Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  60.Vigeois, 332.

  61.GH, I, 296. For the events at Limoges and the ensuing campaign between February and June 1183, we are almost wholly reliant on the testimony of Geoffrey of Vigeois and of Roger of Howden. Their narratives are often vague, fragmented and sometimes contradictory. Howden may have been in the Limousin for part of this period, but it is evident that during the final stages of the Young King’s struggle with his father he was away on royal business, and that the reports he received from those with the king were rumours or allegations about the Young King’s supposed conduct rather than careful reportage. Similarly, much depends on the dating of the relevant poems of Bertran de Born, but their chronology is at best tentative. The resulting difficulty even in reconstructing the sequence of events is reflected in the differing narratives provided by Norgate, Richard the Lionheart, and Gillingham, Richard I. What follows here differs in places from both, but can only be equally tentative. That given in F. Marvaud, Histoire des vicomtes et de la vicomté de Limoges, 2 vols (Paris, 1873), I, 239–60, is confused and unreliable.

  62.Vigeois, 332; GH, I, 296.

  63.GH, I, 296

  64.Vigeois, 332, who calls it a ‘castrum’.

  65.Vigeois, 332.

  66.Vigeois, 332, who notes of Henry II that the inhabitants of the Château ‘irritaverunt eum graviter, idcirco noluit consolari leviter’.

  67.GH, I, 296.

  68.Vigeois, 332–3,‘propugnacula ac defensacula lignea multiplicia super muros’.

  69.Vigeois, 333. He adds, ironically, ‘and had they not been prevented by an enemy of the king, the burgesses would have shaved the beard of the great bishop St Augustine [i.e destroyed the outer buildings of the monastery of St Augustine’s] with the same razor as with St Martin’s.’

  70.Vigeois, 333.

  71.Sancho’s toponym appears in two forms, that of Séranne, an upland region in the Hérault (Norgate, Richard the Lionheart, 53), or as Savannac, a village also in the Hérault (RHF, XVIII, 214; Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, 282).

  72.Vigeois, 333, noting that this was on 13 February.

  73.Vigeois, 333.

  74.Vigeois, 333, 334, dating the attack on Brive to 27 February.

  75.‘Pois Ventedorns’, ll. 41–6.

  76.Vigeois, 334; France, ‘Mercenaries and Capuchins’, 3 and n. 13, who renders this as ‘sleepers on straw’; Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, 279–80.

  77.Vigeois, 334.

  78.Vigeois, 334, who places these events ‘during the days of Lent’, and dates the sack of Brantôme to 26 February. In 1183, Lent began on 13 February, with Easter Day falling on 17 April.

  79.Vigeois, 334.

  80.HWM, ll. 6371–82; Vigeois, 334.

  81.Vigeois, 334–5. Henry, however, appears to have returned briefly to Poitiers, where he is found on 3 March (Recueil, II, no. 639).

  82.GH, I, 297.

  83.GH, I, 297, calls the lands so ravaged ‘terra regis’, but these were presumably those of the duke, or of Richard and Henry’s supporters.

  84.Expugnatio, 196–7; Topographica Hibernica, 200; De principis, 176, 178; Gillingham, Richard I, 68; ‘Rassa, tant creis e mont’e poia’ (Padern, no. 13; Gouiran, no. 1), l.1 and Padern, no. 13, note to line 1. To Howden, he was ‘the son of treason (filius proditionis)’ (GH, I, 297).

  85.Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 135.

  86.‘D’un sirventes no.m cal farloignor ganda’ (Padern, no. 11; Gouiran, no. 11), ll. 33–6.

  87.In a sirventes composed shortly after the Young King’s death, but before the final suppression of the rebellion in Aquitaine, he notes, ‘If Count Geoffrey doesn’t go away [from the Limousin] he will have both Poitou and Gascony – even though he doesn’t know how to please the ladies’ – ‘Seignur en coms, a blasmar’ (Padern, no. 16; Gouiran, no. 19), ll. 49–51.

