The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  MIDDLE AGE:

  A LORD OF THE REALM

  7

  A KING’S WARRIOR

  William Marshal returned from the Holy Land in either late 1185 or early 1186, and presented himself before Henry II in Normandy. The Old King held to his promise and appointed William to the royal household. Having spent long years in the entourage of a king with no realm to rule, Marshal now found himself, on the brink of his fortieth year, at the very heart of the Angevin world. William’s days of grand martial display on the tournament field were over. His duty now was to offer direct service to Henry II, commanding troops in the field and fighting when necessary, proffering sage counsel and steadfast support. This immensely privileged position placed Marshal at the side of the most powerful man in Europe, bringing with it a new level of influence and access to crown favour.

  The appointment soon brought rewards in the form of land and title, and enabled William to start building up his own inner circle of loyal personal retainers and knights. Marshal’s status also meant that he had to maintain a near-constant presence at the royal court. William’s former lord, the Young King Henry, had enjoyed an extravagant life style, but had also felt the nagging burden of his debts. The regal splendour of the Old King’s court left his late son’s profligacy in the shade. Henry II lived in majesty, surrounded by hundreds of fawning courtiers, each thirsting for advancement. As a hardened warrior, William Marshal had risen to the top of Europe’s tournament circuit. The question was whether he could now adapt to this new environment, navigating his way through the rarefied atmosphere of the Angevin court?

  THE ANGEVIN ROYAL COURT

  Henry II’s court was a grand travelling circus. Confronted by the challenge of governing a sprawling Angevin Empire that straddled the Channel, the Old King had chosen not to proclaim any one city as his capital. Instead he became the archetypal itinerant monarch, forever touring his domains, administering crown justice in his ‘court’ and manifesting royal might throughout the provinces. Without a stable seat of power, it became customary for virtually the entire machinery of government to follow in his wake as he criss-crossed the realm. Thus the court became bloated with an army of officials, clerks, servants, retainers and barons – the largest institution of its kind in Europe. This heaving entourage could fill fifty ships when it crossed from England to France. One courtier likened it to a ‘hundred-handed giant’, declaring that ‘no such court like it has been heard of in the past or is to be feared again in the future’.

  William had gained some experience of the Angevin court from his time with the Young King, but the sheer scale and chaotic hustle of this throng must have been bewildering. Marshal was also exposed to the opulence of Henry II’s crown residences, where he could enjoy comforts unimagined by the masses. The ancient seat of royal power in England was Winchester and its palace housed the king’s inner-sanctum – his ‘Painted Chamber’ – where the Old King would recline upon his state bed to receive distinguished visitors. It was said that one wall of this room had been painted, in mocking reference to Henry’s wayward sons, with a fresco depicting a great eagle being ripped to pieces by its four offspring.

  The newer royal palace at Westminster, then on the outskirts of London, was challenging for pre-eminence. Its centrepiece was the massive Great Hall constructed at the end of the eleventh century – at 240 feet in length, easily the largest hall in north-western Europe. Most of the royal complex at Westminster burned down in a fire in 1834, but the Great Hall remains standing to this day and its looming expanse is still overwhelming. Henry II maintained a string of other palaces across his domains. His preferred residence in Normandy was the royal estate at Quévilly, across the Seine from Rouen, complete with its own private hunting park. Elsewhere, the palace at Clarendon, in Wiltshire, consisted of a series of private royal apartments surrounding a central stone and flint-walled hall, its roof held aloft by Purbeck marble pillars and its walls covered in plaster dyed blue with powdered lapis lazuli, sourced from as far afield as Afghanistan.

