Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  85.The Astronomer, Vita Ludovici, ch. 4. Similarly, in 855 Charles the Bald had his son Charles the Child crowned king of Aquitaine at Limoges (Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain (Turnhout 1999)).

  86.Vincent, ‘Henry II and the Poitevins’, 120–4.

  87.GH, I, 196–7; Howden, II, 147–8.

  88.Vigeois, 324; Painter, ‘The Lords of Lusignan’, 33.

  89.Diceto, II, 19.

  90.Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions’, 62.

  91.Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions’, 62 and n. 25. Between 1175 and 1183 Richard had faced a major revolt almost every year, save for a brief period between mid 1179 and 1181.

  92.In 1181, for example, Richard had ordered the destruction of the walls of Limoges, including the bourg of St Martial (Vigeois, 326). In 1179, Aimar of Limoges, William count of Angoulême and ‘many others’ left the duchy on pilgrimage, and it is probable that the undertaking of such a journey was part of the terms of peace imposed on them by Richard (Vigeois, 325).

  93.Vigeois, 326.

  94.GH, I, 292: Gillingham, Richard I, 66.

  95.De principis, 247. It is unlikely that many contemporaries in the duchy would have agreed with Kate Norgate that ‘his sternness towards the barons who withstood his will was none other than what Gerald represents it to have been – part of a wholesome and necessary discipline’ (Norgate, Richard, 36–7).

  96.Gervase, I, 303, 304–5. As a monk professed at Christ Church, Canterbury, by Archbishop Thomas in 1163, Gervase very probably had contact with young Henry on his pilgrimages to Becket’s shrine, which may in part account for the evident esteem in which he held the Young King.

  97.For Bertran’s career, Padern, 12–33; and Gouiran, vii–lv.

  98.‘Tortz et gerras e joi d’amor’ (Padern, no. 2), ll. 212–28.

  99.‘Miez sirventes vueilh far dels reis amdos’ (Padern, no. 38; Gouiran, no. 32), ll. 17–24. This sirventes is dated to c.1190.

  100.‘Pois Ventadorns’ (Padern, no. 10; Gouiran, no. 10), ll. 31–2. For the Poitevin nobles’ right to settle their quarels by warfare, Howden, III, 255, ‘consuetudines et leges Pictaviae … in quibus consuetum era tab antique, ut magnates causas suas proprias invicem gladiis allegarent’.

  101.‘Ges no me desconort’ (Padern, no. 17; Gouiran, no. 17), ll. 35–43; ‘Pois Ventedorns’, ll. 1–30. The lord of Montfort was probably Raymond of Turenne’s son-in-law, Bernart du Casnac (Padern, no. 10, note to l. 2).

  102.‘Pois Ventedorns’, ll. 25–30 and ll. 17–24.

  103.Vigeois, 330. The Puy-Saint Front district had developed around the burgeoning pilgrimage church of Saint Front, and lay immediately to the east of the cité, the shrunken remainder of the old Gallo-Roman town of Versunna, in which the count’s castle was situated.

  104.Vigeois, 330.

  105.Vigeois, 330–1.

  106.Vigeois, 330–1.

  107.Vigeois, 318–19; A. Richard, Histoire des comtes de Poitou, 778–1204, II, 150–3; Gillingham, Richard I, 40. For Sainte Valérie, Bozoky, ‘Le Culte des saints’, 280–1.

  108.D. F. Callahan, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Coronation Rite of the Duke of Aquitaine and the Cult of St Martial of Limoges’, The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine, ed. M. Bull and C. Léglu (Woodbridge, 2005), 29–36, noting the interpolation of a new ordo into an existing text in the late twelfth century, which stipulated that the new duke was not only to receive the ring of St Valerie, but was now to receive a silk mantle, a small crown, a ducal banner, sword and spurs.

  109.Vigeois, 331, ‘pallium, in cuius ornatu scriptum est, Henricus Rex’.