  88.According to William of Newburgh, Geoffrey later tried to obtain Anjou from Henry II, but when Richard refused to countenance this, Geoffrey went over to Philip Augustus, who ‘busied himself in the matter’ (WN, I, 235). One way in which he did so was by granting Geoffrey the seneschalship of France, ‘which pertains to Anjou’ (De principis, 176). Geoffrey’s claims to Anjou may also in part explain the alacrity with which the Angevin baronage supported the claim of Arthur and Constance against that of John in 1199 on the death of Richard.

  89.GH, I, 297.

  90.GH, I, 297, ‘ut ex post facto apparuit’.

  91.‘D’un sirventes no.m cal farloignor ganda’, ll. 1–8.

  92.Ibid., ll. 9–24; Padern, no. 11, notes to lines 12 and 13. The tower of Mirmanda was part of the castle in Orange, stormed by William in the chanson Prise d’Orange, part of the larger cycle, the Geste de Guillaume d’Orange. See D. Boutet, Le Cycle de Guillaume d’Orange, anthologie (Paris, 1996); and P. E. Bennett, The Cycle of Guillaume d’Orange or Garin de Monglane: a Critical Bibliography (Woodbridge, 2004).

  93.‘D’un sirventes no.m cal farloignor ganda’, ll. 25–32.

  94.GH, I, 297.

  95.GH, I, 297.

  96.Map, 282–3.

  97.Gillingham, Richard I, 67, suggests that his actions ‘bear the marks of a man tormented by uncertainty and doubt’.

  98.GH, I, 298.

  99.GH, I, 298.

  100.GH, I, 298–9.

  101.John Gillingham has plausibly suggested that Howden had been sent from the Limousin to England as one of Henry II’s messengers to order the chapter of Lincoln to elect Walter of Coutances to the bishopric, which would also explain his knowledge of the Young King’s attempt to contest Walter’s election. Howden may have attended the ecclesiastical assembly at Caen on 26 May, or at least had access to good information about it (Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions’, 79–81).

  102.Vigeois, 335, who also notes how the body of St Julian and other saints taken from the destroyed abbey of St Martin’s were translated to St Martial’s.

  103.Vigeois, 335.

  104.HWM, ll. 6459–512, 6513–606.

  105.PR 29 Henry II, 148–9.

  106.Vigeois, 335. Henry II also ordered the confiscation of any lands Geoffrey held in England.

  107.Vigeois, 335.

  108.Commemoratio Abbatum Basilice S. Marcialis, in Chroniques de Saint-Martial de Limoges, ed. H. Duples-Agier (Paris, 1874), 14, ‘ad instar palacii regalis’; Callahan, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Coronation Rite of the Duke of Aquitaine and the Cult of St Martial of Limoges’, 35. By the early thirteenth century, it controlled some 84 dependent houses. See C. de Lasteyrie, L’Abbaye de Saint-Martial de Limoges (Paris, 1901).

  109.Vigeois, 335–6; The Chronicle of Bernard Itier, 52–5, gives the total as 52 marks of gold and 103 of silver.

  110.Vigeois, 335–6; The Chronicle of Bernard Itier, 226–7.

  111.Vigeois, 335–6. Roger of Howden believed that it was Count Geoffrey who, under the guise of a truce to speak with his brother, had plundered the shrine of St Martial, and that the sum taken, ‘according to the estimate of good men’, was 52 marks of gold and 27 marks of silver (GH, I, 299).

  112.‘Ieu chan que.l reys m’en a preguat’ (Padern, no. 14; Gouiran, no. 12), ll. 9–12.

  113.GH, I, 294. Queen Eleanor had remained under comfortable house arrest, and the troubles of 1183 do not seem to have adversely affected the conditions of her confinement (Turner, Eleanor, 243).

