Henry II

Henry II

History of Warfare Editor

Kelly DeVries Loyola College Founding editors

Theresa Vann Paul Chevedden

VOLUME 44

Henry II A Medieval Soldier at War, 1147–1189

by

John D. Hosler Assistant Professor at Morgan State University

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

On the cover: [Upper part of folio] King Henry II seated on the throne, arguing with Thomas Becket. Author: Peter de Langtoft, Chronicle of England, f.7v (England; circa 1307–1327). © The British Library, BL ref. Royal 20 A. II, record no. c2205–06 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1385-7827 ISBN 978 90 04 15724 8 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS List of Maps .............................................................................. Preface ........................................................................................ List of Abbreviations ..................................................................

vii ix xi

Introduction ................................................................................

1

Chapter One Historiography .................................................. Nature of the Military Evidence .......................................... Chronicle Sources .................................................................. Record Sources ...................................................................... Literary Sources ....................................................................

9 11 14 31 33

Chapter Two Henry’s Political and Military Career .......... Scotland and Wales .............................................................. The Continent ........................................................................ The Conquest of Ireland ...................................................... The End of Louis VII .......................................................... The Death of Henry the Younger ...................................... The Wars against Philip Augustus ...................................... The End of the Reign ..........................................................

37 51 56 66 76 82 88 98

Chapter Three Military Organization .................................. The Question of Obligation .................................................. The Matter of the Fyrd ........................................................ Mercenaries ............................................................................

103 104 113 119

Chapter Four Strategy Tactics, Logistics .............................. High Medieval Strategy and Henry II ................................ Battle as Strategy .................................................................. Vegetian-Style Campaigns .................................................... Transport and Logistics ........................................................

125 125 130 148 157

Chapter Five Castles and Siege Warfare .............................. Fortress Construction ............................................................ Castle Strategies ....................................................................

171 171 176

vi

contents Siege Warfare ........................................................................ Castles and Henry II: the 1160s ..........................................

182 188

Chapter Six The Great Revolt, 1173–1174 .......................... Main Rebel Attacks .............................................................. Henry II’s Responses ............................................................ The Second Year .................................................................. Endgame: the Great Revolt Fails ........................................

195 199 206 211 215

Chapter Seven Conclusion: Henry the Soldier ....................

221

Appendix 1: Henry Plantagenet’s Military Campaigns .......... Appendix 2: Laudabiliter .............................................................. Maps ............................................................................................

233 237 240

Bibliography ................................................................................ Index ..........................................................................................

245 263

LIST OF MAPS 1 Major Districts of England .................................................. 2 France and its Neighbors .................................................... 3 Henry II’s Continental Sieges, 1166–1168 ........................ 4 Major Engagements during the Great Revolt ..................

240 241 242 243

PREFACE The idea for this book arose in August 2001 while driving the thousand-odd miles from Iowa State University to the University of Delaware, my newly acquired doctoral program. In Ames, I had been steadily guided in historical research by Professor Kenneth Madison, who led my first graduate research seminar and introduced me to scholarly historical writing, the academy, and the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. After arriving in Newark, Delaware, I proposed a dissertation topic to my new advisor Professor Daniel Callahan: eyebrows were raised, we hemmed and hawed, and in the end, he graciously approved. The product of the resulting labor of six years now sits before you. All of my work has benefited from encouragement and guidance generously given by others. Susan Yager and Ken Madison, my former advisors at Iowa State University, have remained faithfully supportive of my educational and professional development. Additional thanks go out to my former graduate classmates, including the erudite Edward Cox and Alex Pavuk, the reader of my preliminary dissertation materials. The fine support of my committee at Delaware, Professors Callahan, Lawrence Duggan, and John Montaño, confirmed my suspicion that coming east was the right career move. I am certain they would join me in thanking Patricia Orendorf for her limitless support on my behalf. I am also fortunate to have met the helpful and collegial members of De re militari, especially Professors Richard Abels, Charles Bowlus, John France, Clifford Rogers, Steven Isaac, and Stephen Morillo. For his kicking open of endless professional doors, I give particular thanks to Kelly DeVries, the editor of this series. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Holly, who sweetly tolerates my endless rants about medieval history, the inaccuracy of Hollywood films, and the continuing death of the past.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AHR ANS

American Historical Review. Anglo-Norman Studies (formerly Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies), eds. R. A. Brown (vols. 1–11), M. Chibnall (vols. 12–16), C. Harper-Bill (vols. 17–22), J. Gillingham (vols. 23–27), and C. P. Lewis (vol. 28). ANW Anglo-Norman Warfare, ed. M. Strickland (Woodbridge, 1992). ASC The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, ed. and trans. M. Swanton (London, 2000). Chronica Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols. (RS 51, 1868–71). Descriptio Descriptio Kambriæ, ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, 8 vols. (RS 21, 1868), VI. EHD English Historical Documents, II: 1042–1189, eds. D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway (London, 1953). EHR English Historical Review. Expugnatio Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, 8 vols. (RS 21, 1867), V. Fantosme Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. R. C. Johnston (Oxford, 1981). Gervase The Chronicle of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, by Gervase, the Monk of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS 73, 1879–1880). Gesta Regis Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I, known commonly under the name of Benedict of Peterborough, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS 49, 1867). Hergest Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes: Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955). HSJ Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History. Itinerarium Itinerarium Kambriæ, ed. J. F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, 8 vols. (RS 21, 1868), VI. JMH Journal of Medieval History. JMMH Journal of Medieval Military History. Mats. Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, eds. J. C. Robertson and J. B. Sheppard, 7 vols. (RS 67, 1875–1885).

xii Peniarth PR Regesta Regis

RS Torigini

list of abbreviations Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes: Peniarth MS. 20 Version, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952). Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, 38 vols. (Reprint, Vaduz, 1966). Regesta Regis Stephani ac Mathildis Imperatricis ac Gaufridi et Henrici Ducum Normannorum, 1135–1154, eds. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis, in Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1913–1969), III. Rolls Series (London, 1858–1896). The Chronicle of Robert of Torigini, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of The Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, 4 vols. (RS 82, 1889), IV.

INTRODUCTION Anglo-Norman England has long been a fertile subject for the study of medieval military history. Its preeminence is due in large measure to the events of 14 October 1066, during which William, duke of Normandy, wrested control of England away from Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The result was a wave of changes that permanently altered the land of the Anglo-Saxons. Many of these changes directly influenced the methods by which the English crown conducted warfare, including the advent of a baronage and the importation of a feudal system of military obligation, both introduced after William’s coronation on Christmas 1066. William brought a policy of conquest and domination to England that defied comparison to the former Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The Old English kings fought primarily defensive battles to preserve the Heptarchy against Viking and Danish expansion from the ninth to the eleventh century. In these endeavors the Saxons were only partially successful; the strong West Saxon-Kentish state built by Alfred (879–899) grew to include lands in the uncertain regions of Northumbria and Mercia, but the advent of the Danelaw and the return of Viking invasions in the late tenth century eroded the stability of the country. By the eleventh century Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) and his earls were struggling to maintain England’s borders in the rebellious west and north. In the years after Hastings, William solidified his reign through military operations such as the 1070 ‘harrying of the north’ with the Scots, as well as diplomatic moves that gained him the fealty of Welsh princes in 1081. Furthermore, because William retained his ducal rights to Normandy, under his rule England’s interests were formally linked to the Continent. Following his death in 1087, the Anglo-Norman royal line would mirror the hereditary success of the French Capetians, and until the deposition of Richard II on 29 September 1399 England’s crown enjoyed, with only one exception,1

1 This was the reign of Stephen of Blois, the nephew of Henry I (1100–1135), who ruled during the ‘anarchy’ in which he struggled with Henry I’s daughter and co-claimant Matilda; her son, Henry fitz Empress, gained the crown in 1154 and restored the original line of succession, albeit through a female. There were also

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direct familial succession through its Anglo-Norman, Angevin, and Plantagenet kings. These and other achievements followed the Norman conquest of England. William the Conqueror’s victory at Hastings has captured the imaginations of student and soldier alike, for it was one out of a relatively small number of major, decisive battles fought during the Middle Ages. Harold’s defeat meant the loss of life and crown as well as the transfer of England to an already-powerful duke, and few moments in history were encapsulated in the course of such a singular event. William’s career in Normandy and Brittany before 1066 set the stage for England’s entrance into the context of continental warfare. The first proper encounter between the Anglo-Saxon infantry and the Norman bowmen and cavalry in 1066 has likewise been regarded as a case study for the conduct of eleventh-century warfare, and the tactics applied at Hastings have been the foci of Anglo-Norman military study for decades. William’s disputes with the Capetians and other local rulers in Brittany, Maine, and Normandy did not disappear after his coronation; king or not, he was still legally a vassal of Philip I of France (1060–1108), so the governance of these other provinces remained points of contention.2 Yet the English crown offered resources enough for William to improve his military footing and retain his holdings in Europe, and for the first time England became directly involved in continental politics. William’s sons William Rufus (1087–1100) and Henry I both intervened in continental lands with varying degrees of success, but the military nature of those struggles departed significantly from the decisive Battle of Hastings. Instead, long campaigns were settled bloodlessly in treaties, pitched battles were forsaken in favor of land-scourging tactics, and castles replaced armies as the effective measure of territorial control.3 These changes and others have encouraged the historical study of warfare during the remainder of the Anglo-Norman period and beyond. The present study addresses a portion of this timeframe

succession disputes between William Rufus and his brother Robert Curthose (1087), Robert and his other brother Henry I (1100), and between John and Arthur of Brittany (1199). 2 For his warfare pre-1066, see D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (Berkeley, 1964), 133–55; and J. Gillingham, “William the Bastard at War,” in ANW, 143–60. 3 S. Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), 1–2.