  The twelfth century marked the start of a decisive shift across Europe towards the use of stone, rather than wood, in building and construction. This brought numerous advantages, not least the ability to create fireplaces and chimneys that were much more efficient and effective than central fires and open roofs. But stone structures literally cost hundreds of times more than their wooden precursors, and only the king and a handful of his wealthiest magnates could countenance such expense. Financial records show, for example, that the late twelfth-century timber hunting lodge built at Kinver in central England cost just over £24. By contrast, Henry II’s majestic stone tower at Orford (on England’s east coast), complete with a private royal bedchamber and an en-suite privy, cost £1,000. Most staggering of all was the mighty stone keep at Dover Castle – known as the Great Tower – that boasted its own advanced plumbing system, with lead pipes drawing fresh water from a well dug hundreds of feet into the chalk below. Its construction was just being completed when William joined the Old King’s household, for a total cost of some £6,500.

  Within these luxurious settings, Marshal was treated to the finest foods, drinks and entertainments. Some of the more exotic fare – such as crane, swan and peacock – required a refined palate, and the scale of consumption was mind-boggling. Royal accounts show that in 1180 the court went through 1,000 pounds of almonds in London alone. William and his fellow courtiers also drank vast quantities of beer and wine, with the latter being transported in giant 252-gallon wooden casks. One contemporary remarked that English wine ‘could only be drunk with your eyes closed and your teeth clenched’, so it was fortunate that Henry’s Aquitanean estates gave him access to the celebrated vineyards of Bordeaux and Poitou.

  The itinerant Angevin court attracted minstrels, musicians and story tellers, happy to regale the crowds with mannered tales of chivalric prowess, drawn from the myth-historic world of King Arthur and his knights. Less earnest amusements were also on offer. One courtier noted that Henry II’s entourage was followed by a disreputable gaggle of hangers-on, ranging from harlots, dicers and confidence tricksters, to barbers and clowns. A famous jester, known as Roland the Farter, earned particular renown because he was able to jump in the air, whistle and pass wind at the same time. In England and Normandy at least, court prostitutes were carefully regulated, and Ranulf of Broc and Baldric FitzGilbert held the office of ‘marshal of the whores’ in these two localities.

  William’s life at court was also unusual in that it regularly continued well into the night and the hours of darkness. In the twelfth century most people had to confine the bulk of their activities to the daylight hours as wax or tallow candles were simply too expensive to burn on a daily basis. The Angevin court consumed an extraordinary quantity of candles, and each member of the royal household received a fixed allowance. Walter Map was playing on this theme of nocturnal activity when he described Henry II’s courtiers as the ‘creatures of the night’, alluding to what he regarded as their more unsavoury habits and damning them as men ‘who leave nothing untouched and untried’.

  The courtly life

  The Angevin court offered William manifold luxuries, delights and enticements, but it was also a place of danger and insecurity – a viper’s nest of gossip, intrigue and duplicity, where a single misstep or ill-chosen word could threaten ruin. Indeed, one courtier likened it to a Hell, littered with ‘the foul trailings of worms [and] serpents, and all manner of creeping things’. The prize, yearned after by all, was access to the king – to his ear and favour – because royal patronage could transform one’s fortunes. The example set by Thomas Becket in the 1150s proved that Henry II had it in his gift to turn a relative unknown, of middling or even low birth, into one of the richest and most powerful figures in the realm. In theory, at least, the court was highly stratified, with only the elite inner circle – of which Marshal was now on the fringe – permitted regular contact with the Old King. But the alarming feature of Angevin court was
its unpredictability. Its sheer size, constant mobility and ever-changing personnel made it, in the words of Walter Map, a ‘perilous whirl . . . fluctuating and variable’, in which it was simply impossible to remember everyone’s name and station.

  William Marshal’s task in 1186 was to mark the most important players – the great magnates and clergymen, the leading clerks and officers – and to move with exceptional caution. At knightly tournaments he had been expected to conform to the emerging code of chivalry. Now, success depended on his ability to interpret and absorb the unwritten rules of the court; to be able to follow the precepts of ‘courtesie’ (‘courtesy’, or quite literally ‘how to behave at court’). Those found in the upper echelons of the Angevin court were generally either of knightly or clerical background. As a member of the warrior class, William did have some natural advantages. His acknowledged status as a preudhomme – a man of virtue, worthy of respect – weighed in his favour and, at times of military conflict, he could continue to reaffirm his value to the king through feats of arms. This would prove to be particularly significant during the turmoil of the Old King’s final years.

