But she had also made another decision. To govern the realm as it needed to be governed and to preserve it for her son, she had to have someone who was not only firm and capable but disinterested and, above all, uncommitted. He must also be someone who spoke her language and whom she found personally sympathetic. In all Sicily, it appeared, no such paragon existed. Very well, she would look elsewhere. New situations called for new men to handle them. Secretly, she wrote a long letter to her cousin2 Rothrud, Archbishop
1 Though Matthew's church, known as the Magione, was badly damaged during the second world war, it had been sensitively restored and is well worth a visit. With its three apses, its blind and interlaced arcading and the lovely cloister that adjoins it, it provides an excellent example of later Norman-Sicilian architecture, shorn of all obvious Arabic influences. With the fall of the Norman Kingdom at the end of the century, the church and neighbouring convent were given over to the military order of the Teutonic Knights, traces of whose occupancy are still visible. Most guidebooks, incidentally, give the date of the original construction as 115 o; in fact it was almost certainly begun a good decade later, and finished during Queen Margaret's regency.
2 Not her uncle, as Chalandon maintains—see genealogical table on p. 395.
of Rouen, explaining her situation and suggesting that he might send some member of their family out to Palermo to help her. Two names she mentioned in particular: Rothrud's brother Robert of Newburgh or, failing him, another cousin—Stephen du Perche.
That the Queen's anxieties for the future were justified, the next few months were all too clearly to show. On the other hand her confidence, such as it was, in Caid Peter's abilities proved to have been misplaced. By the middle of the summer Sicily was in chaos. With all the various factions jockeying ever more frenziedly for position, the plots more plentiful, the intrigues still thicker than before, no proper government was possible; and Peter, a civil servant rather than a statesman, was incapable of imposing his will on an unruly and discontented people. To have done so at that time would have needed a man of infinitely greater stature—a Maio of Bari at the least. And even Maio had succumbed in the end.
Typical of those who sought to fish in these troubled waters was the Queen's cousin, Gilbert.1 Some clue to his character may be seen in the haste with which, on his arrival in Sicily a few years before, he had been placated with the County of Gravina and packed off to Apulia—where, as we have seen, he had later become involved in the conspiracy against Maio. On the late King's death and his cousin's assumption of the Regency he had hurried back to the capital and, with the covert support of Richard Palmer, had soon become the focus of the opposition to Caid Peter, complaining publicly that Sicily was being run by slaves and eunuchs and constantly pressing Margaret to appoint him her chief minister in Peter's stead. The Queen, with understandable reluctance, had at last offered him a seat on the council, but Gilbert had indignantly refused—in the course of a hideous scene in which, if Falcandus is to be believed, he berated Margaret for having put him on the same level as a slave,
1 I have not been able to trace Gilbert's relationship with the Queen. Chalan-don says that he had arrived from Spain, but gives no references to support this theory; from his name and from subsequent events it seems to me far likelier that he was one of the French side of the family—possibly a son or grandson of a sibling of Margaret of Laigle, the Queen's mother. (See genealogical table, p. 395.) La Lumia accepts him as a Frenchman and even on one occasion refers to him as Stephen's nephew—surely most improbable.
threatened her with a nadon-wide revolution, and left her in tears.
But the aristocratic faction had found in the Count of Gravina the mouthpiece they had long been seeking, and as they grew daily more threatening the Queen and Peter recognised that some voice in the council chamber could no longer be denied them. With Gilbert still persisting in his refusal, they therefore nominated one of the army leaders, that same Richard of Mandra who had protected William I with his own body during the 1161 insurrection—whom, in order to give him equal rank with her odious cousin, Margaret now created Count of Molise. This appointment was more than Gilbert could stand. He did his best to conceal his anger; but henceforth he began to plot seriously against the eunuch's life.
It was not long before Peter's agents brought him word of what was going on. At first he merely strengthened his bodyguard; but finally, with Maio's fate constantly at the back of his mind, his nerve failed him. A ship was secretly fitted out in the harbour; and one dark night, taking with him a few fellow-eunuchs and a large quantity of money, Peter slipped back to those shores whence, long ago, he had come. On his return to Tunis he resumed his former name of Ahmed, the religion of his fathers and, ultimately, his original profession; for we later find him commander of Caliph Yusuf's Moroccan fleet, in which capacity he is said to have fought with great distinction against the Christians.1 After what he had suffered from them in Palermo, this should cause us no surprise; perhaps, as Falcandus maintained, he was ever a Saracen at heart.
Peter's defection came as a blow to Margaret, and also as a severe embarrassment. She vigorously denied allegations that he had absconded with any of the royal treasure, but she could not muffle the triumphant crowings of Gilbert of Gravina. What other conduct could ever have been expected of a Muslim slave, he demanded; had not Peter already once betrayed bis country—at Mahdia seven years before ? The only wonder was that he had not long ago introduced
his Almohad friends into the palace, to make off with the rest of the treasure and, in all probability, with the King as well. Richard of
1 These details of Peter's subsequent career are given us by Ibn Khaldun (B.A.S., II, pp. 166 and 238). He refers to him as Ahmed es-Sikeli; from the chronological and other details he gives of the flight from Sicily there can be no doubt that Ahmed and Peter are one and the same. (See p. 306.)