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referred to as the Angevin period of English history, which is traced loosely from the coronation of Henry II in 1154 to the death of King John in 1216. The transition from Anglo-Norman to Angevin is something of a misnomer. King Stephen, the grandson of William the Conqueror through his mother Adela, died in 1154 and was succeeded by Henry fitz Empress, the grandson of Stephen’s predecessor Henry I (and thus great-grandson of William). Both kings were Norman through their mothers’ side, not their fathers’: Stephen’s father was the reluctant crusader Stephen, count of Blois (d. 1102), and Henry’s father was Geoffrey le Bel, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy (d. 1151). From the beginning Henry fitz Empress was groomed for the chores of governance and battle that surely lay in his future. The death of Henry I’s only legitimate son William Adelin in the White Ship disaster of 1120 prompted the king to accept a baronial oath in 1126 to the effect that, should his daughter Matilda (d. 1167) ever bear a son, they would pledge their commitment to that boy’s future, legitimate kingship.4 Fully expecting that her son would one day reign as king, Matilda gave birth to the young Henry in 1133 and procured for him an education befitting a future monarch. Henry’s schooling was never intended to be comprehensive, as a noble had little need for advanced education, and his instruction was therefore to be broad in scope but shallow in content. Before the age of seven the boy probably listened to epic stories such as Beowulf in his mother’s household. Such stories offered excellent models of bravery, loyalty, and eloquence and were commonly used in the instruction of the nobilitas. After seven he received basic instruction in letters and the basics of knighthood in his father’s household in Angers, as was the custom in the twelfth century.5 Henry’s first proper lessons were grammatical in nature, and his teacher Peter of Saintes may have been a sort of freelance instructor.6 From Peter he learned

4

Gesta Stephani, 10–13. M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), 144; N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: the Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy 1066–1530 (London, 1984), 182. Knighthood training consisted of riding, hunting, swimming, fighting, and other skills; F. B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages (Reprint, Chicago, 1980), 311. 6 As proposed by R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (Reprint, New Haven, 1973), 196; see also S. Reynolds, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric, and the Classical Text (Cambridge, 1996), 61; and R. V. Turner, “The Miles Literatus in 5

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the rudiments of Latin and French, two languages in which he became proficient.7 His tutelage under Peter ended before the age of nine in the waning days of 1142. Matilda’s plans for her son were initially thwarted in 1135 when her father Henry I died suddenly after feasting on a plate of lampreys. Forgetting their 1126 oaths, the barons supported the coronation of Stephen, count of Blois, who claimed lineage through his mother Adela, the sister of the late king.8 England itself was split territorially as magnates chose the side seen as most beneficial to their own interests: The empress, or rather her protector the earl of Gloucester, held sway over a belt of territory in the west which varied greatly in extent from time to time, but of which the nucleus was formed by Somerset, Gloucestershire, the modern Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, and occasionally Worcestershire. Stephen ruled over a district which was roughly bounded, on the west by the Hampshire Avon and the Cotswolds, on the north and north-east by the Welland, the fens in the lower valley of the Ouse, and the river Waveney . . . But to the very end of the reign the territories of the rival factions interlaced and overlapped.9

The dispute over the succession transformed into outright civil war, sometimes called ‘the anarchy of Stephen’s reign’. In 1142 the young Henry actually traveled from Anjou to England with his uncle Robert, earl of Gloucester (d. 1147), a bastard child of the late Henry I, half-brother of Matilda, and an ally of the Angevin cause in the civil war.10 In the twelfth century noblemen such as Geoffrey of Anjou customarily turned their sons’ education over to a friendly and suitable lord, and in this regard Robert of Gloucester was an excellent choice.11 The earl was the most powerful noble in England after

Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England: How Rare a Phenomenon?” AHR 83 (1978): 943. 7 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtier’s Trifles, eds. M. R. James, C. N. L. Brooke, and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), 476–7. Henry would later add Italian to his repertoire. 8 For a recent synopsis of the lineage dispute, see C. W. Hollister, Henry I (New Haven, 2002), 308–13. 9 H. W. C. Davis, “The Anarchy of Stephen’s Reign,” EHR 18 (1903): 631–2. Use of the term “anarchy” has recently been questioned in J. Bradbury, Stephen and Matilda: the Civil War of 1139–53 (Stroud, 1996), 191–3. 10 Torigini, 139. 11 S. Painter, William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England (Reprint, Toronto, 1997), 16.

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King Stephen, possessing several strong castles in the western counties as well as some territory on the Welsh March; moreover, Robert himself was well-educated and chose to school his own son Roger alongside Henry at Bristol.12 The boys were first drilled in grammar by Master Matthew, an obscure figure who may have later served as chancellor to Eleanor of Aquitaine.13 Henry’s second teacher at Bristol was Adelard of Bath (1080–1149), a former teacher at the court of Henry I and an astronomer who learned Arabic letters and mathematics in Greece and further east.14 Adelard instructed Henry in mathematics, astronomy, and perhaps a smattering of natural philosophy. 1142 was a tumultuous year for the Angevin forces. In September Matilda found herself besieged within Oxford Castle by Stephen’s army and only escaped by fleeing through a small window at night; shortly thereafter, Oxford fell to Stephen’s army.15 This might have been a fatal blow to the rebellion had not Gloucester arrived by the end of the year with his nephew Henry and an Angevin army in tow. The mere presence of Henry was symbolic and powerful, for his promised succession was a central reason for the war. But at such a young age Henry was hardly expected to join in the fighting, and sometime after 20 January 1144 Henry returned to the Continent, where his father Geoffrey had been waging a successful military campaign in Normandy.16 On the whole Geoffrey was a strong and successful leader and a good role model for his son to follow, and on 23 April Geoffrey was invested duke at Rouen.17 Henry continued 12 H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England from Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), 273. 13 Matthew is present in two charters, Regesta Regis, nos. 329 and 331; see also H. G. Richardson, “The Letters and Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine,” EHR 74 (1959): 194; and N. Orme, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London, 1989), 51. 14 R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1912), 52–3; Hollister, Henry I, 2; C. H. Haskins, “Adelard of Bath and Henry Plantagenet,” EHR 28 (1913): 516. 15 For the siege of Oxford, see Gesta Stephani, 71; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), IV: 20; and William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. E. King (Oxford, 1998), 75. 16 A. L. Poole, “Henry Plantagenet’s Early Visits to England,” EHR 47 (1932): 450–1. Poole allows for a timeframe of up to 25 March 1144 for Henry’s departure; given that Robert of Torigini makes no mention of Henry at the siege of Rouen in January and February (an aberration in his customary attention to detail), I suspect Henry arrived in February or March; see Torigini, 147–8. 17 J. Bradbury, “Geoffrey V of Anjou, Count and Knight,” in The Ideals and

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his education there with the celebrated scholar William of Conches, a former teacher of John of Salisbury.18 Their relationship must have been a good one, for William dedicated his book Dragmaticon to Duke Geoffrey and may have dedicated De honesto et utili to the young Henry as well. His instruction under William lasted for three years initially, with a short break in 1147. It was during Henry’s short leave of absence from his studies in 1147 that he engaged in his first proper military adventure. The Gesta Stephani relates that Henry hired a troupe of knights and embarked upon an invasion of England, promising his men payment from the booty he expected to seize. Rumors flew that the young Angevin actually marched at the head of a force several thousand strong. Stephen and his men were easily able to defeat the small band at various locales including Crickdale. With a lack of booty hunger set in, and Henry was soon deserted by his mercenaries. His mother Matilda was unable to help him because of her own desperate straits, and his uncle Robert of Gloucester chose not to, so Henry was at length forced to appeal to the charity of Stephen himself. The king, “full of pity and compassion,” sent Henry the money he needed to return home. This was certainly an ignominious beginning of what would eventually become a fine military career.19 This study concerns itself with Henry’s military career between 1147 and 1189, the year of his death. My goal in the book is to provide a comprehensive, though not exhaustive, examination of the different facets of Henry II’s military experiences. The first chapter, inspired by C. Warren Hollister’s fine precedent in his posthumous biography Henry I, surveys the medieval evidence in detail.20 Chapter Two sketches a short narrative of his military and political exploits and problems. Chapters Three, Four, and Five examine the structure of his armies and the nature of his various military operations, while Chapter Six concentrates upon the military aspect of the Great

Practice of Medieval Knighthood III: Papers from the Fourth Strawberry Hill Conference, 1988, eds. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1990), 25–9. 18 Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 144. On William of Conches, see C. H. Haskins, The Rise of the Universities (Reprint, Ithaca, 1957), 41; and H. O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind: a History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (London, 1938), II: 402–3. 19 Gesta Stephani, 206–209; Poole, “Early Visits to England,” 447–52. 20 Hollister, Henry I, 1–29.