  110.This would explain the comment of Torigni, 305, when describing the Young King’s last days in June 1183, that he ‘per guerram fere per annum Deum et sanctam ecclesiam et patrem suum offenderat’.

  111.Vigeois, 330, records his presence with Henry II and an assembly of nobles at Grandmont on 24 June, the feast of St John. For his proactive support in the revolt, Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 132; Gillingham, Richard I, 69. That Young Henry may already have made an alliance with Raymond V of Toulouse can perhaps be inferred from Bertran’s comment that ‘Count Raymond is honoured here, since he has newly allied himself with the king (ar ab lo rei s’es novellamen afiatz)’ (‘Tortz et gerras e joi d’amor’, ll. 33–5). In this same sirventes, Bertran instructs his messenger Papiol, ‘Go quickly to the Young King; tell him too much sleeping doesn’t please me’ (ibid., ll. 57–9).

  112.Vigeois, 331.

  113.‘Un sirventes on motz no faill’ (Padern, no. 3; Gouiran, no. 16), ll. 36–42.

  114.Vigeois, 331.

  115.Vigeois, 331.

  116.GH, I, 287–8; K. Jordan, Henry the Lion (Oxford, 1986), 183–4. The couple had left Germany in July 1182.

  117.‘Ges de disnar non for’ormais maitis’ (Padern, no. 10; Gouiran, no. 2), ll. 7–8.

  118.‘Casutz sui en mal de pena’ (Padern, no. 9; Gouiran, no. 3), ll. 25–36; W. Kellerman, ‘Bertran de Born und Herzogin Matilda von Sachsen’, Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles): mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Crozet (Poitiers, 1974), 447–60. It was at Argentan that Matilda gave birth to a son, whose name is unknown and who probably died young (GH, I, 288).

  119.He took the Taillefer castle of Blanzac while Oliver, brother of the viscount of Castillon in Perigord, fortified Chalais against the duke (Vigeois, 332; The Chronicle and Historical Notes of Bernard Itier, ed. A. W. Lewis (Oxford, 2012), s.a 1182).

  120.GH, I, 289.

  121.GH, I, 289, ‘pravorum usus consilio’; Howden, II, 266, where this incident is placed earlier in the year, before the peace established between Philip Augustus and Count Philip of Flanders. The Gesta’s placing near the end of the year seems more likely.

  122.GH, I, 288–9.

  123.Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 131. Henry II may have been withholding Nantes precisely because the combination of this and the rest of Brittany would give Geoffrey a position of great strategic power in relation to the other Angevin continental domains (ibid., 130).

  124.Torigni, 302.

  125.GH, I, 289.

  126.GH, I, 274–6; Alexander III, Epistolae, PL CC, no. 1504. Vigeois, 330, recording Baldwin’s resignation from direct rule that year, notes the king had been ‘utilis ad rempublicam, armis strenuis, sed leprosus’.

  127.GH, I, 275–6. Pope Alexander had attempted to kill two birds with one stone by authorizing Count Hugh, the nephew of Bishop Hugh de Puiset, to lead a force of Brabançons against the Muslims in Spain.

  128.Expugnatio, 200–3; Diceto, II, 33–4.

  129.GH, I, 78. Few details of Queen Margaret’s regular outgoings are known, but it would seem likely that the payment to her in 1174–75 of £30 (or 120 livres angevins) for twenty-eight days’ expenditure had not been exceptional (PR 21 Henry II, 41). If so, Henry II was being equally generous in more than doubling her allowance. By comparison, when in 1181 his natural son Geoffrey finally resigned as bishop elect of Lincoln and was made chancellor, Henry II had assigned him the annual revenue of 500 marks from the revenues of England and 500 marks from those of Normandy (GH, I, 272).

  130.GH, I, 291, ‘centum militibus de familia sua, scilicet regis filii sui, redderet servicia sua’.

  131.GH, I, 291.