  114.PR 29 Henry II, 40, 153–4. Allowances were paid from these monies for the upkeep of Earl Robert and his family; the countess and her daughter received 3 shillings a day for food and clothing. Leicester’s lands were restored a year later (PR 30 Henry II, xxiv).

  115.PR 29 Henry II, 121.

  116.GH, I, 294.

  117.PR 29 Henry II, xxiii, 19, 20, 118, 119, 138, 160.

  118.‘Ieu chan que.l reys m’en a preguat’, ll. 37–42.

  119.GH, I, 299 and n. 2. As Howden had stated clearly that Walter was elected ‘per mandatum regis’, Stubbs’ suggestion is surely correct that a word in Howden’s subsequent text was missing, and that it shoul
d read ‘Quod cum regi filio nunciatum esset [i.e Coutances’ election], respondit quod non permitteret illum esse episcopum in regno suo qui sine ejus consensus et voluntate electus fuit’. Walter was subsequently consecrated at Angers, ‘in the chapel of the lord king and in his presence’, by Archbishop Richard of Canterbury (Torigni, 305).

  120.Map, 280–1.

  121.‘Ieu chan que.l reys m’en a preguat’, ll. 31–6. According to Wace, Roman de Rou, ll. 3925–6, ‘Valie!’ was the war cry of the Angevins.

  122.M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1996), 128–9.

  123.Peter of Blois, Epistolae, letter 69, col. 214: ‘Et unde haec proditoriae factionis iniquitas, ut Andegavensis exercitus, tanquam transfuga et desertor domininum suum in acie hostilitibus cuneis fugiendo exponeret?’

  124.Vigeois, 336, who notes, without further explanation, that Henry II left Limoges after Easter. The king’s movements, however, are difficult to trace, reflecting the absence from his court of Roger of Howden, who gives no information about Henry II’s actions between Easter and the death of the Young King on 11 June.

  125.Vigeois, 336.

  126.Vigeois, 336.

  127.Vigeois, 336. For Henry II’s patronage of the abbey, Hallam, ‘Henry II, Richard I and the Order of Grandmont’, 165–86; Hutchison, The Hermit Monks of Grandmont, 57–62; J. Martin and L. E. M. Walker, ‘At the Feet of St Stephen Muret: Henry II and the Order of Grandmont redivivus’, JMH, 16 (1990), 1–12.

  128.Vigeois, 336.

  129.Thus, for example, John, count of Eu (1140–70), had extorted treasure from his abbey of Le Tréport to meet the heavy costs of the 1166 campaign, when Eu was invaded by the counts of Flanders, Boulogne and Ponthieu (Cartulaire de l’abbaye de St-Michel de Tréport, ed. P. Laffleur de Kermaingant (Paris, 1880), 63–4; HWM, III, 62, note to line 827).

  130.Vigeois, 336; and for Raymond’s involvement, ‘Pois Ventedorns’, l. 2.

  131.‘Ieu chan que.l reys m’en a preguat’, ll. 61–6. Padern, no. 14, note to line 63, reads ‘Champagne’ as an allusion to French mercenaries sent by King Philip, but there seems no reason why it could not refer to the assistance of the count of Champagne himself.

  132.‘Pois Ventedorns’, ll. 17–24.

  133.Map, 280–1.

  134.HWM, ll. 6607–64. It is more than unlikely, however, that King Henry gave the Marshal letters patent giving him ‘absolute leave to fight him, set fire to his property and do all within his power to do’ (ibid., ll. 6657–64).

  135.HWM, ll. 6669–76; CDF, I, no. 35; Torigni, ed. Delisle, II, 121, n. 1; Delville, Tombeaux de la cathédrale de Rouen, 162.

  136.GH, I, 300; Howden, II, 278.

  137.Peter of Blois, Epistolae, no. 47 (wrongly dated 1174) (PL, CCVII, cols 157–41).

  138.GH, I, 303.

