The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  Nonetheless, the question of Young Henry’s status remained unresolved, and by the autumn of 1182 his patience was running thin. In a move calculated to alert the Old King to his wavering allegiance, Henry made a formal visit with his wife Marguerite to King Philip in Paris, and then issued a demand for the duchy of Normandy. The same problems that had underpinned the Young King’s rebellion a decade earlier now resurfaced. In the words of one chronicler, Henry sought territory ‘in which he and his wife might take up their abode’, but also added that the Young King wished to own land ‘from which he might pay his knights and servants for their services’. This suggests that, in spite of their tournament successes, William Marshal and the other members of Henry’s mesnie may well have been pressurising their lord for further reward. As always, the Old King prevaricated, merely promising Henry a renewed allowance of 100 Angevin pounds per day (plus a rather measly ten for Queen Marguerite) and the service of an additional 100 knights.

  What made this all the more galling was that the Young King’s brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, were thriving. Both were now grown men, governing the territories of Aquitaine and Brittany in their own name. Richard, in particular, was garnering a formidable reputation. He would come to be known by the nickname ‘Cœur de Lion’ or the ‘Lionheart’ and later play a critical role in William Marshal’s career. Deprived of his mother Queen Eleanor’s influence and guidance since 1174, Richard had nonetheless held his own in the south. In physical terms he bore some resemblance to his elder sibling, though it was always Henry who possessed the easy good looks. A chronicler who knew Richard personally wrote of his ‘tall, elegant build’, adding that ‘the colour of his hair was between red and gold [and] his limbs were supple and straight’. But in temperament, Richard differed from the Young King. He shared more of his father’s mercurial energy, was at once cultured and learned yet readier to resort to violence, even casual brutality, and he showed little interest in the knightly pageantry of the tournament. Some of these qualities perhaps emerged in response to the incessant demands of pacifying Aquitaine, but Richard had proven himself to be up to the task. Through hard-nosed military campaigning, siege warfare and destructive raiding, he was busily thrashing his independent-minded subjects into submission, and finding the time to eye territory to the north in neighbouring Anjou, the county to which Young Henry held rights.

  As the Young King’s brothers grew in stature, an obvious, but troublesome question came more into focus: would the Angevin Empire endure beyond Henry II’s death? Or would Brittany and Aquitaine become fully fledged, independent territories? This divisive issue served only to inflame Young Henry’s nagging anxieties. For close to three decades, his father had stood as overlord of the realm, at the head of the Angevin world. When the Young King finally came into his inheritance, he naturally expected to enjoy this same, pre-eminent status. He was, after all, his father’s eldest son and primary heir – an anointed king. Surely it was only right that he should stand above his younger brothers; be able to call on their allegiance and expect their subservience. Just as naturally, Duke Richard and Count Geoffrey held a rather different view of the future; one in which any formal sense of empire would die with the Old King, leaving them free to govern their domains – the lands which they sweated over and shed blood to hold – as autonomous lords. The wrangling over this thorny issue, and Young Henry’s renewed focus on the issue of his position, would draw William Marshal back into the arena of high politics.

  The path to a second rebellion

  In Young Henry’s eyes, the Old King remained frustratingly evasive on the subject of the empire, equivocating just as he did over the duchy of Normandy. Henry II was now almost fifty – a man entering his twilight years – yet he showed no sign of loosening his grip on the levers of power. By the second half of 1182, the Young King had waited long enough. He wanted clear answers and definitive action. It is not known whether he sought the advice of leading retainers like Marshal and Robert Tresgoz, or formulated a plan of action on his own, but Henry certainly resolved to place his father in a position where choices could no longer be avoided or postponed. First, Young Henry declared that he was considering a crusade to the Holy Land. Crusading was viewed as an act of knightly virtue and Christian piety. It was customary for those planning such a campaign to make a ritualised crusading vow – a formal promise to God of their intent – and to ‘take the cross’ by sewing a simple cloth crucifix on their cloak or clothing as a visible symbol of their crusader status and an affirmation of their resolve. In the autumn of 1182, Young Henry announced his intention to take these two steps and thus make a formal commitment to crusade in the East.

