Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  100.Crouch, Tournament, 24.

  101.HWM, ll. 3719–843.

  102.HWM, ll. 3020–36.

  103.HWM, ll. 3305–8.

  104.Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 133–4; Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, 320, for ‘Roland the Farter’, who held land by the serjeantry tenure of performing ‘a jump, a whistle and a fart’ (presumably the humour lay in these actions being simultaneous) annually at the king’s Christmas court. For the Easter court at Winchester in 1176, ‘the king’s bear’ was brought from Northampton by the royal bear keeper (ursarius) (PR 22 Henry II, 29).

  105.For valuable overviews and extensive bibliography see M. Aurell, ‘Henry II and Arthurian Legend’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, 362–394, especially 364–6, and for discussion of the wider question of literary patronage at the Angevin court, Gillingham, ‘The Cultivation of History, Legend and Courtesy’, 25–52.

  106.Marie de France, Lais, ed. L. Harf-Lancner and K. Warnke (Paris, 1990), Prologue, ll. 44–7. Aurell, ‘Henry II and Arthurian Legend’, 375, notes, however, that such terms were conventional ones applicable to any monarch.

  107.J. F. Benton, ‘The Court of Champagne as a Literary Centre’, Speculum, 36 (1961), 551–91; and A. Putter, ‘Knights and Clerics at the Court of Champagne: Chrétien de Troyes’ Romances in Context’, Medieval Knighthood V. Papers from the Sixth Strawberry Hill Conference, ed. S. Church and R. Harvey (Woodbridge), 243–66, at 250–1.

  108.R. Lejeune, ‘La Date du Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes’, Le Moyen ge, 60 (1954), 51–79; P. Zunthor, ‘Toujours à propos de la date du Conte du Graal’, Le Moyen ge, 65 (1959), 579–86.

  109.L. D. Benson, ‘The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal’, Chivalric Literature. Essays on Relations between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages, ed. L. D. Benson and J. Leyerle (Toronto, 1980), 1–24, 147–51.

  110.HWM, ll. 3041–54.

  111.HWM, ll. 3466–70, 3524–6.

  112.Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Brittaniae, BK IX: 13.

  113.Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, 332.

  114.Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background, 81–5.

  115.Wace, The Hagiographical Works, ed. J. Blacker, G. S. Burgess and A. V. Ogden (Leiden, 2013); Gervase, Otia imperialia, xcii.

  116.FitzStephen, 99–100. Similarly, before his assumption of the habit at St Denis, the celebrated master of the Paris schools, Peter Abelard (d. 1142), had been noted for his fine clothes, costly horses and impressive retinue, as well as for his ‘elegance of manners’ (elegantia morum) and his courtly bearing, which led him to be referred to as ‘palatinus’ by his admirers (M. Clanchy, ‘Abelard – knight (miles), courtier (palatinus) and man of war (vir bellator)’, in Medieval Knighthood, V, ed. S. Church and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1995), 108–18, at 108–12).

  117.JF, ll. 732–4; Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200, 105–14; and R. Bezzola, Les Origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en occident (Paris, 1944–63), III. Part 1, 198–206.

  118.Benoît of St Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. L. Constans, 6 vols (Paris, 1904–12); Thomas of Kent, Le Roman d’Alexandre ou Le roman de toute chevalerie, ed. C. Gaullier-Bougassas and L. Harf-Lancner (Paris, 2003); Alexandre de Paris, Roman d’Alexandre, ed. E. Armstrong et al., in The Medieval French Alexander, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1937).

  119.Cligès, in Arthurian Romances, trans. Kibler, 123.

  120.Joseph of Exeter, The Illiad of Dares Phrygius, trans. G. Roberts (Cape Town, 1970), 63–4; W. B. Sedgwick, ‘The Bellum Troianum of Joseph of Exeter’, Speculum, 5 (1930), 49–76; K. Bate, ‘Joseph of Exeter [Canterbury], poet (fl. c.1180–1194)’, ODNB. Gerald of Wales similarly regarded the Young King as another Hector (Gerald, Opera, V, 193; De principis, 173–5).

  121.Cligès, in Arthurian Romances, trans. Kibler, 123.

  122.Epistolae, no. 57, 76; M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters (Edinburgh, 1950), 6–9; Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 87.

  123.Coggeshall, 121–4; Gervase, Otia imperialia, xxvii. According to the story Ralph claimed to have heard from Gervase himself, the girl protested that if she lost her virginity she would be eternally damned. As the Cathars claimed that sex and reproduction were inherently evil, Gervase, who was a zealot in his condemnation of heresy, jumped to the conclusion that she too must be a heretic. He was busy engaging with her in theological disputation when Archbishop William of Rheims arrived, with the upshot that the unfortunate girl was burned at the stake.

  124.Gervase, Otia imperialia, xcii, 14–15.