  132.Duby, ‘Youth in Aristocratic Society’, 112–22.

  133.Diceto, I, p. 428; Vigeois, 331, 334.

  134.Such problems were inherent in the mesnie: the History had noted that William’s companions in the household of William de Tancarville had been jealous of the chamberlain’s favour towards him (HWM, ll. 774–804, 1513–14).

  135.Crouch, William Marshal, 47.

  136.E. Baumgartner, ‘Trouvères et losengiers’, CCM, 25 (1982), 171–8; Crouch, William Marshal, 47–8; and Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 60–4, on the rivalries of the court.

  137.HWM, ll, 6463–7, where this figure is called ‘the man who had hatched, pursued and carried out that act of treachery, and was the instigator of all
the harm that was done’. He cannot have been Peter FitzGuy, who had served as a seneschal to the Young King before 1177, for he had taken service with Henry II by 1181 (HWM, III, 102, note to line 6466; Recueil, Introduction, 260, 261).

  138.HWM, ll. 5221–40; Crouch, William Marshal, 48.

  139.For this topos in contemporary romances such as Gui de Warewic and Ami et Amile, see Crouch, William Marshal, 49.

  140.William of Tyre, Bk XIV, chs 15–18. Charged with treason and challenged to single combat, Hugh not only failed to present himself for wager of battle but fled to the Muslims of Ascalon, with whom he then attacked the kingdom. Though Fulk succeeded in establishing peace, Hugh’s subsequent assassination plunged the court into fresh scandal.

  141.Angevin tradition had it that in 1000, Fulk Nerra had burned his first wife Elizabeth of Vendôme for infidelity (Norgate, Angevin Kings, I, 152).

  142.GH, I, 99–101; Howden, II, 82–3. The incident is discussed by R. F. Hervey, ‘Cross-Channel Gossip in the Twelfth Century’, England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, ed. J. Mitchell (Stamford, 2000), 48–59.

  143.Les Tristan en vers, ed. C. Payen (Paris, 1974); Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, ed. E. Choiseul (Geneva, 1999).

  144.Crouch, William Marshal, 49–50. Yet conversely as Ashe, ‘William Marshal, Lancelot and Arthur’, 32, suggests, ‘the frequency of the trope in literature is almost as likely to have inspired the Marshal’s enemies as his biographer; they may indeed have concoted the story because of its inherent pre-existence as a possibility’.

  145.Howden’s statement that in 1183 Philip received her with honour and provided for her every need hardly suggests her arrival under a cloud of shame and scandal (GH, I, 296).

  146.HWM, ll. 5364–426.

  147.HWM, ll. 5480–596; ibid., III, note to line 5492.

  148.HWM, ll. 5491–630.

  149.Torigni, 304; GH, I, 291; Howden, Chronica, II, 273, ‘cum filiis et filias et familia multa’; HWM, ll. 5693–714, who notes it was proclaimed as far as the Empire. Patterson, ‘Great Festivals in the South of France’, 215–16, draws a parallel with Frederick Barbarossa’s magnificent court at Mainz in 1184, at which he knighted his sons Henry and Frederick. Its exceptional splendour and cost may well have been informed by Henry II’s 1182 court, at which Barbarossa’s Welf rival was a principal guest, and the desire to surpass it.

  150.HWM, ll. 5693–843.

  151.HWM, ll. 5921–60, 6155–70; Crouch, William Marshal, 51–2.

  152.It is notable that while in 1183 Count Philip did not prevent the Marshal from returning to the Young King, he himself stayed aloof from the war.

  153.HWM, III, 99 note to line 5693, suggesting the possibility that the History may even have been presenting a muddled version of the incident involving Tancarville.

  154.Map, 488–91.

  Chapter 13: The Brothers’ War, 1183

  1.‘Ieu chan que.l reys m’en a preguat’ (Padern, no. 14; Gouiran, no. 12), ll. 67–72, and 77–8. Bertran’s allusion is to Charlemagne’s legendary conquest of Muslim Spain.

