas court at Windsor (GH, I, 106).

  122.Diceto, I, 404, ‘in revenge for the injuries which the lords of these castles had frequently inflicted on the king the father’. He names Huntingdon, Walton, Leicester, Groby, Tutbury, Dudley, Thirsk ‘and many others’. For a list of the destroyed castles and evidence from the Pipe Rolls, Beeler, Warfare in England, 370, n. 136.

  123.GH, I, 68–9.

  124.GH, I, 107; Pleas before the King and his Justices, III, lvii–lix. On the significance of this early general eyre, in which seemingly for the first time the justices themselves made the majority of judgments, rather than as previously simply presiding over sessions in which judgments were reached by those normally attending county or other courts, see P. Brand, ‘Multis Vigilis Excogitatam et Inventam: Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 197–222, reprinted in P. Brand, The Making of the Common Law (London, 1992), 79–102, at 83–4. Young Henry’s former magister, Hugh de Gundeville, served as one of the justices assigned to the circuit covering the Midland shires of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire (Vincent, ‘Hugh de Gundeville’, 133–4).

  125.GH, I, 110.

  126.GH, I, 111.

  127.GH, I, 110.

  128.GH, I, 110.

  129.GH, I, 108–9.

  130.GH, I, 109–10.

  131.GH, I, 110, ‘quae assisa est per consilium regis filii sui, et hominum suorum per quos ituri sunt comitatus’.

  132.HWM, ll. 1889–91.

  133.King Louis VII had visited St James in 1154, combining this with a diplomatic visit, as his wife Constance was daughter of Alphonso of Castile (Torigni, 182). The monks of St Denis were also fostering close links with Santiago: E. Greenhill, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine, Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis’, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician, ed. W. W. Kibler (Austin, 1976), 81–113. Philip of Flanders had been to Compostella in 1172, returning in time to play a key role in peace talks between Henry and Louis after the settlement at Avranches (Expugnatio, 108–9). In 1177, Henry II himself was to inform King Ferdinand of Leon that he wished to make a pilgrimage to Compostella, and that he had long wished so to do, but though he requested a safe conduct, he never set out (GH, I, 157). In the event, no Plantagenet king of England ever visited Compostella, Rome or Jerusalem (Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 18).

  134.GH, I, 114.

  135.As evidenced by Richard’s campaign in January 1177 (GH, I, 131–2).

  136.GH, I, 114.

  137.HWM, ll. 2395–407.

  138.Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. Kibler, 124–5.

  139.HWM, ll. 2404–5, 2412–18.

  140.HWM, ll. 2400–1, and cf. ll. 1889–91.

  141.Philippe de Novare, Les Quatre ges de l’homme, ed. M. de Fréville (Paris, 1888), 38–9; trans. Painter, William Marshal, 30. In just this way, noted the History, the Marshal himself had gained the reputation for prowess that had won him his position as the Young King’s tutor in arms by an itinerant life ‘in tournaments and war’ in ‘all the lands where a knight should think of winning renown’ (HWM, ll. 1884–5, ll. 1516–25, and cf. ll. 1889–904).

  142.History of the Counts of Guines, ch. 93; trans. Shopkow, 125–6.

  143.WN, II, 422: HWM, ll. 2409–11.

  144.HWM, ll. 1531–48.

  145.GH, I, 114.

  146.GH, I, 115; PR 22 Henry II, 90–1, where Robert Mald receives 56 shillings ‘for paying the Queen’s maintenance at Winchester’; Turner, Eleanor, 237. Joanna may also have been at the Easter court, for in May the Sicilian ambassadors were sent to Winchester to see her (GH, I, 116).

  147.GH, I, 115.

  148.Gillingham, Richard I, 52–4.

  149.GH, I, 115; PR 22 Henry II, 207, recording the payment of £7 10s. for the esnecca for the Young King’s crossing, and a further £7 15s. for the four ships that also crossed with him carrying his household and that of Queen Margaret. Evidently for security, the Young King’s treasure was shipped in a separate vessel under the custody of Adam de Yqeboeuf, a reflection of Adam’s importance within the Young King’s mesnie.

  150.HWM, ll. 2436–49. The History here contracts the chronology of April to June 1176, having the Young King sail directly from Dover to Wissant, and omitting his crossing to Barfleur and his journey to the Île-de-France, whence he more probably moved on to Flanders (see HWM, III, 72, n. to l. 2438).

  151.HWM, ll. 2459–60, 67–70.

  152.HWM, ll. 2471–96. For Ressons and its situation, HWM, III, 73, n. to l. 2473.

  153.HWM, ll. 249–72518.

  154.HWM, l. 2508.

  155.Diceto, I, 407; GH, I, 120.

  156.GH, I, 120.

  157.GH, I, 121.

  158.Grand Cartulaire de Fontevraud, ed. J.-M. Bienvenue et al., 2 vols (Poitiers, 2000, 2005), II, no. 830, noting Geoffrey’s gift to Fontevraud after his fatal participation ‘cum Henrico Juniore, Anglorum rege, filio Henrici regis, adversus comitem Engolismensem in expeditione’. This suggests that part of young Henry’s force had been raised from the knight service of Anjou.

  159.GH, I, 121,
‘pravo usus concilio’. L. Clédat, Du rôle historique de Bertran de Born, 1175–1200 (Paris, 1879), 35, followed by Norgate, Angevin Kings, II, 210, suggest Bertran de Born as the probable culprit, though this cannot be substantiated and probably considerably exaggerates Bertran’s political importance.

  160.Thus Howden had noted how his army in 1176 had been swollen by knights attracted from surrounding regions by the generous wages Richard was offering (GH, I, 120).

  161.GH, I, 121.

  162.Smith, ‘Acta’, 299–301, and for his chaplains William, Nicholas and John see, for example, ibid., nos 27, 30, 31 and 32.

  163.GH, I, 122; Diceto, I, 406. For Geoffrey, D. Carpenter, ‘The Dignitaries of York Minster in the 1170s: a Reassessment’, Northern History, 43 (2006), 21–37, at 25–6, 33–4.

  164.GH, I, 122.

  165.GH, I, 122. Howden’s detailed knowledge of these events is a further reflection of the close ties he had to Archbishop Roger and the clerics in his circle (Gillingham, ‘The Travels of Roger of Howden’, 74–6). He appears to have been deeply affected by the death of Geoffrey and another York cleric, Robert Magnus, in a shipwreck in 1177, and Adam of Churchdown may also have been known to him. Certainly the Young King’s treatment of Adam only served to reinforce Howden’s poor opinion of him.

  166.GH, I, 122–3; Howden, II, 94–8. Though Adam was handed over to Henry II, the king nevertheless had him kept in custody of the abbot of Hyde until he could consult with his council on further action.

  167.GH, I, 124. On the death of William d’Aubigny, earl of Sussex, he took the castle of Arundel into his hands (The Complete Peerage, ed. G. E. Cockayne, 14 vols (London, 1910–1959), I, 235–6; History of the King’s Works, II, 554). Henry had even carried out similar measures in Ireland; on the death of Strongbow in April 1176, the king immediately sent William FitzAldelin to take all his castles into royal hands (GH, I, 125).

  168.GH, I, 124; and cf. Chronicle of Battle Abbey, 174–5. For Ongar, J. H. Round, ‘The Honour of Ongar’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, new series, vii (1900), 142–52; King, Castellarium, I, 146.