  125.Among its subjects was a discussion of costume, to which Gervase refers when remarking on the tight-fitting clothing worn by the men of Narbonne, similar to fashions of the Spaniards and Gascons (Gervase, Otia imperialia, 298–9).

  126.Gervase, Otia imperialia, 14–15.

  127.Wace, Roman de Rou, I, part III, ll.5–10.

  128.History of the Counts of Guisnes, ch. 97; trans. Shopkow, 130.

  Chapter 12: Keeping the Balance of Power

  1.De principis, II: 11; trans. Stevenson, 152–3.

  2.For this period, the History’s narrative consists largely of a series of tournaments, with little or no reference to wider political events. While on occasion it notes the Young King’s absence from tournaments which were attended by the Marshal and other of his household knights, such, for example, as those held at Joigny and Eperon (HWM, ll. 3426–40; ll. 4319–28), it rarely states why. An exception is the History’s comment that the Young King decided not to join the Marshal at the tournament at Pleurs (Marne, cant. Sézanne) in the spring of 1178, because ‘that site was much too far from where the King was for very heavy baggage (trop grant herneis) to be moved, so he did not go’ (HWM, ll. 2875–82; ibid., III, note to line 2879).

  3.One manuscript of the Gesta Henrici stops in 1177, and it seems likely that Howden was largely absent from the Angevin court during 1178 and 1179 (GH, I, xlv). Although he briefly records some of Richard’s campaigns in Aquitaine, in a short narrative compressing events between July 1178 and Easter 1179 (GH, I, 212–13), his principal interest in the annals of 1178 was the problem of heresy in southern France. As John Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions’, 74–5, has suggested, it may well be that Howden accompanied the anti-heresy mission of Henry, abbot of Clairvaux, and other leading clergy to Aquitaine in 1178.

  4.Torigni, 277, 286; Chronique du Bec, ed. A. A. Porée (Rouen, 1883), 10, 21–2; and for Henry II’s grant, Recueil, II, no. 534; (Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 183). For the wider architectural context of the rebuilding of Bec, see L. Grant, Architecture and Society in Normandy, 1120–1270 (New Haven and London, 2005), with a brief discussion of Bec itself at 75–6.

  5.Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 189–91.

  6.Torigni, 277.

  7.Chronique du Bec, 21–2. Rings were a common token of conveyance. Henry II, for example, made a similar gift of a ring on the altar to mark a grant to the abbey of Le Valasse (Torigni, ed. Delisle, II, 165, n. 2).

  8.Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 35.

  9.He styles himself ‘Henricus Dei gratia Rex Anglorum, et dux Normannorum, et comes Andegavorum, Regis Henrici filius’, and somewhat unusually refers to Henry II ‘of distinguished memory’ (The Cartae Antiquae Rolls 11–20, ed. J. Conway Davies, Pipe Roll Society, new series, xxxiii, London, 1960, no. 359, and ibid., no. 358, for Henry II’s own grant; The Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1062–1230, ed. R. Randsford, Woodbridge, 1989, lxiv and nos 26–8 (calendared); Smith, ‘Acta’, 325–6, no. 32, who suggests a probable date for the Young King’s charter of September 1180, as opposed to 1177 as suggested by Eyton, 218–19).

  10.Smith, ‘Acta ‘, no. 31.

  11.Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 19, dated 23 September 1182 x early 1183; M. Billoré, ‘Henri le Jeune confirme les privilèges judiciaires de l’abbaye de Fontevraud’, Dans le secret des archives. Justice, ville et culture au Moyen
ge, ed. M. Billoré and J. Picot (Rennes, 2014), 79–98, which prints the text in full together with a detailed analysis of the nature of these fiscal and judicial rights. I am most grateful to Maité Billoré for sending me a copy of this valuable study.

  12.Recueil, Introduction, 257; Smith, ‘Acta’, no. 29.

  13.GH, I, 221, 238; Diceto, I, 428.

  14.Diceto, I, 428.

  15.GH, I, 238; Eyton, 225–6. Game from the king’s hunt was sent from Bicknore to Winchester, while the sheriff of Worcester accounted for 50 marks for the Young King (PR 25 Henry II, 89, 92).

  16.GH, I, 238, notes that the council was held ‘coram rege filio suo’.

  17.GH, I, 238.

  18.GH, I, 238–9; Pleas before the King or His Justices, III, lxi–lxii.

  19.GH, I, 207–8; D. M. Stenton, English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066–1215 (Philadelphia, Pa., 1964), 75–6; R. V. Turner, ‘The Origins of Common Pleas and the King’s Bench’, American Journal of Legal History, 21 (1977), 238–54.

  20.The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England commonly called Glanvill, ed. G. D. G. Hall (London, 1965), c. 26–8; Warren, Henry II, 352–4: Hudson, Formation of the English Common Law, 134, 203–5; J. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, II, 871–1216 (Oxford, 2012), 519–20, 527–8, 600–3.