  Even so, most leading courtiers were prized first and foremost not for their physical prowess, but their measured advice and trusted guidance on matters of state. To earn Henry’s respect and gain his ear, Marshal needed to prove his worth as a counsellor and confidante. The ideals of ‘courtesie’ current in the 1180s meant that, to achieve this goal, William had, above all, to be impassive; capable of maintaining an icy, ironclad grip on his feelings. Excessive public displays of emotion (especially anger) were frowned upon as indicators of an intemperate and unbalanced personality, and any advice proffered by such a figure might be easily discredited as hasty or unwise. Rivals for the king’s affection often sought to goad the unwary through insults – some veiled, others blatant – in the hope of provoking an enraged outburst. Not surprisingly, many hot-blooded knights, born to the battlefield, struggled to achieve this mannered control.

  William had experience of mixing with men of power – as a tournament champion he had been on speaking terms with the likes of Philip of Flanders and Theobald of Blois since the late 1170s – and the scandal of 1182 had given him a bitter taste of courtly machinations, but nothing can have prepared him for the scale and complexity of the challenge he now faced. Nonetheless, over time he learnt to navigate the quagmire of courtly customs and politics, and proved to be a remarkably successful courtier. He possessed a rare ability to thrive both in war and at court. Marshal seems to have gradually developed a form of emotional armour, allowing him to present an imperturbable public face. This glacial calm would serve him well in the latter stages of his career.

  William also appears to have diffused the tension of ‘courtly’ confrontations by recounting disarming anecdotes from his past. This was where the oft-repeated tales of his time as a child hostage, or his various tournament triumphs, came into their own. Each carefully crafted story affirmed Marshal’s laudable qualities: his ability to charm King Stephen in 1152 or to earn the triumphal spear at the Pleurs tournament around 1177. But at the same time any hint of prideful boasting was countered by notes of humour and self-deprecation: the young boy spurned by his father or the champion found with his head on a blacksmith’s anvil. In relative terms these were simple, but effective, stories – hardly the masterpieces of veiled subterfuge employed by men such as the likes of Walter Map, where everything was implied and nothing said openly.

  It would be naive to assume that William’s conduct as a courtier was thoroughly admirable. In truth, it was probably impossible to climb through the ranks as he did without a degree of obsequious duplicity and scheming ambition. To thrive in the shark-pool of the Angevin court one had to manage an array of shifting alliances, and engage in a delicate dance of nuanced flattery and guarded insinuation. As his career advanced, William would take great care not to make powerful enemies and to avoid alienating those who might further his interests in the future. Indeed, one of Richard the Lionheart’s favourites, the plain-speaking William Longchamp, would later accuse Marshal of just such conniving equivocation. Nonetheless, at moments of crisis, when the hardest choices had to be made, William would prove to be a remarkably loyal retainer and servant of the crown. Ultimately, it was perhaps his well-earned reputation for unfailing fidelity that brought Marshal to the notice of successive monarchs.

  The psychological strain of holding a mask of placid ‘courtly’ composure, while constantly weighing the intentions of rivals, must have been immense. There was perhaps some relief to be had from finding former associates at court; men who had followed a similar path from the Young King’s military entourage to Henry’s household, such as Robert Tresgoz, Gerard Talbot and Baldwin of Béthune. Marshal certainly cultivated close friendships with a handful of trusted confidants like Baldwin. He also forged an important alliance with another rising figure in the Angevin court, Geoffrey FitzPeter. Like William, Geoffrey was the younger son of a minor West Country crown official, but he had pursued the clerical, rather than knightly career path, and was fast achieving distinction as an administrator and bureaucrat. However, it was perhaps only in the company of his own inner circle – his mesnie (military retinue) – that Marshal could actually drop his guard, and as the years passed, this must have served to deepen his relationship with, and dependence upon, these retainers.