Molise, who chanced to be present, could restrain himself no longer and sprang to the defence of his former patron, pointing out that Peter was no slave—he had been formally enfranchised by William I —and that his departure was solely due to the Count of Gravina's notorious intrigues against him. If any man called him traitor, then he—Richard—would be prepared to settle the matter once and for all by single combat.
Somehow the two were separated before any violence was done, but the incident was enough to convince the Queen that her cousin could no longer be permitted to remain in the capital. On the pretext that Frederick Barbarossa was said to be preparing another expedition to the south, she confirmed Gilbert as Catapan of Apulia and Campania and invited him forthwith to return to the mainland and prepare the army for war. The Count had no delusions as to the real reason for his departure; seeing, however, that in the present state of affairs there was no future for him in Palermo he accepted the charge and, still fuming, took his leave.
With Gilbert of Gravina out of the way, Margaret must have felt some measure of relief; but in other respects the situation was little easier than before. Fortunately she still had one counsellor whom she liked and could trust—Richard of Molise, who had now taken Peter's place as chief minister in the Council. Though Richard had little political experience and was inclined to be intemperate and headstrong, he was completely loyal and, says Falcandus, was greatly feared by all—a useful attribute at such a time. But, he too was powerless to stop the decline. Perhaps because he was held in greater respect than Peter he also failed to draw as much popular criticism on himself, with the result that Margaret found herself increasingly blamed for the state of the realm. Already her popularity—based largely on the amnesty she had declared and by the remission of redemption money, but tinged also with the admiration due to the mother of so beautiful a son—had vanished away. Nowadays, in the street, men were openly grumbling and gossiping about 'the Spanish woman',1 and even looking nostalgically back to the bad old days of her husband's reign.
1 Just as, six centuries later, Marie Antoinette was to be known a
s 'L'Autrichienne' in the streets of Paris.
And now, at the worst possible moment—which was in itself typical of him—there arrived in Palermo another of the Queen's more disreputable relations. Gilbert had been bad enough; the newcomer was more unattractive still. Not only the timing of his arrival but everything about him seemed inept and tactless—even his birth. In theory at least, he was Margaret's brother; Falcandus on the other hand is at pains to point out that it was common knowledge—and admitted as such even by the gang of Navarrese adventurers whom the young man had brought with him—that King Garcia had never accepted him as a son, believing him to be the child of one of his wife's prodigious collection of lovers. Then there was his name, Rodrigo, which sounded so barbarous and indeed ridiculous to Sicilian ears that his sister at once made him change it to Henry. Finally we have Falcandus's description of his appearance, character and way of life.
This Henry was short in stature; his beard was extremely thin, his complexion unpleasantly swarthy. He was imprudent and of poor conversation, a man who had no interests but dice and gaming, no wants but a partner to play against and plenty of money to lose; he would spend wildly, with neither forethought nor consideration. Having passed some little time in Palermo, during which by his immoderate spending he had soon squandered the immense sums given him by the Queen, he announced his intention of crossing to Apulia; but on his arrival at Messina he at once fell in with many fellows of the kind he found congenial. Now this city, which is largely given over to foreigners, predators and pirates, harbours almost every kind of man within its walls: persons expert in every villainy, acquainted with every vice, men who esteem nothing illicit which lies within their power to achieve. Thus he was soon surrounded by thieves, pirates, buffoons, yes-men and criminals of all descriptions, carousing by day and spending whole nights gambling. When these things reached the ears of the Queen, she wrote him a severe reprimand, ordering him to cross the straits without delay. And so, though hardly able to tear himself away, he took his comrades' advice and set off for Apulia.
Soon after his arrival in Sicily, Margaret had given up her original idea of marrying him off to an illegitimate daughter of Roger II, and had instead bestowed upon him the County of Montescaglioso— just as she had given Gilbert that of Gravina—with the deliberate object of keeping him as far as possible from the capital. When at last she received word of his safe arrival in his fief, she may ruefully have reflected that he had already done just about all the damage he could. If so, she was soon to discover that she was wrong; but not before the advent of yet a third member of her family, as different from the other two as it was possible to imagine and distinctly more promising.
When Archbishop Rothrud of Rouen received his cousin Margaret's appeal for help, he acted swiftly. His brother, Robert of Newburgh, seems to have had little inclination to involve himself in Sicilian affairs; but Margaret's other suggestion, young Stephen du Perche, was immediately attracted to the idea. The invitation reached him just in time, as he was on the point of setting out, with a suite of no less than thirty-seven, for the Holy Land. When he left France, this was still his ultimate objective; but he saw no reason not to stop off for a few months in Palermo on his way.