  In some respects, this decision was hardly surprising. Calls for aid from the embattled Latin Christian settlers in the Levant were becoming increasingly desperate. Henry also had a close family connection to the Christian rulers of the Holy Land: his great-grandfather, Fulk of Anjou, had become king of Jerusalem in 1131, establishing a bloodline that still held. Jerusalem was now ruled by Fulk’s enfeebled grandson, King Baldwin IV – a tragic figure who had contracted leprosy as a child – while, by contrast, the Muslims of the Near East were uniting under the rule of Saladin, a fearsome Kurdish warlord. The future survival of the crusader states thus hung in the balance.

  The Young King’s crusading impulse also had clear precedent. King Henry II had himself frequently promised to lead a crusade to the East, though as yet those vows remained unredeemed. As a king struggling to govern the great Angevin realm, Henry constantly protested his inability to leave Europe, and instead sent money to help pay for Jerusalem’s defence. Count Philip of Flanders had actually followed through on a crusading vow taken in 1175, travelling to the Levant in the summer of 1177 at the head of a sizeable military contingent and fighting in Syria. At one level then, Young Henry’s suggestion that he too might answer the call to crusade made perfect sense. But his declaration also sent the Old King a clear message. Should his requests remain unanswered and the future of the Angevin Empire unresolved, the Young King might be forced to seek a different future in the Holy Land – perhaps even to pursue a claim to the Jerusalemite crown. That would leave Henry II’s precious plans for the succession in ruins and shatter the finely tuned balance of power with Capetian France.

  With his crusading project still under discussion, Henry the Young King eyed a more direct means to force Henry II’s hand, one that would play out far closer to home. As the Old King refused to give him lands of his own or to confirm his pre-eminence, Young Henry might have to take power for himself and thereby prove that he stood above his brothers. Aquitaine seemed to be a likely target. The sprawling province remained prone to unrest, and much of its populace saw Richard as a brutish tyrant. Even English chroniclers admitted that he ‘oppressed his subjects with unjustified demands and a regime of violence’ and acknowledged that ‘the great nobles of Aquitaine hated him because of his great cruelty’. Indeed, one shocked contemporary stated that Richard routinely ‘carried off his subjects’ wives, daughters and kinswomen by force and made them his concubines’, later handing them on to his men to enjoy.

  William Marshal had a well-established familiarity with this region dating back to 1168, but the Young King also knew the depth of the Aquitanians’ antipathy from first-hand experience. The spring and summer of 1182 had seen Richard fighting yet another string of campaigns in Angoulême and, further south, in Périgord. Henry II had come to his son’s aid and later summoned the Young King to join the war effort. Young Henry obliged, marching through Aquitaine with William Marshal and the rest of his military household, to arrive at the siege of Puy-St-Front in Périgord on 1 July. In the face of this overwhelming concentration of Angevin might, the locals reluctantly sued for peace.

  However, the Young King also used this visit to establish links with a number of local nobles, surreptitiously forging a loose network of connections and alliances, testing the water. It was clear that many Aquitanians were eager to throw off t
he yoke of Richard’s rule, and Young Henry could easily present himself as the man who might bring justice to the province, especially in aristocratic circles. After all, he was the grandiose hero of countless tournaments, a famed paragon of chivalry and the lord of renowned knights like William Marshal. It was perhaps with a view to cultivating this image of regal magnificence and honourable piety among a wider audience that Henry travelled to Limoges – the scene of his first open rift with the Old King in 1173 – to visit the revered Abbey of St Martial. There he received a joyous welcome from ‘the monks, the clergy and the people’ and then made a special gift to signal his devoted patronage: a majestic cloak, wrought of the finest materials, and richly embroidered with the legend Rex Henricus – King Henry.

  In spite of the summer’s campaigning, open resistance to Richard’s authority resurfaced in the autumn of 1182. Young Henry sensed his opportunity. A number of Aquitanian nobles were already encouraging him to intervene and release them from oppression. If he answered their call, he could argue that he was pursuing a just cause, snatch the duchy from Richard and leave his father no option but to acknowledge his standing. The question was whether the Young King had the stomach to wage open war against his brother.