  WITH THE KING’S FAVOUR

  As William Marshal found his bearings within the Angevin court, gratifying evidence of Henry II’s favour was soon forthcoming. During his thirteen years of service in the Young King Henry’s entourage, William’s hopes of gaining advancement through title and land had been constantly thwarted. His own fortune and fame had depended, in large part, upon continued success on the tournament circuit, but these chivalric contests could be dangerous and unpredictable. They were a young man’s game and Marshal was now entering his forties.

  Luckily for William, the Old King was not merely a monarch in name. He wielded real power and could shower his favourites with gifts. Nonetheless, even an august ruler of Henry’s stature could not simply dole out estates and honours on a whim. In 1066, when William the Conqueror’s Norman forces ransacked England and dispatched the vast majority of its Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, virtually the entire realm had reverted to the crown. In the first wave of Norman settlement and colonisation, these newly seized territories could then be parcelled out as King William saw fit, along with an array of titles and offices. When the pickings were this rich it was easy to satisfy ambitions, and the Conqueror was able to retain a vast quantity of land for himself and still have more than enough left over to transform his leading retainers into great magnates.

  More than a century had passed since those heady days. Patterns of landholding, lordship and entitlement had become established and then ingrained, while the king’s own estates had been slowly whittled away. Laws and customs had evolved to protect many of the nobility’s rights, though there was a constant tension between the interests of the crown and the expectations of his aristocracy. By the later twelfth century, in most cases, land and title could not be stripped and redistributed without good cause. There had been opportunities for fresh conquests in Wales and Ireland, and some remained, but for the most part, kings wishing to reward loyalty and allegiance had either to work on the margins through legal channels, or to forfeit a portion of their own royal lands.

  It was this latter approach that Henry II employed in 1186 when granting William Marshal his first estate at Cartmel in north-west England – a handsome parcel of Lancashire land, set between the majestic shores of Lake Windermere (at the foot of the Lake District) and the windswept-coast at Morecambe Bay to the south. This was a modest enough start, but it brought William an annual income of £32 and gave him a firm foundation from which to build. Around this same time, the Old King made use of another significant royal prerogative to bring Marshal further reward. It was traditional for young male and female noble-born heirs to
become wards of the crown if their lands were held directly from the king. Henry II had it in his gift to confer guardianship of such wards as he saw fit, and two were now bestowed upon William.

  The first of these brought Marshal wardship of Heloise of Lancaster. Since her father’s death in 1184, she had been heiress of Kendal, one of the major lordships in northern England, with lands stretching across Westmoreland, Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire and control of a number of castles. Given that Kendal lay just fifteen miles north-east of Cartmel, there was an obvious connection with William’s new estate. In formal terms, Marshal had a duty as her guardian to protect Heloise’s interests and to care for her person, and the History was keen to emphasise that he discharged this role, keeping the ‘lady of Lancaster, [a woman of] great elegance . . . from dishonour for a long time’. At a practical level, however, this wardship was a valuable gift. So long as Heloise remained unwed, William could control and exploit her lands for his own benefit. As guardian, it was also his responsibility to arrange her marriage and this meant that he could either wed her himself or use the promise of her hand to secure other advantages.

  This might seem like a desperately seedy and mercenary arrangement, but in many ways it suited all parties. Heloise obviously had little say in her future, but she was at least shielded from harm and could expect to retain a direct claim to her family lands, while Henry II was able to discharge his responsibility for the lordship of Kendal and reward his new household knight. Of course, the main beneficiary was William. He now had the promise of significant advancement, but also the opportunity to shape his own future. Marshal could have jumped at the opportunity that now stood before him, marrying Heloise, uniting his Cartmel estate with the Kendal lands and assuming the role of a noteworthy northern baron. That seems to have been the Old King’s expectation. As it was, William proved content to bide his time. So long as the lady of Lancaster remained living and healthy the option of a marriage remained, but he decided for now to leave the door open to other, even rosier, prospects.