After a short stay in Apulia with Gilbert—who presumably gave him a highly tendentious account of the Sicilian political scene— Stephen arrived in Palermo towards the end of the summer, to an enthusiastic, even effusive, welcome from Queen Margaret. One of the first things that struck the Palermitans about him was his extreme youth. He can have been only in his early twenties at most, while the fact that Falcandus and William of Tyre describe him with the words puer and adolescens—this in an age when men were often leading armies before they were out of their teens—suggests that he may have been even younger. Such a supposition, on the other hand, raises a new problem. Rothrud II, Count of Perche, whom Margaret referred to as his father, is known to have died in 1143; if Stephen were in fact his son, he could not in September 1166 be less than twenty-two—a little old for boyhood or adolescence. But we also know that soon after Rothrud's death his widow was married again, this time to Robert of Dreux, brother of Louis VII—who, in a letter to his fellow-ruler William II, was later to refer to Stephen as caro et sanguis noster, 'our own flesh and blood'. It has therefore been argued that Stephen was not of the family of Perche at all, but a nephew of the French King. If he were, however, why did he not say so and take advantage of the fact, and why is it mentioned by none of the contemporary chroniclers? As Chalandon characteristically puts it, Von ne peut pas sortir du domaine de I'hypothese; the question must remain unresolved.1
Man or boy, Stephen seems to have appeared to the Queen just the person she needed to support her in her tribulations; and she in turn had little difficulty in persuading him, with promises of power, riches and honours for himself and his companions, to postpone his pilgrimage indefinitely and to share with her the government of the realm. From the outset he seemed able and energetic; just as important—and even rarer in Sicily—he proved personally incorruptible. Margaret was delighted with him. In November 1166, scarcely two months after his arrival in Palermo, she appointed him Chancellor.
The news of the appointment, as might have been expected, called forth a storm of protest. It was now over a century since the Normans had invaded the island, thirty-six years since the founding of the Kingdom. The Sicilians were beginning to feel themselves a nation, and to resent seeing more and more of the senior—and most profitable—positions in the land being given to foreign newcomers. Matthew of Ajello, it now appeared, was not the only one in the palace to have had his eye on the Chancellorship. Besides, while the office remained vacant its revenues had been divided among the members of the inner council. Stephen's appointment thus not only blighted their hopes; it reduced their incomes too.
Nor was it the new Chancellor alone who aroused such feelings. He had arrived, it will be remembered, with an entourage of thirty-seven ; in the months that followed others came out from France to
1 A genealogical table showing the two possible relationships between Queen Margaret and Stephen du Perche will be found on p. 395. The theory of Stephen's royal parentage was first put forward, by Brequigny, as long ago as 1780 (Memoires de l'Academic des Inscriptions, vol. XLI). It is strongly contested by La Lumia, while Chalandon, as we have seen, sits firmly on the fence. My own opinion, for what it is worth, is that Stephen was what he purported to be—a younger son of the Count of Perche—and that the phrase of Louis VII must be dismissed as a figure of speech, not too far-fetched in the circumstances. It seems in any case unlikely that he would have been made both Chancellor and Archbishop if he had not been at least in his twenties—hardly more than boyhood for the two highest posts in the kingdom.
join him: and before long the court and many sections of the administration seemed more French than Sicilian. It was perhaps natural that the young man should prefer to surround himself with people he knew, whose native language he understood; but it was natural too that those who suffered by the change should resent it, the more so since many of his friends-—especially those who had received Sicilian fiefs—behaved with curious tactlessness, treating the country folk around them as a subject race and everywhere imposing French habits and customs without regard for local susceptibilities.
On the other hand, Stephen was a genuine idealist. He may have lacked sensitivity and finesse, but he sincerely wished to make Sicily a better place and lost no time in instituting the reforms he considered necessary. He turned his attention first to the notaries— thus antagonising Matthew of Ajello, the Protonotary, of one of whose relations he made a public example; then, in rapid succession, he dealt with judges, local officials and castellans, clamping down on injustice wherever he saw it. 'He never,' says Falcandus, 'allowed powerful men to oppress their subjects, nor ever feigned to overlook any injury done to the poor. In such a way his fame quickly spread throughout the Kingdom ... so that men looked on him as a he
avensent angel of consolation who had brought back the Golden Age.'
Even when we make due allowance for exaggeration, tendentious reporting and the sad scarcity of reliable source material, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Margaret was initially justified in her decision to bring in an outsider to govern the Kingdom. Reforms were obviously overdue; and in the prevailing atmosphere of discord and mistrust it would have been virtually impossible for any Sicilian—whether by birth or by long-term adoption—to bring them about. Stephen, impartial and uncommitted, was in a position to do so, and because he did not lack moral courage he succeeded. But in the process, however much favour he gained with the masses, it was inevitable that he should have made himself hated by his Sicilian subordinates; and though his preference for Frenchmen around him may have gratuitously provided additional grounds for resentment, his own presence and power in the land would have been more than enough to ensure his lasting unpopularity.
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