  2.GH, I, 292, ‘sicut ligio domino suo’.

  3.Vigeois, 322.

  4.Now Haut-Clairvaux outside the village of Scorbé-Clairvaux (Vienne, cant. Châtellerault), where the fragmentary remains of Richard’s keep still commands the countryside. The castle itself was not new, but Richard enlarged and heightened the existing donjon (M.-P. Baudry, Châteaux ‘Romans’ en Poitou-Charente (La Crèche, 2011), 153–4).

  5.Norgate, Richard the Lionheart, 46 and n. 1. Torigni, 302, believed Clairvaux to be ‘de feudo Andegavensi’.

  6.Gillingham, Richard I, 69 and n. 53. The sensitivity of constructing a castle at Clairvaux is suggested by Torigni’s statement that Richard did so secretly (latenter) (Torigni, 302).

  7.Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, 191–2.

  8.‘Pois Ventedorns’, ll.12–16: ‘I think all Angoumois has greater honour in abundance than Sir Carter, who abandoned his cart – he does not have any money, and he does not steal it without fear – for I prize a small fief with honour more than a great empire without it’. For the text of the razo, Gouiran, no. 10, 183–5. The unreliability of such razos is stressed by Moore, The Young King, 36–8, but he is perhaps too ready to follow A. Stimming, Bertran de Born (2nd edn, Halle, 1913), in dismissing the razo’s explanation here.

  9.‘Pois Ventedorns’ (Padern, no. 10; Gouiran, no. 10), ll. 33–40.

  10.GH, I, 291; Diceto, II, 18.

  11.GH, I, 36.

  12.Gillingham, Richard I, 70.

  13.Diceto, II, 18; GH, I, 291–2.

  14.GH, I, 292. Gervase, I, 303, notably hostile to Richard, noted that he refused homage ‘suae confidens tirannidi’, despite his father’s prayers and commands.

  15.Diceto, II, 18–19.

  16.Once he himself became his father’s principal heir after the Young King’s death, however, Richard was to change this view. He refused to contemplate ceding Aquitaine to John in 1184, and as king from 1189 treated his father’s lands as an entity to be kept in his own hands.

  17.Diceto, II, 18; Norgate, Richard the Lionheart, 49.

  18.GH, I, 294.

  19.GH, I, 294.

  20.GH, I, 294–5.

  21.GH, I, 295.

  22.GH, I, 295.

  23.GH, I, 295.

  24.GH, I, 292.

  25.Diceto, II, 19.

  26.HWM, ll. 6340–5.

  27.Vigeois, 332.

  28.Vigeois, 332; GH, I, 296.

  29.GH, I, 292.

  30.GH, I, 293–4, 295; HWM, ll. 6384–7, noting that on the Young King’s orders Geoffrey had collected ‘a bold and powerful company of good knights’. For Geoffrey’s ability to raise knights in Brittany, whether directly from tenants of the ducal domains or the levying of the wider obligation of exercitus in the duchy as a whole, see Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 106–7, 133.

  31.De principis, I: 8.

  32.HWM, ll. 6360–8.

  33.Vigeois, 332: ‘Pois Ventedorns’ (Padern, no. 10; Gouiran, no. 10), ll. 1–2, where Bertran also mentions Guillem de Gourdon as a member of the league.

  34.The Lusignans are listed among those whom Bertran de Born calls on for aid, together with Geoffrey de Rancon and Aimery VII, viscount of Thouars (‘Pois Ventedorns’ (Padern, no. 10; Gouiran, no. 10), ll. 25–30).

  35.HWM, ll. 6413, and ll. 6517–6524, where improbably the History has Geoffrey praise the Marshal and advise the Young King to recall him to his service.

  36.HWM, ll. 6356–60.