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Revolt of 1173 and 1174. The concluding chapter then seeks to construct from these fresh analyses a fuller legacy of Henry, not only as a general but as a soldier of war. I like to think that Henry’s record speaks for itself, so I have tried to provide extensive documentation at every step. Whether or not his name stands along those of the greatest medieval generals is immaterial—I believe that in the final analysis he can be viewed as a sound and versatile commander who enjoyed massive success and suffered few setbacks. In any case, whatever our individual opinions, I think all can agree that his warfare is more than worthy of an extended inquiry.

CHAPTER ONE

HISTORIOGRAPHY Given the length and breadth of Henry II’s military career, one might expect that the subject would be a focal point for historical inquiry. In fact, it has been understudied and there is a relative scarcity of scholarly work on the warfare of his reign. Such has not been the case with other Anglo-Norman and Angevin monarchs, tangibly evidenced by books such as Jim Bradbury’s Stephen and Matilda: the Civil War of 1139–53, a military history of the anarchy, and John Gillingham’s Richard I, a text that concentrates heavily upon that king’s affairs in war. Though biographies of Henry abound, they rarely concentrate on his military campaigns outside their political ramifications, meaning that such issues as generalship, use of battle and siege tactics, or overall strategic plans are often glossed over or generalized.1 Apart from the biographies, there are in fact no booklength studies of Henry II’s military enterprises comparable to the works of Bradbury and Gillingham. Only two books have systematically studied Henry’s warfare, and both are limited in their objectives. John Beeler’s Warfare in England, 1066–1189 devotes 70 out of 300 pages exclusively to Henry’s campaigns in England, Scotland, and Wales and are of unquestionable value on the subjects of fortifications, military organization, and the development of battle tactics. As its title implies, however, there is no discussion of Henry’s warfare on the Continent. Beeler rarely digresses into scholarly debates over the details of particular conflicts, nor does he spend much time assessing the larger political implications of Henry’s campaigns. Michael Jones’ War of the Generations: the Revolt of 1173–74 centers on the middle portion of Henry’s reign, when his sons allied with Louis VII of France (1137–1180) and William the Lion of Scotland (1165– 1214) in a general uprising that lasted two years. This book is an

1 J. Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, 1999). The best biographies on Henry II are W. L. Warren, Henry II (Berkeley, 1973), and R. Barber, Henry Plantagenet: a Biography (London, 1964), both of which largely supersede other texts listed in the bibliography.

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effective but predominantly political survey, not a military history; moreover, Jones at times sacrifices a systematic interrogation of his sources in order to construct a readable plotline.2 Aside from these two books, there are many other notable studies on Anglo-Norman and Angevin warfare that are of great value. Stephen Morillo’s Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 compares the warfare of William the Conqueror, William Rufus (1087–1100), and Henry I, but ends with the latter’s death. Michael Prestwich’s Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: the English Experience ranges further and comments on the whole of English history from Alfred the Great through the Wars of the Roses. His approach to English warfare follows topical, not chronological, lines and addresses such subjects as chivalry, naval combat, and siege techniques. This is undoubtedly useful, but the methodology employs wide-ranging examples and does not offer a coherent picture of any one general or period. In a similar vein follow Matthew Strickland’s War and Chivalry: the Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 and John France’s Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1100–1300. Both texts discuss a period which is immediately useful for the study of Henry II, especially Strickland’s because it addressed methods and mentalities of the mounted knights in the Angevin realms in particular. France considers the physical facets of Western warfare such as infantry, fortifications, and technology, as well as developments in tactics and a short look at those components in the Latin East. It will be noticed that neither of these books centers solely on our subject at hand, but offers instead valuable information regarding the different aspects of twelfth-century warfare.3 The remainder of essential secondary reading on Henry II’s military affairs appears in scholarly journals and is of a goodly number, but considering his long reign and the nature of military developments under his rule, they are only partially sufficient and hold not even a candle to the sheer mass of

2 J. Beeler, Warfare in England, 1066–1189 (Ithaca, 1966); M. Jones, War of the Generations: the Revolt of 1173–74 (Ann Arbor, 1980). 3 M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: the English Experience (New Haven, 1996); M. Strickland, War and Chivalry: the Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 106–1217 (Cambridge, 1996); J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (Ithaca, 1999). For an overview of these, see Anne Curry’s review article, “Medieval Warfare. England and her Continental Neighbors, Eleventh to the Fourteenth Centuries,” JMH 24 (1998): 81–102.

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research conducted on his person, relations with the Church, or his methods of governance. Following John Gillingham’s recent call for studies of whole military careers, an examination of Henry II’s story has much to offer our historical knowledge of both the king himself and medieval warfare in a greater context.4 Nature of the Military Evidence One problem perhaps lies in the fact that information regarding Henry II’s political and religious affairs is much more accessible than that on his warfare. More than one historian has pointed to his reign as the pinnacle of English historical writing in the Middle Ages, but these authors rarely couch such statements in military terms. Take, for example, W. L. Warren’s remark, “the material for Henry II in particular is so copious and from such varied sources, including some of the highest quality, that he can be seen in the round as a living, flesh-and-blood figure.”5 In a strictly biographical sense Warren is correct, and these sources are of great value for subjects of an ecclesiastical or political nature. Warren’s comments are not, however, applicable to the history of warfare during Henry’s reign; rather, much of the evidence from Henry’s reign has nothing to do with the conduct of military affairs. At its core, the problem of twelfth-century evidence is one of content, not supply: we have a lot of evidence that unhappily neglects the details required by military historians. Although interesting accounts of warfare from such writers as Froissart and Joinville are available for the later Middle Ages, there are few comparable texts for the Anglo-Norman period (excepting the detailed accounts of Hastings) and even fewer for the Angevin era. Surviving materials typically offer cursory accounts about the initiation of a hostile confrontation and then its outcome. Those accounts that do describe the actual progress of a battle are highly prized and tend to dictate the focus of historical study—the detailed battles are the ones examined in articles and book chapters. Many conflicts are so

4 J. Gillingham, “‘Up with Orthodoxy!’ In Defense of Vegetian Warfare,” JMMH 2 (2004): 150. 5 W. L. Warren, King John (Reprint, New Haven, 1997), 5. For another enduring affirmation, see C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1927), 224.

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vaguely depicted that we are at a loss to discern even their geographical location. In 2004 Helen Nicholson repeated a familiar criticism by wondering if the writers could even understand military terminology, much less battle tactics, at all.6 This vagueness is exemplified by the only passage in the Peterborough manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that speaks of Henry II’s military affairs, those he conducted as duke of Normandy in 1153: “Then he [Henry] travelled into England with a great army, and won castles, and the king [Stephen] travelled against him with a much greater army; and nevertheless they did not fight.”7 Here are useful bits of information that are quite lacking in description: we have two armies of varying sizes that did not engage in battle, and while Henry gains castles we remain ignorant of the where, why, and how. To supplement these two points we are fortunate to possess the chronicle Gesta Stephani, which, detailing the same events, notes: So the duke [Henry], collecting his forces, and with the barons flocking in eagerly to join him, made without delay for the castle of Malmesbury, which was subject to the king, and when a crowd of common people flew to the wall surrounding the town as though to defend it he ordered the infantry, men of the greatest cruelty, whom he had brought with him, some to assail the defenders with arrows and missiles, others to devote all their efforts to demolishing the wall. So when the town of Malmesbury, as has been indicated, was captured [. . .] behold, not long afterwards, the king [Stephen] arrived with a countless army collected from all his supporters everywhere, as though he meant to fight a pitched battle with the duke, and as the armies of both sides stood in array with a river dividing them it was arranged between them and carefully settled that they should demolish the castle, both because they could not join battle on account of the river and its very deep valley intervening and because it was a bitter winter with a severe famine in those parts.8

Much of the vagueness has now been dispelled and several avenues for inquiries of a military nature are opened. But the Gesta Stephani is one of only a handful of such descriptive narratives.