  But then, just at the moment that Henry was weighing up these momentous choices – when he most needed the steadfast support and measured guidance of his trusted household knights – a dreadful rumour reached the Young King’s ears. He had been cuckolded. One of his warriors was bedding Queen Marguerite, his wife. And most shockingly of all, the man accused of this heinous crime was none other than William Marshal.

  6

  THE QUESTION OF LOYALTY

  William Marshal’s betrayal remains shrouded in uncertainty and mystery. It was only recorded in his biography, the History of William Marshal, yet given that its author decided to include a record of these events, and to address the accusations, it seems certain that a grave rift did occur. According to the History, a faction within Young Henry’s military household became jealous of William’s preferred status: envying the renown he had gained, the wealth he had accrued and, perhaps above all, his constant proximity to the Young King.

  Five conspirators supposedly decided to engineer Marshal’s downfall, hatching a ‘treacherous plot’ to ‘sow discord between [William] and his lord’. The biographer stated that he could only name two of the men responsible. They were Adam of Yquebeuf, a Norman knight who, like Marshal, had been a core member of Henry’s mesnie since the early 1170s, but who had not enjoyed the same storied tournament career; and a newer arrival, Thomas of Coulonces. Both had fought at the great Lagny tournament in 1179. William’s biographer refused to reveal the identity of the remaining three plotters because their relatives were still alive when the History was written in the 1220s, but he did later specify that one of them – perhaps even the ringleader – was the Young King’s seneschal (the officer in charge of administering the household), and this office was held by Peter FitzGuy in the 1170s, so this may be the third man.

  The accusations levelled against Marshal took two forms. First, it was suggested that William was brazenly acting above his station, stealing the limelight and thereby usurping honour and renown due to the Young King. Not only had Marshal assembled his own military retinue, he was also said to have employed a herald, Henry ‘li Norreis’ (‘the Northerner’), who would proudly strut through the lists before a tournament proclaiming the war-cry ‘Dex aïe lei Marschal’ (‘God for the Marshal’) – a rather cheeky and ill-advised extension of Young Henry’s own chant ‘Dex aïe’. The description of William’s second supposed crime was more direct. It was said that he had been ‘fornicating with the queen’ (‘il le fait a la reïne’), or more literally, that he had been ‘doing it to the queen’.

  The five conspirators apparently moved with great care once they decided to blacken Marshal’s name. Deeming it too risky simply to go directly to the Young King, they slowly began spreading their rumours within the household, trying to insinuate, without themselves being caught in an open allegation. Peter of Préaux, one of the five Préaux brothers in the mesnie, heard these early whispers and immediately warned William ‘to be very much on his guard’, urging him to take pre-emptive action by speaking to Henry ‘before the [Young King] should show him any hatred’, but Marshal refused to do so. Eventually, Adam, Thomas and the other plotters found a proxy to do their dirty work – a young intimate of the king named Ralph Farci. Ralph was invited to a small gathering, plied with copious amounts of alcohol and, in the course of the evening, the tale of Marshal’s crimes was retold. The seed had been sewn. That same night, while still drunk, Ralph took the rumour to Henry, and though the Young King refused at first to believe such scurrilous hearsay, when each of the five conspirators came forward to say that ‘the matter was well known, heard of by people and actually seen’, the story began to gain purchase.

  Young Henry still seems to have harboured doubts. He reacted neither with blind rage, nor violence. Instead, he simply began to treat William with cold detachment. In the rarefied atmosphere of a royal household, where public demonstrations of favour were critical to a retainer’s status, this sudden change in disposition was damaging enough. As the History reported, ‘the king was very upset and ill-disposed towards the Marshal’, refusing to speak to him. It was soon obvious to all that William was no longer ‘cherished by the king or in such a position of influence’, and evident that instead, Henry ‘hated him with all his heart’.

  The case against William

  Could William Marshal really have been guilty of these crimes? The accusations of prideful arrogance and vain display are more than plausible, though William’s actual intent may not have been malicious. Marshal was not the only knight-banneret to serve in the Young King’s entourage, but he was now one of the fêted celebrities of the tournament circuit, and he seems to have relished the renown and fame that victory brought. Having risen at an extraordinary pace from relatively humble origins, it was almost inevitable that, to some, he might seem a social upstart – a mere knight, trying to step out beyond Young Henry’s shadow.