  37.HWM, l. 6395, and ll. 6388–92. The only one of the Young King’s household knights to be mentioned by name in reference to the muster at Limoges and the ensuing siege is the Flemish knight, Roger de Jouy (HWM, l. 6414, and for this knight, HWM, III, 78–9, note to l. 3385). Gerald of Wales similarly notes that young Henry was aided by ‘the flower of the young knights of France (electa Gallice milicie iuventute)’ (Expugnatio, 196–7).

  38.For the routiers, see above, 165–6, 169–70, 193, 202, and for an important recent analysis of these bands and their impact, see J. France, ‘Capuchins as Crusaders: Southern Gaul in the Twelfth Century’, Reading Medieval Studies, 36 (2010), 77–93; idem, ‘People against Mercenaries: The Capuchins in Southern Gaul’, Journal of Medieval Military History, 8 (2010), 1–22; and idem, ‘Mercenaries and Capuchins in Southern France’, Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean. Studies in Honour of John Pryor, ed. R. Gurtwagen and E. Jeffreys (Aldershot, 2012), 289–315.

  39.Map, 118–19.

  40.France, ‘Mercenaries and Capuchins’, 293–5.

  41.C. Devic and J.-J. Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. A Molinier et al. (16 vols, Toulouse, 1872–1904), 1878, VIII, 341.

  42.Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, 277.

  43.Rigord, 166–7; Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, 279, who also suggests that the ‘Asperes’ and ‘Pailer’ mentioned by Vigeois were bands drawn from Aspres and Pallars in the Pyre
nees; P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1984), 244; France, ‘Mercenaries and Capuchins’, 290–1.

  44.Map, 118–19, who counted among their number ‘men banished for sedition, false clerics, runaway monks, all those who have forsaken God’. Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis (1154–1219), ed. A. Cartellieri and W. Stechele (Leipzig and Paris, 1929), 37, lists bands ‘Ruthariorum, Arragonensium, Basculorum, Brabancionum et aliorum conducticiorum’. Vigeois, 328, gives a still fuller range, noting the operation in Aquitaine of ‘primo Basculi, postmodum Teuthonici Flandrenses et, ut rustice loquar, Brabansons, Hannuyers, Asperes, Pailer, Navar, Turlau, Vales, Roma, Coterel, Catalans, Aragones’. They were also known by other generic terms, ‘Coterellis’, ‘Triaverdinis’ or ‘Rutharii’ (C. J. Hefele, Histoire des Conciles, ed. H. Leclerq, 9 vols, Hildesheim, 1973, 5:2 1106–8). For a discussion of these terms, France, ‘Mercenaries and Capuchins’, 290–1.

  45.Torigni, 282, for example, noted how in 1179, when Richard had disbanded his army after the fall of Taillebourg and his defeat of the Poitevin rebels, a force of ‘Basques, Navarrese and Brabanters’ sacked and burned Bordeaux.

  46.Vigeois, 334. On the black reputation of these forces for atrocities, Strickland, War and Chivalry, 297–302.

  47.Map, 118–19.

  48.Diceto, I, 407, describing the Brabançons in the pay of the count of Angoulême in 1176.

  49.Vigeois, 323; Diceto, I, 407.

  50.Histoire des Conciles, 5: 2, 1106–8.

  51.These measures were detailed by the archbishop of Narbonne in a letter to his suffragans sent shortly after his return from the Lateran Council; Devic and Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, VIII, 341; Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, 277.

  52.GH, I, 293.

  53.Vigeois, 332.

  54.Vigeois, 332.

  55.GH, I, 293.

  56.Howden, II, 274.

  57.GH, I, 293.

  58.GH, I, 296; Vigeois, 332.

  59.Vigeois, 333. On the topography of medieval Limoges, see B. Barrière, ‘Une agglomération double (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, Histoire de Limoges, ed. L. Pérouas (Toulouse, 1989), 61–82; and idem, ‘The Limousin and Limoges in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century’, Enamels of Limoges, 1100–1350, ed. J. P. O’Neil (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996), 22–32.