6 H. Nicholson, Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe, 300–1500 (New York, 2004), 8. 7 ASC [E], 268. 8 Gesta Stephani, 230–33.

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Detailed corroboration in the written record is, despite the volume of historical materials that has survived, decidedly uncommon and even exceptional for Henry II’s reign as king of the English. This problem is noticeably acute in the accounts of authors who began writing in the years following King Stephen’s death in 1154. Henry emphasized economic and legal initiatives, so chroniclers responded by filling their books with transcripts of papal letters, law codes, and discussions of political relations between the rulers and nobles. The authors themselves were cloistered monks or stationary clerks who obtained their evidence from interviews, chance stories, or borrowed materials from other locales. Such geographical isolation stymied the flow of knowledge onto the written page, as Robert of Torigini aptly illustrates in his entry for the year 1168: “Besides these his exploits the king of England did many things in this war of which we have not been informed, or if we have heard of them we have forgotten them.”9 Those writers living outside of monastic settings, identified by Antonia Gransden as the “secular historians,” are sometimes more reliable, but with rare exceptions their accounts differ little in descriptiveness.10 Secular writers were, after all, still ecclesiastics—Henry of Huntingdon, for example, was an archdeacon, and Ralph Diceto was the dean of St. Paul’s—and so tended to address subjects relevant to their churches. In addition, while warfare could be important enough for posterity, the motivation to compose in the first place was usually devotional; as Ernst Breisach notes, “the recording of secular events was ultimately useless if it did not concentrate above all on demonstrating God’s grace and will, which alone are not transitory.”11 Therefore, when Bernard Bachrach speaks of “the illinformed comments of monkish chroniclers” as barriers to precise understandings of medieval warfare, he is referring to problems of perspective as well as evidence.12 Such difficulties hamper the military

9 Torigini, 239. Moreover, there is a general lack of good information for Normandy during the early year’s of Henry II’s reign; see the old but still poignant C. H. Haskins, “The Government of Normandy under Henry II,” AHR 20 (1914): 25–31. 10 See A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (Ithaca, 1974), 219–68, for two chapters on the historians of Henry II’s reign. 11 E. Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, & Modern, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1994), 131. 12 B. Bachrach, “Medieval Military Historiography,” in Companion to Historiography, ed. M. Bentley (London, 1997), 211.

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study of Henry II’s reign at every turn and are applicable, in addition to the Latin chronicles, to Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and AngloFrench histories. Yet this does not mean that chronicle accounts of warfare are wholly untrustworthy, only that they should be treated with care. There are, as Kelly DeVries points out, numerous historiographical factors to consider, including the location of the chronicler himself, his audience, nationality, vocation, education, and agenda, but such analysis is worthwhile because it can allow historians to recreate and explain military events from even the most extraordinary or hard-to-believe narrative sources.13 Chronicle Sources In 1878 William Stubbs delivered a delightful lecture at Oxford in which he depicted a visitor to twelfth-century England. Wandering around, the man could not help but notice authors hard at work— a virtual “paradise of clerks” across the countryside in towns both large and small.14 While the story is idealistic, Stubbs’ general point seems on target. Along with manuscripts that are recognizable as histories has survived a vast array of literary and documentary texts, and taken together they suggest a leap forward in composition across the Angevin Empire. The learning was communal because individual scholars traveled to other schools or monasteries and often shared materials by sending entire books cross-country. As a result, many chronicles contain transcribed stories from one another and their accounts must be untangled, often a difficult process. Noting the locations of each author and their respective times of composition is therefore quite useful for clarity’s sake. For the early years of Henry II’s life we posses only a few narrative accounts, none of which addresses him as its central subject. These are the chronicles from the reign of Stephen that end in or before 1154 and thus include the years in which Henry Plantagenet became involved in military affairs in England while a young man. There are several

13 K. DeVries, “The Use of Chronicles in Recreating Medieval Military History,” JMMH 2 (2004): 1–15, esp. 15. 14 W. Stubbs, “Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II ( June 13, 1878),” in Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History (Oxford, 1886), 145–50.

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accounts of Stephen’s reign that include Henry’s early years: the anonymous Gesta Stephani, the final entries in the Peterborough manuscript, and the chronicles of John of Hexham, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, and Robert of Torigini. Of these, only Torigini continues his history past Henry II’s coronation in 1154. Many excellent historiographical discussions of these works preclude our being detained by such examination here; instead, our focus concentrates on how such evidence from Stephen’s reign characterizes warfare.15 Superior in reputation and quality among these varied sources is the Gesta Stephani, whose author, after centuries of anonymity, was identified as Robert, bishop of Bath (d. 1166), by R. H. C. Davis. Of the useful and detailed military accounts in the Gesta Stephani we have already spoken. Its historical reputation is based largely on its uniqueness, for it is the only history to cover the whole of King Stephen’s reign: William of Malmesbury had died in 1142, Orderic Vitalis in 1141, and John of Worcester in 1140. Henry of Huntingdon’s history though contemporary can hardly be called detailed, while Robert of Torigini’s information was confined in the main to Normandy, and John of Hexham’s to the extreme north of England. Almost all the information in the newly discovered portion of the GS [Gesta Stephani] (1148–54) is new.16

The first three men cited by Davis were all dead by the time young Henry Plantagenet was nine years of age. Along with the Gesta Stephani, Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum might be called the next best in a military sense. The tenth book of the Historia Anglorum, and Huntingdon’s sixth overall version, was begun in 1149 and concludes in 1154 at the coronation of Henry II.17 From 1135 onward Huntingdon ceased to rely upon other chronicles for his information and applied data of his own choosing; for Henry Plantagenet’s ducal years of 1149–1154, therefore, the Historia Anglorum is a contemporary, original, and valuable account. Henry’s attentiveness to the details of warfare has been acknowledged, and he is known for his stirring battle orations composed in the tradition of Thucydides.18

15

As an introduction see R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen (Berkeley, 1967), 146–50. Gesta Stephani, xv and xxxviii, for the identification of Robert of Bath. For a skeptical view see Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 189–90. 17 It was mostly composed after 1153; see Historia Anglorum, lxxvi. 18 Historia Anglorum, lix–lx. 16

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The monk Robert of Torigini met with Henry of Huntingdon in 1139 at Bec and was already an accomplished writer by that time. His continuation of the deeds of the dukes of Normandy ends during Stephen’s reign but before Henry became a pivotal figure.19 In his own separate chronicle, however, Torigini was very concerned with continental affairs after 1147. He is thus a good source for Henry II’s warfare in Normandy and Anjou, both before and following his coronation, and even received a personal visit from Henry in 1166 while composing at Mont-St. Michel.20 Although at times brief in his accounts, Torigini was remarkably well-informed on military activities, particularly in the realm of combat and siege tactics. He died in 1186, three years before Henry’s final defeat at LeMans.21 John of Hexham’s chronicle, a continuation of the chronicler Symeon of Durham, runs to 1153 and is of some value, but its late date of composition (1162 × 1170) renders it inferior to the contemporary accounts of Torigini, Huntingdon, and the Gesta Stephani.22 The aforementioned Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is far too limited to be usable in a military analysis of our subject. Better information survives for the regnal years of Henry II and includes a variety of continental documents. While anonymity is common in terms of authorship, their provenance is generally well known. Several extant chronicles of note were composed in the county of Anjou or adjacent provinces. The most valuable piece is perhaps the Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum, an extant history of the life of his father Geoffrey.23 The other Angevin chronicles generally offer brief 19 This continuation is The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigini, ed. and trans. E. M. C. Van Houts, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1995), II. On its value, see E. M. C. Van Houts, “Historical Writing,” in A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, eds. C. Harper-Bill and E. M. C. Van Houts (Woodbridge, 2003), 118–20; Davis, King Stephen, 147. 20 Evidenced by internal references in his chronicle as well as a royal confirmation made to him as abbot of Mont-St. Michel; see Acta of Henry II and Richard I, Part Two, ed. N. Vincent, List & Index Society Special Series, vol. 27 (Richmond, 1996), no. 106. 21 E. M. C. Van Houts, “Le roi et son historien: Henri II Plantagenêt et Robert de Torigini, abbé de Mont-Saint-Michel,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 37 (1994): 118. See also idem, “Robert of Torigini as Genealogist,” in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth, and J. L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), 215–33, for Torigini’s accuracy regarding the noble families of Normandy and England. 22 See Historia Regum: Eadem Historia ad quantum et vicesimum Annum Continuata, per Joannem Hagulstadensem, ed. T. Arnold, vol. 2 (RS 75, 1885). 23 Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum, eds. L. Halphen and