  139.Vigeois, 336.

  140.Mason, ‘Rocamadour in Quercy’, 39–54.

  141.Vigeois, 336; Howden, II, 278. The Young King is also said to have taken Durendal, Roland’s famous sword, which, legend had it, had been miraculously transported to Rocamadour from the battlefield at Roncesvalles where Roland had fallen (Norgate, Angevin Kings, II, 226–7, followed by E. Mason, ‘The Hero’s Invincible Weapon: an Aspect of Angevin Propaganda’, The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, III, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Hervey, 121–37, at 126–7). Durendal is not, however, mentioned by Howden in either the Gesta or the Chronica, nor by Vigeois, and there seems no contemporary authority for the story. For Durendal, G. J. Brault, The Song of Roland. An Analytical Edition, 2 vols (University Park, Pa., and London, 1978), I, 252–3.

  142.GH, I, 301–2.

  143.GH, I, 300.

  144.GH, I, 300; Howden, II, 278.

  145.Vigeois, 338.

  Chapter 14: Vir Sanctus

  1.Anthology of Troubadour Lyric Poetry, ed. A. R. Press (Edinburgh, 1971), 24–5 (no. 6).

  2.M. Evans, The Death of Kings. Royal Deaths in Medieval England (London, 2006), 105–15, gives a valuable discussion of the Young King’s death, which is also used as a case study of the problems of constructing ‘la vie affective’ by H. Vollrath, ‘Alénor d’Aquitaine et ses enfants: une relation affective’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages, ed. M. Aurell and N.-Y.Tonnerre (Brepols, 2006), 113–23, at 119–23.

  3.GH, I, 300.

  4.Magistri Thomae Agnelli, Wellensis archidiaconi, Sermo de morte et sepulture Henrici regis junioris (hereafter De morte), in Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (Rolls Series, London, 1875), 265–6; Howden, I, lxvii; Vigeois, 337–8; CDF, I, no. 37. On his own deathbed in 1189, Henry II is said to have given his natural son Geoffrey a ‘very fine golden ring with a leopard, which he greatly treasured (annulum aureum optimum cum pantera, quam valde carum habebat)’, and which he had originally intended to send to his son-in-law, Alfonso of Castile (Gerald, De vita Gaufridi, 371).

  5.Torigni, 306; Evans, The Death of Kings, 109.

  6.Torigni, 306; GH, I, 301.

  7.GH, I, 300.

  8.Torigni, 305; Vigeois, 336, ‘justo Dei judicio percussus’; WN, I, 233, noting that ‘by the judgment of God’ he was attacked by a fever, ‘the avenger of both his faithless acts’.

  9.Map, 280–1.

  10.This tympanum is illustrated in J. Evans, Art in Medieval France, 987–1498 (London, 1948), plate 248, where it is given a mid-twelfth-century date. Bishop Hugh of Lincoln was said to have drawn the attention of the newly crowned King John to the figures of the damned on the tympanum of Fontevraud abbey as a warning to rule justly (Adam of Eynsham, The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. D. Farmer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1961–1962), II, 140–1, and for wider context, A. Musson, ‘Controlling Human Behaviour? The Last Judgment in Late Medieval Art and Architecture’, Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England, ed. A. D. Boboc (Leiden, 2015), 166–91).

  11.HWM, ll. 6884. For approaches to death and the ars moriendi see D. Crouch, ‘The Troubled Deathbeds of Henry I’s Servants: Death, Confession and Secular Conduct in the Twelfth Century’, Albion, 34 (2002), 24–36; and idem, ‘The Culture of Death in the Anglo-Norman World’, Anglo- Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. C. W. Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), 157–80.

  12.Howden, II, 278–9. The Angevin chroniclers were anxious to stress that he had performed penance in the presence of, and been shriven by, men of suitable piety. Thus, for example, Ralph Niger, Chronicle, 93, noted that he died ‘sub testimonio sanctorum virorum, in sancta devotione’, and Torigni, 305, recorded his absolution ‘a quodam sanctissimo episcopo et multis aliis’.