  William lived in an aristocratic society fascinated by knightly culture and chivalric ideals. In this world, there was a natural tension between a lord or king and his knight. Each might display estimable virtues – the Young King was revered for his largesse; Marshal for his prowess. But which quality took precedence? If a knight was actually a better warrior than his lord, did that make him more worthy of praise? This question did not just apply to William and Young Henry. It was one of the simmering social dilemmas of the day, and would be repeatedly rehearsed and explored in the chivalric ‘Romances’ – the popular fiction of the late twelfth century. These epic stories of knightly endeavour and courtly intrigue, often set in the Arthurian world, evolved out of the earlier chanson de geste and were just then starting to grip the imaginations of noble courts across Europe. Not surprisingly, their fictionalised plots and characters often reflected their audience’s real-life concerns, and one of the central dynamics of Arthur’s relationship with Lancelot was the question of pre-eminence between a king and his leading knight. The accusation that William was somehow competing with his lord and comporting himself with unseemly grandeur was understandable given this obsession with the contest for renown. In fact, it is perhaps a testament to the strength of Henry and Marshal’s friendship through the 1170s that this inherent tension had not caused an earlier rift.

  What of Marshal’s illicit affair with the queen? Is it conceivable that William could have carried out such an act of betrayal? The affair might have been driven by lust or love, with Marguerite perhaps irresistibly drawn to Marshal by his famed prowess. After all, in the world of courtly literature, the tension between characters like Arthur and Lancelot often culminated in adultery – with Guinevere choosing the great knight over her husband the king – and this plot was echoed in a number of Romance stories already circulating in that period. The power of sexual desire
to shape human behaviour was well understood in this period. The medieval Church sought to promote the sanctity of celibacy, warning that sex out of wedlock was a deadly sin. Even within marriage, intercourse was proscribed: being permissible only in pursuit of procreation, not physical pleasure, and strictly forbidden on feast days or fast days – of which there were more than 200 per year.

  But for all that, many of the men and women living in twelfth-century Europe had a surprisingly frank and natural approach to sex. Regular lovemaking was thought by some to be essential for the maintenance of good health, and sexual pleasure was also encouraged, especially for women, because it was widely believed that procreation could only occur when a woman experienced an orgasm. Bawdy entertainments were also popular. It was in William Marshal’s lifetime that the humorous poems known as fabliaux came into vogue. They typically dealt with tales of sexual conquest or misadventure, made use of toe-curlingly explicit language and, by the 1180s, were all the rage in the aristocratic circles of northern France.

  It is also the case that, in William’s world, male adultery was commonplace – indeed, most noble-born men were expected, as a matter of course, to have mistresses, and some chroniclers actually expressed amazement at the very idea that a lord might stay faithful to his wife. King Henry II had a number of well-known mistresses, including ‘Fair’ Rosamund Clifford and the Welsh noblewoman Nest Bloet. It was also rumoured that Henry took King Philip II’s half-sister Alice of France as a mistress, even though she had been betrothed to his son Richard. Nobles serving in the king’s household were not expected to see their wives, instead official royal whores catered for their sexual needs.

  Adultery initiated by a noble-born woman, however, was a different matter – a rare and scandalous occurrence. Nonetheless, it was not unheard of – Queen Eleanor herself had been accused of pursuing an incestuous affair with her uncle during the Second Crusade. The treatise on courtly manners authored by Daniel of Beccles towards the end of the twelfth century offers a glimpse of the mores of the day. Beccles was not at all surprised that noble ladies might be possessed by lust – like many contemporaries, he believed that women possessed an insatiable sexual appetite; he also thought it only natural that they would find well-endowed men irresistible. In light of this, he helpfully offered two pieces of advice to knights trying to fend off the sexual advances of their lord’s wife: first, pretend to be ill; second, never, under any circumstances, tell your lord. Walter Map also related the rather salacious story of a queen who lusted after a handsome young knight at court named Galo. One of the warrior’s friends tried to solve the problem by suggesting to the queen that Galo was actually a eunuch, but she promptly sent one of her ladies-in-waiting to seduce him with strict instructions to ‘put her finger on the spot [and] bring back word of whether he was man or no’.