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accounts that do not contribute much new information, for the bulk of it is concerned with Angevin events well before the rule of Count Henry. For his reign there are bits and pieces that usually relate to his birth and death, reception of titles, and his occasions of warfare. The Chronicon Sancti Sergii Andegavensis departs from this formula a little by recording the Becket Affair, demonstrating how that event was significant enough to gain the attention of monks further south.24 Reliable details in the Angevin documents are at a premium, as evidenced by the erroneous attribution of Henry’s coronation to 1155 in a surviving fragment of an anonymous chronicle.25 The longest and most detailed Angevin account of Henry’s reign is the Historia comitum Andegavensium, in which Thomas of Parcé, prior of Loches (and later, John of Marmoutier in a continuation) recorded events up to 1169. This chronicle constituted part of the official history of the family of Geoffrey le Bel.26 We have at our disposal four other significant continental records. The first two are the chronicles of the monk Rigord at St. Denis and the canon of Senlis, William the Breton. Both are accounts of Capetian history which suffer from a lack of critical analysis and a tentative approach to the successes and failures of the French kings.27 Rigord begins his chronicle in 1165 with the birth of Philip Augustus and thereafter concentrates on the adult years of Philip’s life, 1179–1208. His work was continued by William the Breton in the Gesta Philippi Augusti, which begins by running through Mediterranean history from Troy through the early

R. Puopardin, in Chroniques des comites d’Anjou et des Seigneurs D’Amboise (Paris, 1913), 172–231. 24 Chronicon Sancti Sergii Andegavensis, eds. P. Marchegay and É. Mabille, in Chroniques des Églises d’Anjou (Paris, 1869), 150. Also in Chroniques des Églises d’Anjou are the two accounts Vita beati Girardi monachi Sancti Albini Andegavenis and Breve Chronicon Sancti Florentii Salmurensis, 91–126 and 179–96, respectively. In addition, see Historia Abbreviata consulum Andegavorum, eds. P. Marchegay and A. Salmon, in Chroniques d’Anjou (Paris, 1856), 362–3. 25 Fragment de Chronique Angevine, in Chroniques des comites d’Anjou, 251; the fragment is also found in Chroniques d’Anjou, 367. 26 Chroniques d’Anjou, 338–47. On the chronicle’s historiography see Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories and the Life of St. William, eds. J. France and N. Bulst, trans. J. France and P. Reynolds (Oxford, 1989), cii; and Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 188. 27 R. Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation, 987–1328, trans. L. Butler and R. J. Adam (New York, 1960), 3–4. On the other hand, Rigord is trustworthy because he rarely added details for which he did not have personal knowledge; see G. M. Spiegel, “Political Unity in Medieval Historiography: a Sketch,” History and Theory 14 (1975): 318.

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Capetians. Once William stops for breath in his record of 1183 the chronicle becomes somewhat more detailed and useful.28 The final chronicles are those of Gilbert of Mons in the north and Geoffrey of Vigeois in the south. Gilbert of Mons wrote between 1195 and 1196, and his chronicle largely concerns the northern French province of Hainaut and those French and Norman affairs that affected it, particularly Champagne.29 Geoffrey, prior of Vigeois, is our principle source for the history of the Loire valley and events in Aquitaine for the period. Writing at the monastery at St Martial, Geoffrey ends his work in 1182.30 In general, we may state with certainty that events north of the Loire are much better-documented in these chronicles, with Poitevin and Aquitanian history often given short shrift.31 The best sources of information for the reign of Henry II are generally understood to be those chronicles composed in England. Some are more local monastic accounts that speak only of the most important political events of the day, such as the Chronicle of Ramsey and the writings of Jocelin of Brakelond at Bury-St. Edmund’s.32 Then there are the major English chronicles, with which the monastic works generally concur and upon whom they are often wholly dependent. These are typically in Latin and have an assortment of good qualities: identifiable authors, some certainty of geographical provenance, and an evidentiary connection to royal court, and they are sometimes supplemented with eyewitness accounts. The most important historians of Henry’s reign are the chroniclers Roger of Howden and ‘Benedict of Peterborough,’ William of Newburgh, Ralph Diceto, and Gervase of Canterbury; the witty writers Walter Map and Gerald of Wales; the poet Jordan Fantosme; and John of Salisbury. Our consideration of their usefulness will again center on their treatment of military affairs. 28 Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, Historiens de Philippe-Auguste, ed. H.-F. Delaborde (Paris, 1882). 29 Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainaut, trans. L. Napran (Woodbridge, 2005), xxviii. 30 Ex Chronico Gaufredi Cænobitæ Monasterii S. Martialis Lemovic, et Prioris Vosiensis, eds. L. Delisle and M. Bouquet, in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, 33 vols. (Paris, 1877), XII: 421–51. 31 J. Gillingham, “Events and Opinions: Norman and English Views of Aquitaine, c. 1152–c. 1204,” in The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries, eds. M. Bull and C. Léglu (Woodbridge, 2005), 57–82. 32 Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, eds. W. H. Hart and P. A. Lyons, 3 vols. (RS 79, 1884–1893); The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond concerning the Acts of Sampson, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Edmund, ed. and trans. H. E. Butler (New York, 1949).

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The most prolific chronicler of the period was Roger of Howden, a clerk and sometime emissary from Yorkshire who spent several years traveling alongside Henry II.33 To him are attributed the major works the Chronica and the Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi. The latter text had formerly been attributed to one ‘Benedict of Peterborough,’ a monk at Peterborough thought to have written independently of others, but in 1953 he was identified as Roger of Howden.34 Howden was a parson who often traveled with Henry’s court, and he became an experienced and savvy diplomat during his lengthy service to the crown. For the period 1154–1169 he is largely original, save for some Scottish materials taken from the Chronicle of Melrose. He was an eye-witness to the rebellions of 1173 and 1174, and thereafter his chronicle is an amalgamation of his own experiences and outside materials. Given his close proximity to warfare, including a thirteenmonth stint with Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade, one might expect Howden’s descriptions of combat to be quite detailed, but instead he saved his extended discussions for diplomatic affairs.35 For example, regarding a siege conducted by Geoffrey Plantagenet (d. 1212), one of Henry’s illegitimate sons, Howden tells us Geoffrey “took the castle of Kinardeferie, and levelled it with the ground,” so we learn some important details but certainly not the whole story.36 One exception to Howden’s lack of descriptive detail is his very careful recording of treaties, assizes, and diplomatic arrangements, in all probability a result of his close connection to the court and his knowledge of state affairs.37

33

For a biographical discussion, see F. Barlow, “Roger of Howden,” EHR 65 (1950): 352–60. 34 For a discussion of the Benedict question, see D. M. Stenton, “Roger of Howden and Benedict,” EHR 68 (1953): 574–82; Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 222–30; D. Corner, “The Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi and Chronica of Roger, Parson of Howden,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 56 (1983): 126–44; and J. Gillingham, “The Travels of Roger of Howden and his Views of the Irish, Scots and Welsh,” in The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000), 69–72. 35 J. Gillingham, “Historians without Hindsight: Coggeshall, Diceto, and Howden on the Early Years of John’s Reign,” in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church (Woodbridge, 1999), 21–2; Barlow, “Roger of Howden,” 357–8; J. Gillingham, “Roger of Howden on Crusade,” in Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds, ed. D. O. Morgan (London, 1982), 65. 36 Chronica, II: 57. 37 Howden himself embarked on a diplomatic mission to Galloway in 1174; see Gillingham, “The Travels of Roger of Howden,” 71–2. On his preservation of

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William of Newburgh was an Augustinian canon, one of the period’s most engaging chroniclers, and certainly one of the more polished writers of his time. His Historia Rerum Anglicarum runs from 1066 to 1198, a timeframe that makes it an invaluable resource for the study of both Henry II and Richard I. It is important to note, however, that its provenance is between 1199 and 1201, a period of less than two years and well after the death of Henry at that. He has been applauded for his critical historical eye, his knowledge of Latin and contemporary theology, dramatic storytelling skills, and judicious impartiality.38 His location in York necessarily limited his information gathering; Newburgh was in a favorable position to learn of northern events such as the 1190 massacre of the Jews in York, but he was far removed from events in the south of England and on the Continent.39 Although his materials are replete with indications of a careful research process, with so late a date of composition we must treat his hindsight analysis with some trepidation.40 Compounding matters, Newburgh only finished one rough draft before his death, and in that time he leaned heavily upon the chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Howden, and Jordan Fantosme.41 He frequently gets sidetracked by tangential issues on which he is able to offer a Christian lesson.42 When he speaks of military affairs he typically