  13.Vigeois, 337.

  14.Howden, II, 279.

  15.Howden, II, 279; Vigeois, 336–7. Examination of the tomb of the Young King’s sister Eleanor at the Castilian royal mausoleum at Las Huelgas revealed that a number of richly decorated cushions had been placed at her feet and her head (M. Gómez-Moreno, El Pantéon Real de las Huelgas de Burgos (Madrid, 1946), 27, 68, 87–8).

  16.Evans, The Death of Kings, 110.

  17.William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum, I, 438–9, who has Fulk cry, ‘Reject not, O Lord, Thy piteous servant Fulk, Thy perjurer, Thy renegade. Accept a penitent soul, Lord Jesus Christ’. For the context of Fulk’s contrition, see B. Bachrach, ‘The Pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra, count of the Angevins, 987–1040’, Religion, Culture and Society in the Early Middle Ages (Studies in Medieval Culture, xxiii, Kalamazoo, Mich., 1987), 205–17.

  18.Suger, Vie de Louis, 284.

  19.De morte, 266–7. Nevertheless, when young Henry respectfully bowed to the wishes of clergy, the ring could not be removed, a sign of divine recognition of his father’s forgiveness (ibid., 267).

  20.HWM, ll. 6891–2, ‘son testament qu’il fist bien e menbreement’. The History, l. 6968, again refers to the Young King’s ‘testement’, including his bequests and instructions as to his burial.

  21.Howden, II, 279. The future Louis VII had promised his elder b
rother Philip that he would complete his unfulfilled vow to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a pledge which it was claimed was among the chief reasons that Louis went on crusade; Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, ed. and trans. V. G. Berry (1948), 6–7; Pacaut, Louis VII, 47.

  22.HWM, ll. 6891–905.

  23.Vigeois, 337.

  24.Vigeois, 338.

  25.Torigni, 307.

  26.William de Mandeville, for example, who died in Normandy and whose body could not be transported back to his family foundation at Walden because of the danger of winter storms, had his heart sent there, but his body was buried at the abbey of Mortemer (Foundation of Walden, 84, n. 64). For the division of the corpse, see E.A. R. Brown, ‘Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: Boniface VIII and Legislation on the Division of the Corpse’, Viator, 12 (1981), 221–70; D. Westerhof, Death and the Noble Body in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2008); and I. Warntjes, ‘Programmatic Double Burial (Body and Heart) of the European High Nobility, c.1200–1400. Its Origin, Geography, and Functions’, Death at Court, ed. K. H. Spiess and I. Warntjes (Wiesbaden 2012), 197–259.

  27.Rouen, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime, G 3569 (3); CDF, I, no. 38; and above, ch. 2, n. 162; Howden, I, lxvii; Vigeois, 338; HWM, ll. 69671–73.

  28.Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 71, f. 118v.

  29.HWM, ll. 6912–15.

  30.Howden, II, 279.

  31.GH, I, 300, ‘quod unicuique quod promeruerat, servitia sua solveret’.

  32.GH, I, 301; Diceto, II, 19.

  33.Diceto, II, 19. For Anglo-Norman prejudice against the inhabitants of Aquitaine reflected in Ralph’s comment, Gillingham, ‘Events and Opinions’, 58–65.

  34.Diceto, II, 20.

  35.Vigeois, 338.

  36.Howden, II, 367; De principis, III: 28.

  37.Vigeois, 338; and for Theobald, E. Kartusch, Das Kardinalskollegium in der Zeit von 1181–1227 (Wien, 1948), no. 105.

  38.Vigeois, 338; GH, I, 300: Howden, II, 280. Howden believed that the Young King’s familiares had buried his entrails and brain at Martel, but Vigeois’ better-informed testimony is to be preferred.