  21.GH, I, 240. He sailed to Wissant, c.22 April (Eyton, 227).

  22.As suggested by HWM, III, note to l. 3683, and see ibid. for details of the date and location.

  23.GH, I, 240; Torigni, 282; Rigord, 9–10.

  24.Torigni, 282–3; Rigord, 124–7; Sassier, Louis VII, 468, ‘atteint de l’une de ces peurs quasi pathologiques dont le Philippe Auguste de l’âge adulte sera coutumier’.

  25.E. Bournazel and J.-P. Poly, ‘Couronne et mouvance: institutions et représentations mentales’, La France de Philippe Auguste. Le temps des mutations, ed. R. H. Bautier (Paris, 1982), 217–36, at 230; Sassier, Louis VII, 468–9.

  26.Diceto, I, 433; Torigni, 283; and Herbert of Bosham, who noted that ‘it is unheard of for kings of France to cross the sea except perhaps to fight against nations hostile to the Faith’ (Bosham, 538). It is striking that Rigord suppresses any mention that Louis crossed to England and of his pilgrimage to Canterbury (Rigord, 124–7).

  27.GH, I, 240–1; Howden, II, 192–3; Diceto, I, 433; Expugnatio, 222–3.

  28.GH, I, 242–3.

  29.A. Cartellieri, Philipp August. II. König von Frankreich, 4 vols (Leipzig, 1899–1921), I, 37–41.

  30.GH, I, 242–3.

  31.Certainly the tract De majoratu et seneschalcia indicates that functions at royal crown-wearings were among the most important duties of the seneschal of France. It claimed that Fulk V had fulfilled the functions of the seneschal at a crown-wearing by Louis VI at Bourges, while Geoffrey le Bel had done likewise at two of Louis VII’s crown-wearings (RHF, XII, 92; XV, 439, 602; Bémont, ‘Hugues de Clers’, 257, n. 4 and 5).

  32.Rigord, 126–9.

  33.Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims, 8 (ch. 15).

  34.Howden, II, 194, ‘de jure ducatus de Normanniae’.

  35.Diceto, 438–9, trans. Hallam, Plantagenet Chronicles, 164.

  36.Torigni, 287, ‘magna exenia in auro et argento, et de venatione Anglicana’.

  37.Rigord, 160–3. This incident is not dated by Rigord but it must have occurred before 1183, and the sharp deterioration of relations between Henry II and Philip following young Henry’s death and Philip’s coronation offers the most plausible occasion for so exceptional a present.

  38.Torigni, 287.

  39.HWM, ll. 4465–71. Gilbert of Mons, ch. 92, notes that Count Baldwin of Hainualt attended the coronation at Count Philip’s request with eighty knights at his own expense, even though he did not owe homage or allegiance to King Philip.

  40.Diceto, II, 5; GH, I, 245, puts the crossing in late March.

  41.Cartellieri, Philipp August, I, 37–67; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 15–16. In so doing he was aided by the absence of Count Henry on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople to escort Louis’ daughter Agnes to marry the emperor’s son (GH, I, 239).

  42.Ralph of Diss notes that he had publicly sworn to King Louis ‘custodiendo, protegendo, legaliter instruendo’ his son (Diceto, II, 8).

  43.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 94; trans. Napran, 74, n. 304. Isabella was the daughter of Baldwin, count of Hainault (1171–95) and Margaret, Count Philip’s sister.

  44.Diceto, II, 5; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 15.

  45.GH, I, 245–6; Diceto, II, 5. For the coronation prerogatives of the archbishop of Rheims, see E. A. R. Brown, ‘“Franks, Burgundians and Aquitainians” and the Royal Coronation Ceremony in France’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 82 (1992), 1–189, at 35, n. 136.

  46.Diceto, II, 6; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 16.

  47.Diceto, II, 4; GH, I, 244.

  48.Diceto, I, 5.

  49.GH, I, 245; Diceto, II, 5. The Young King had sailed from Dover before Easter (20 April), while his father crossed from Portsmouth.

  50.GH, I, 246; Howden, II, 196.

  51.De principis, 188–90; Gilbert of Mons, ch. 95.

  52.GH, I, 246; Diceto, II, 6.

  53.GH, I, 246–7.

  54.GH, I, 247–9; Diceto, II, 6; Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. H.-F. Delaborde, C. Petit-Dutaillis, J. Boussard and M. Nortier, 5 vols (Paris, 1916–2004), I, no. 7.

  55.T. de Hemptinne, ‘Aspects des relations de Philippe Auguste avec la Flandre au temps de Philippe d’Alsace’, La France de Philippe Auguste, ed. Bautier, 255–62.