Henry II’s laws, see D. Corner, “The Texts of Henry II’s Assizes,” in Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History: Papers presented to the Edinburgh Legal History Conference, 1977, ed. A. Harding (London, 1980), 7–13. 38 B. Dickins, “A Yorkshire Chronicler,” Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 5 (1934): 15–26; M. Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing (Chapel Hill, 1996), 95–6; N. F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: the Writing of History in Twelfth Century England (Chicago, 1977), 62–6; Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 265. 39 William’s account of that event reveals much about his historical style; see in general R. B. Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190 (York, 1974). 40 Richard Howlett once thought the date of composition to be 1196–1198, but this has been reconsidered; see William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, 4 vols. (RS 82, 1884–5), I: x; and the correction in K. Norgate, “The Date of Composition of William of Newburgh’s History,” EHR 19 (1904): 295. For a brief survey of William’s life and writings see R. Jahncke, Guilelmus Neubrigensis: ein pragmatischer Geschichtsschreiber des zwölften Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1912). 41 For William’s use of Howden in particular, see J. Gillingham, “Two Yorkshire Historians Compared: Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh,” HSJ 12 (2002): 20–25. 42 Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: xi; Partner, Serious Entertainments, 58.

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abbreviates materials gleaned from his sources into more fluid stories complete with plot lines and moral lessons at the finish; while quite illustrative and interesting, his tales may be as fabulously inventive as literary tropes in the Anglo-Norman chivalric romances. William of Newburgh’s only other major work is an exposition on the Canticle of Mary in the Gospel of Luke, which is useless to military historians.43 Ralph Diceto, archdeacon of Middlesex and by 1180 dean of St. Paul’s, received a classical education at Paris and was a competent historian, so much so that Stubbs chanced to remark that “in the roll of English Historians of the twelfth century no name stands higher.” Diceto is known to have been a favorite of Stubbs and his excellence is certainly up for debate.44 Among his thirteen known works of various lengths stand two histories useful for the study of Stephen and Henry II, the aptly-named Abbreviationes Chronicorum and the longer, more detailed Ymagines Historiarum. The former text ends in 1148 and borrowed primarily from Hugh of St. Victor’s Chronicon for its short entries, while the Ymagines, the relevant source for our present study, ends in 1202 during the reign of King John. Because Diceto probably died in either 1199 or 1200, Ymagines must have been finished by a different writer. Although the information up to 1171 is largely based on the chronicle of Robert of Torigini, its materials thereafter, and especially after 1180, are original and not to be found elsewhere.45 Accordingly, the first half of the Ymagines bounces quickly through brief accounts of military action, such as in Diceto’s record for 1159, in which he treats the Toulouse campaign, the largest of Henry II’s reign, in but a single paragraph.46 Later accounts of warfare increase in both size and quality, and the

43 William of Newburgh’s Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii in Matrem Sponsi, ed. J. C. Gorman (Fribourg, 1996). 44 Both documents are printed in Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (RS 68, 1876); for Stubbs’ comment, see Ymagines Historiarum, I: 9. 45 G. A. Zinn, “The Influence of Hugh of St. Victor’s Chronicon on the Abbreviationes Chronicorum by Ralph of Diceto,” Speculum 52:1 (1977): 38–61; D. E. Greenway, “The Succession to Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul’s,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 39 (1966): 86–95; Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 231–2; C. Duggan and A. Duggan, “Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Becket (with an appendix on decretal letters),” in Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government presented to Walter Ullman on his Seventieth Birthday, eds. B. Tierney and P. Linehan (Cambridge, 1980), 63. 46 Ymagines Historiarum, I: 303.

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chronicle offers unique information on the rebellions of 1173 and 1174. Diceto had a large number of accessible sources both secular and ecclesiastical, and as Gransden notes, he possessed more contacts on the Continent than Roger of Howden, including such men as Thomas Brown and Walter of Coutances. Diceto was loyal to the English crown and had a personal relationship with Henry II, first meeting the king in 1162 and frequently thereafter, and his positive view of the king remained relatively unchanged even during the Becket Controversy. Diceto began preparing the final draft of the Ymagines after Henry’s death, but unlike writers such as Gerald of Wales, who, as we shall see, embarked on vitriolic criticisms, Diceto retained his praise of the king.47 Such steadfastness does not necessarily demonstrate historical objectivity, but it does make his authorial voice more consistent. Gervase of Canterbury was a monk at Christ Church whose historical work is characteristic of the typical monastic chronicle: an amalgamation of different source materials, including identifiable annals and histories, colored by frequent local references that are far more detailed than international topics. What highlights Gervase’s efforts as a monastic chronicler is the fact that we know his name, as well as a few biographical details. This allows for cross-referencing of his facts and thus sets him apart from other local monastic chroniclers. Born in Kent, he became a novice at Canterbury in 1163 and remained there until his death, an unknown date in the early thirteenth century.48 He was apparently an eye-witness to the fire that consumed the cathedral choir in 1174, of which he left a written account that has been routinely applauded and criticized by art and architectural historians for its use of detail.49 Gervase probably began writing history at an advanced age in 1188 and relied heavily on outside materials for his two principal historical works, the long Chronica Gervasii on the history of England and the shorter, more contemporary Gesta Regum, an unfinished chronicle of its kings. His sources include Henry of Huntingdon and Florence of Worcester for

47 Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 231 and 235; Duggan, “Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Becket,” 64. 48 In 1199 he was still writing; see Gervase, I: xiv, xxvii, xxxii. 49 P. Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” Speculum 68 (1993): 969–91; see Gervase’s account of the fire in The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. R. Willis (Chicheley, 1972).

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the reign of King Stephen, and for the reign of Henry II he uses the Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi of Roger of Howden, several Lives of Thomas Becket that had been finished by the time he began writing, and perhaps the Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury.50 The late date of composition is problematic in Gervase’s works and he rarely wrote about military affairs. Henry II’s most notable campaign between 1163 and 1170, the 1165 expedition to Wales, for example, receives but one short sentence: “Illis vero valide resistentibus, parum vel nichil profecit; multos tamen ex suis tam milites quam pedites perdidit et reversus est.”51 Because of his reliance upon other books, as well as his hindsight method, Gervase’s authority on military matters is questionable. The poet Jordan Fantosme was probably a Norman clerk at Winchester between 1150 and 1180, but may have originally been from Poitou. He composed a lyrical chronicle of great importance to Henry II’s reign, La Chronique de Jordan Fantosme, not in Latin but Old French, which centers solely on the rebellions of 1173 and 1174. Matthew Strickland has rightly deemed this focused text “of primary importance for the study of war, diplomacy, and knighthood in the Anglo-Norman world.”52 Fantosme offers vivid descriptions of battles, sieges, individual combat, and even military organization, often relating where troops were found and mustered. The chronicle is also useful for examining the warrior mentality because it relates the anxieties and joys of the men as they march on campaign. Many of his observations indicate that he himself witnessed the events he describes. Eye-witness history was, however, a new type of writing in the twelfth century, and this is the primary difficulty in his poetry. Peter Damian-Grint has argued that Fantosme’s eyewitness status, along with his considerable education and literary skill, renders him a reliable source—he is depicted as a sort of medieval reporter who saw events himself or used trustworthy witnesses to his advantage.53

50

Gervase, I: xxi, xliii, xlv–xlvi. Gervase, I: 197. 52 M. Strickland, “Arms and the Men: War, Loyalty and Lordship in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle,” in Medieval Knighthood IV: Papers from the fifth Strawberry Hill Conference, eds. C. Harper-Brill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1992), 220. 53 C. Hanley, War and Combat, 1150–1270: the Evidence from Old French Literature (Cambridge, 2003), 54–5; P. Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge, 1999), 75–6. 51

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Given his location in Winchester, he may indeed have been an eyewitness to some events in Northumbria, or perhaps his informants traveled south to relate the news to him in his study. On the other hand, there is no evidence that he traveled with Henry II to the Continent, so his intricate descriptions of matters such as Matthew of Boulogne’s death in Normandy in 1173 cannot be considered authoritative. More troubling is Fantosme’s outright praise of Henry as a noble and rightful king that reveals his clear bias, “verses about the best king who ever lived”; so laudatory was his account that it was addressed to Henry himself and given to the king sometime before 1183.54 Fantosme’s sources remain a mystery and his enthusiastic data (such as 40,000 Scots arrayed against Carlisle in 1173)55 may often be construed as creative literary devices. Two other principal authors were the Welshmen Walter Map and Gerald of Wales. Neither were historians but both represent historiographical trends of some importance because they looked to the past for lessons, anecdotes, and to contextualize current events. Both were well educated and made frequent use of classical sources in conjunction with their own experiences to argue political points.56 The two were also good friends: they consulted one another frequently in speech and prose, and each commented upon the other’s work in his own. Walter Map earned his living as a clerk for Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London (d. 1187), and Henry II, later finishing his career as the archdeacon of Oxford. He won some praise as a poet, composing several pieces in French to much acclaim, but his crowning work was the De Nugis Curialium, an insightful and sometimes scathing view of the English court and its diplomatic relationships.57 Begun at some point in the 1180s, perhaps as early as 1181, the book survives in but a single manuscript and features several incomplete chapters and many grammatical errors, leading James Hinton to argue that it is essentially unfinished.58 The De Nugis Curialium is

54

Fantosme, xix-xx and 1 [numbers refer to Johnston’s verse divisions]; C. H. Haskins, “Henry II as a Patron of Literature,” in Essays in Medieval History presented to Thomas Frederick Tout, eds. A. G. Little and F. M. Powicke (Manchester, 1925), 75. 55 Fantosme, 71. 56 Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 221–2. 57 K. G. T. Webster, “Walter Map’s French Things,” Speculum 15 (1940): 272–9; De Nugis Curialium, xiii. 58 J. Hinton, “Walter Map’s de Nugis Curialium: its Plan and Composition,” PMLA 32 (1917): 124.

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a satirical piece at heart, “jotted down by snatches at the court of King Henry,” and is replete with stories ranging from the rise of the Hospitallers in England to the temperament of the Empress Matilda. Any information of a military nature to be gained from the book must be stripped out of the numerous anecdotes and digressions, although there are hidden gems in Map’s descriptions of Welsh ferociousness and frequent stories of individual courage in battle. One must wonder if his tales are true, given his lively quip: “I am but your huntsman. I bring you the game, it is for you to make dainty dishes out of it.”59 Gerald of Wales,60 on the other hand, was a more focused writer, dividing his subjects into a number of sizable volumes that are peppered with his own political opinions. He was born around 1146 into a family of some standing in Wales and traveled to Paris, where he studied theology, rhetoric, and canon law, and later taught as a master. He also worked in the employ of the Crown for a time, but hostilities arose over his failed bids for the bishopric of St. David’s, causing him to leave in 1193 to pursue a scholarly life.61 Before his death in 1223 he traveled throughout Wales and twice to Ireland, thereafter composing four books based on his knowledge of those areas: Itinerarium Kambriae, Descriptio Kambriae, Topographia Hibernica, and Expugnatio Hibernica. All of these are useful for the study of Henry II’s reign, especially the Expugnatio, which is a record of Henry’s conquest of Ireland. The remainder includes some of his military exploits in each country and the character of his foes, particularly the military tactics of Welsh infantry. Gerald’s other writings are useful as well, particularly De Principis Instructione Liber, a political tract that is highly critical of Henry’s governance.62 Such expressions of political intemperance make Gerald a difficult writer with whom to deal. His bias against both the Crown and the see of Canterbury is readily obvious in his work, although it fluctuated with his own circumstances:

59

De Nugis Curialium, 2 and 32. Alternatively called Gerald de Barri or Giraldus Cambrensis; for their different uses, see J. Gillingham, “The English Invasion of Ireland,” in The English in the Twelfth Century, 155. 61 M. Richter, Giraldus Cambrensis: the Growth of the Welsh Nation (Aberystwyth, 1972), 4–6; R. Bartlett, “Rewriting Saints’ Lives: the Case of Gerald of Wales,” Speculum 58 (1953): 599–601. 62 De Principis Instructione Liber, ed. G. F. Warner, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, 8 vols. (RS 21, 1891), VIII. 60

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for over a decade he served the Angevin kings at court and praised them in his writings, but his attitude soured after he left John’s court in the wake of the unsuccessful rebellion of 1193–1194 and deteriorated further after his unsuccessful bid for the bishopric of St. David’s in 1199.63 Unlike Ralph Diceto, who remained an even-handed witness following Thomas Becket’s murder, Gerald hid not his scorn and frequently vented his frustrations.64 Even so, his works are ample evidence as to the condition of English, Welsh, and Irish church and state in the twelfth century. Like his friend Walter Map, Gerald is a witty and creative author whose descriptions of human nature are both entertaining and penetrating. Rounding out the list of notable contributors to English history is the most notable and enduring name from the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, John of Salisbury, clerk to archbishops Theobald and Thomas Becket of Canterbury (1154–1161 and 1163–1170) and later bishop of Chartres (1176–1180). Educated at Paris and Chartres under the instruction of such luminaries as Peter Abelard and William of Conches, John’s advanced learning places him in the upper echelons of the great minds of the Middle Ages. His expositions were not by themselves extraordinary or revolutionary, but he was, in the words of Etienne Gilson, “a good writer, a man of parts and a fine scholar” with “a mind more delicate than powerful.”65 Attributed to his hand are five significant works: Metalogicon, a treatise on the state of the trivium and one of the best extant surveys of medieval education; Policraticus, an exposition on the follies of courtiers and royal officials, as well as an instructional guide for good government; Vita Sancti Thomæ, a brief piece on the martyrdom of Thomas Becket; Entheticus, a short poetic discourse on philosophy; and Historia Pontificalis.66

63 R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1982), 58. On his changing attitudes in general, see Y. Wada, “Gerald on Gerald: Self-Presentation by Giraldus Cambrensis,” ANS 20 (1997): 223–46. 64 I. Short, “Language and Literature,” in Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, 203–4. 65 R. L. Poole, ‘The Masters at the Schools of Paris and Chartres in John of Salisbury’s Time’, EHR 35 (1920): 321–42; idem, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning (London, 1932), 177–81; E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), 150–3. 66 The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: a Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, trans. D. D. McGarry (Berkeley, 1955). For Policraticus, see in Latin Policratici sive de Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum, ed. C. C. J. Webb (Oxford, 1909); and in English, Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers, trans.

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The last is John’s only foray into the writing of history and is a continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux’s chronicle that picks up the story in 1148 and ends in 1152. The Historia Pontificalis was probably written in 1164, making it his last major product, for his other works were finished in draft form by 1159. It is a memoir of the papal court in which John had some sort of administrative role after 1149, so in one respect it is an eye-witness account, although Marjorie Chibnall has cautioned that he could not have personally seen everything of which he wrote.67 As such it is of little use for our subject who was not crowned until 1154, and the Historia’s focus is on papal politics in Italy, Germany, and France but not England. When John refers to English or Norman affairs before 1159, he does so in the Metalogicon and Policraticus; otherwise, his considerable letter collection, as noted below, extends his commentary until 1180, the year of his death. In addition to his thorough classical training in logic, grammar, and theology, John of Salisbury was also extraordinarily well-versed in theoretical military strategy, reading and owning copies of the military manuals De re militari by Flavius Vegetius Renatus and Strategemata by Julius Frontinus.68 John referred to both classical authors in the Metalogicon and Policraticus but chose to copy only those portions of the manuals instructing commanders about military training, the taking of oaths, and valor in combat. Doubtless John knew other military passages, but he appears to have been concerned mainly with the maintenance of an army and not the proper conduct of warfare: in Policraticus he states, “my purpose is not to teach this art of military affairs, which yet is the greatest and most indispensable of arts.” Other notable military passages in his works include heroic battle stories about Hannibal and the kings Harold Godwinson, William I, William Rufus, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry Plantagenet in battle as duke of Normandy.69 J. B. Pike (Minneapolis, 1938), The Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury, trans. J. Dickinson (New York, 1963), or John of Salisbury: Policraticus, of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, trans. C. J. Nederman (Cambridge, UK, 1990). The text of the Entheticus is printed in Pike, 415–25. For John’s Life of Becket, see Mats., II: 299–352. 67 The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1986), xxii–xxx. See also idem, “John of Salisbury as a Historian,” in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. M. Wilks (Oxford, 1984), 169–78. 68 C. R. Shrader, “The Ownership and Distribution of Manuscripts of the De re militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus” (Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University, 1976), 67–9. 69 Policraticus, VI: 6, 18–19; VIII: 25; Metalogicon, 189–90 and 199–200.