  56.Gilbert of Mons, chs 96, 97, 99. Howden confuses this conflict with the count of Flanders’ subsequent hostilities against Raoul de Clermont (GH, I, 277; Cartellieri, Philipp August, 102, n. 5).

  57.GH, I, 276–7; Howden, I, 260; Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, 213–15. William had come to Normandy at Henry II’s command to reach a settlement of a major ecclesiastical dispute in Scotland regarding the appointment of a new bishop of St Andrews (GH, I, 250–1, 263–60).

  58.Diceto, II, 7–8.

  59.Diceto, II, 7–8.

  60.Diceto, II, 8, ‘totam Normanniam filii sui regis dispositionem supponeret’; trans. Hallam, Plantagenet Chronicles, 166.

  61.GH, I, 284; Diceto, II, 8; Gilbert of Mons, ch. 99, trans. Napran, 77.

  62.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 99. Breteuil was strategically located between Amiens and Beauvais.

  63.According to Ralph of Diss, the count of Flanders had also sought the aid of Emperor Frederick to attack the king of France (Diceto, II, 8).

  64.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 99; trans. Napran, 78; GH, I, 283–4; Diceto, II, 8.

  65.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 99.

  66.Diceto, II, 9: Gervase, I, 297.

  67.Torigni, 300, ‘obiit Hunfredus de Bohun, positus in exercitus cum rege Henrico juniore’.

  68.Diceto, II, 9.

  69.Diceto, II, 9.

  70.Diceto, II, 9. The early thirteenth-century Histoire des ducs, 82, recalls how the Young King ‘mena les Normans à Senslis, quant li cuens de Flandres destruisi la tierre le roi Phelippe de France, ki estoit ses serouges; et, por la paour de lui, se concorda li cuens de Flandres au roi Phelippe de France’. On this text, and for the marked Franco-Norman, rather than Anglo-Norman focus of other versions of the Chronique de Normandie, see G. Federenko, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Chronique de Normandie’, ANS, 35 (2012), 163–80, at 174–7.

  71.Diceto, II, 9–10.

  72.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 99.

  73.GH, I, 284.

  74.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 99. He laconically notes only that ‘with the lord king of France armed for battle on one side and the count of Flanders on the other, they came to battle (but not by God’s will)’. Count Philip was by no means a spent force, as his renewed campaigns in 1182 revealed.

  75.Gilbert of Mons, ch. 103.

  76.Ibid.; GH, I, 284–5; De principis, 189–90. The settlement is discussed by E. Va
n Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past, 1066–1203’, ANS, 103–121, at 118–119 (and Appendix II), noting the fact that Henry II’s half-brother Hamelin of Warenne was married to Countess Isabelle’s granddaughter Isabelle, and that he may perhaps have played a role in these negotiations.

  77.GH, I, 283–4. Howden believed that Philip of Flanders also surrendered a charter granted to him in 1173 by the Young King, and again quitclaimed young Henry and his brothers of all the agreements he had made with them during the war (ibid., I, 286).

  78.Diceto, II, 10; GH, I, 285, and for the text of the will, Gervase, I, 298–300; Foedera, I, 47; Recueil, II, no. 612; Letters and Charters of Henry II, no. 1260. He may in part have been motivated to do so then because of anxieties about the Channel crossing after a period of rough weather. For a discussion of this will, and for the wider context of Angevin testamentary depositions, see Gillingham, ‘At the Deathbeds of the Kings of England’, 509–30; and Church, ‘King John’s Testament’, 505–28, especially at 511.

  79.Diceto, II, 10; Allen, ‘Henry II and the English Coinage’, Henry II. New Interpretations, 275.

  80.Diceto, II, 10. The phenomenon of such enormous post-mortem bequests and the possible reaction of heirs is discussed by E. A. R. Brown, ‘Royal Testamentary Acts from Philip Augustus to Philip of Valois’, Herrscher- und Fürstentestamente, 415–30. Nevertheless, despite the huge bequest, Henry noted that the sum only represented ‘a certain part of my money’, and in 1189 Richard was said to have inherited more than 100,000 marks in his father’s treasuries (Howden, III, 7–8; Gillingham, ‘Deathbeds of the Kings of England’, 523 and n. 64). Both William Rufus and Robert Curthose are recorded as having honoured the extensive bequests of William the Conqueror after his death in 1087 (Aird, Robert Curthose, 104–5).

  81.PR 25 Henry II, 101; Norgate, Richard, 31.

  82.Torigni, 296; Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 127–31. Henry still retained the county of Nantes and the honour of Richmond in his own hands. For the date, Torigni, ed. Delisle, II, 104, n. 4.

  83.Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 131.

  84.As the Histoire des ducs, 84, later noted, ‘Quant li jouenes rois Henris vivoit, il li aidoit por chou que il voloit avoir la tierre de chà mer’.