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Vernacular chronicles offer different perspectives and information on Henry II’s reign that sometimes differ from the Latin records. We have already discussed the Old French chronicle of Jordan Fantosme. There are other prose and poetic accounts from Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but because their authors were principally concerned with matters close to home, these sources are often sketchy in details when discussing affairs in England. For our purposes, their information becomes useful when the borders of the Angevin Empire erupted in warfare. There are thus several identifiable moments during the reign of Henry II for which their information is applicable: the Scottish accounts are pertinent during the rebellions of 1173 and 1174; the Welsh during Henry’s campaigns of 1157, 1163, and 1165; the Irish for the English invasion of 1171. Another characteristic unifying the vernacular chronicles is their anonymity: although guesses can be made as to authorship, no author chose to identify himself. In such a circumstance it is hard to prefer their interpretations of events over those of known English and Norman writers, men whose education and location have been determined. Nevertheless, vernacular accounts do form additional pieces of the puzzle and are at times to be preferred to their Latin counterparts. Unfortunately, each Welsh annals that has survived postdates Henry II’s reign by at least a century and is thus immediately problematic. The earliest account is the early-thirteenth century Annales Cambriae, which was probably based on older monastic records.70 The Annales Cambriae is generally an accurate, if bare-bones, record of events concerning Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth, the northern and southern regions of Wales in which English intervention most often occurred. English involvement in Welsh affairs generally enters the story only when military conflict arose on the March, and these passages are light on detail and rather incomplete. More complete descriptions of these campaigns and battles appear in the vernacular Welsh chronicles, all of which employed Annales Cambriae as source material. Their historiographical debt to its Latin text has been soundly established along with their relative date (late-thirteenth century) and probable place of composition (the Cistercian monastery at Strata Florida).71

70

Annales Cambriae, ed. J. W. ab Ithel (RS 20, 1860). J. E. Lloyd, “The Welsh Chronicles,” Proceedings of the British Academy 14 (1928): 369–91; I. Jack, Medieval Wales (Ithaca, 1972), 24–33. 71

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Three manuscripts are extant: they are two versions of Brut y Tywysogyon, the Chronicle of the Princes, and Brenhinedd y Saesson, the Kings of the Saxons, a close parallel to the Brut.72 Due to the lack of additional evidence, historians have accepted these chronicles as the most reliable Welsh accounts of the twelfth century, despite the fact that they are not contemporary. Their usefulness for military studies varies enormously by document. The Bruts, for example, identify several Welsh soldiers and geographical aspects of March conflicts, but the Brenhinedd y Saesson often abbreviates those same passages or alters the content in subtle ways. Evidence from the rest of the Isles is not only scarce but limited in scope in regards to English affairs. However, because major events involving kings and wars tended to be noticed and jotted down Scottish and Irish chronicles and literary sources are useful for comparative study. The pertinent Scottish chronicles share a close association with each other that is akin to the Welsh evidence, and they are based heavily upon earlier English and Scottish sources and written in Latin. The two main texts are the chronicles of Holyrood and Melrose, which, following each entry for the year 1128, have highly similar texts that record virtually the same information, albeit in different manners and with a few exceptions. Besides royal charters, these are virtually the only Scottish sources from the reign of Henry II to have survived: John of Hexham’s chronicle ends at 1153. The English chroniclers of the next twenty years seldom notice Scottish events except those concerning the relations between the kings of Scotland and England. The Chronicle of Melrose is chiefly derived, for the period, from a source that was also used by Roger of Howden. That source, and the Chronicle of Holyrood, are the chief sources of information about Scottish internal affairs at this time. [. . .] From 1170 onwards, the chronicle [Holyrood] supplies little that is not found in the Chronicle of Melrose, which at that point, or earlier, becomes an original work.73

The older, flawed Brut y Tywysogyon, ed. J. W. ab Ithel (RS 17, 1860) has now been supplanted by Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes: Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955), and Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes: Peniarth MS. 20 Version, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952). See also Brenhinedd y Saesson or The Kings of the Saxons: BM Cotton MS. Cleopatra BV and the Black Book of Basingwerk NLW MS. 7006, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1971). 73 A Scottish Chronicle known as the Chronicle of Holyrood, ed. M. O. Anderson (Edinburgh, 1938), 42–3. See also The Chronicle of Melrose, eds. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson, Studies in Economics and Political Science, no. 100 (London, 1936); the excerpts 72

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In terms of warfare the Scottish annals are most important for the only military conflict between Henry II and the Scots, the rebellions of 1173 and 1174 when William the Lion entered the conflict at the behest of Henry’s son, Henry ‘the Younger’. The Irish annals are even further removed from English affairs and offer no more than a passing remark until 1166, when Diarmait Mac Murchada, the exiled king of Leinster, recruited English and Welsh manpower and invaded Ireland with Richard fitz Gilbert, earl of Clare, by his side. Even then the Irish sources are brief and lacking sufficient detail. The most descriptive source for the regnal years of Henry II is the Annals of Clonmacnoise, a collection of transcribed manuscripts that perhaps has its origination in the late eleventh or early twelfth century. It is a patchy work with several missing years and many incorrect dates, but the annals have a moderate level of detail regarding the Anglo-Irish affairs of the 1160s and 1170s and thus offer some comparative perspective. Along with the fragmentary Annals of Tigernach, the Annals of Clonmacnoise comprises the so-called Chronicle of Ireland, a large synthesis of these two chronicles in addition to some older materials that are nevertheless no longer extant. Next in usefulness is the Annals of Ulster, a large compendium similar in style to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The earliest extant manuscript is of fifteenth-century provenance, although its composition probably began in the late thirteenth. The Annals of Ulster offers less detail on English affairs and is naturally more concerned with events in the north of Ireland. Along the same lines is the Annals of Boyle, probably completed in 1257; its information is extremely brief and virtually useless for the study of English history.74 During Henry’s reign, Ireland and Scotland were less frequently involved in English military affairs than were the districts of Wales, and this is reflected in the quantity and quality of the surviving historical materials. in which English chronicles cite Scottish events have been collected in Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, A.D. 500 to 1286, ed. A. O. Anderson (London, 1908), and Early Sources of Scottish History, A.D. 500 to 1286, ed. A. O. Anderson (Edinburgh, 1922). 74 The Annals of Clonmacnoise, being the Annals of Ireland from the Earliest Period to A.D. 1408, ed. D. Murphy, trans. C. Mageoghagan (Dublin, 1896); Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. B. MacCarthy, 4 vols. (Dublin, 1893). Historiographical studies include K. Hughes, Early Christian Ireland: Introduction to the Sources (Ithaca, 1972), 107 and 273–4; and E. O’Curry, Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861), 81–2 and 105–6. See J. D’Alton, The History of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to the year 1245, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1845), for a still-valuable historical study.

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Record Sources Other documents such as legal and financial records are better suited to the study of logistics and organization than the application of warfare. The most valuable aspects of charters, writs, and diplomas are their witness lists and geographical origins. Even those available charters without a full text (printed in a basic calendar format) can be valuable for military historians, for their signatories permit the tracing of those individuals important enough to testify to an edict. Some of these witnesses are men of the cloth, but others are Henry II’s nobles and royal officers, either of whom were in many cases subordinate commanders in the field and, at times, in command of armies when the king was absent. Second, the place of composition tells us where Henry and these other men and women were located at a certain moment in time. The dating of charters is a problematic affair, however, and many edicts cannot be pinned down to a particular season, much less a calendar year, with any accuracy. At present there are four major collections of Henry II’s charters available in print. The first is a volume in the series Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, which includes a register and full Latin texts of Henry’s ducal charters 1149–1154, as well as a few earlier charters on which he is listed as a witness. These documents, alongside chronicles such as the Gesta Stephani, are useful in charting his activity in England before his coronation as well as affairs on the Continent during the same period. The primary collection of Henry’s continental edicts is Recueil des Actes de Henri II, printed in four volumes.75 This compendium includes over 800 of Henry’s charters issued in France or for his French beneficiaries. It has been supplemented by two volumes from the List and Index Society, the Acta of Henry II and Richard I, published ten years apart and edited by different scholars.76 The first volume deals generally with charters residing in British library and museum collections, while the second is more concerned with materials in French repositories. Neither volume offers full charter texts; rather, they are calendars that include

75 Recueil des actes de Henri II, roi d’Angleterre et duc de Normandie, concernant les provinces franscaises et les affaires de France, eds. L. Delisle and E. Berger, 4 vols. (Paris, 1916–27). 76 Acta of Henry II and Richard I, eds. J. C. Holt and R. Mortimer, List & Index Society Special Series, vol. 21 (Richmond, 1986); and Acta of Henry II and Richard I, Part Two.

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summaries of each manuscript, probable dates, citations to related studies of said texts, and in the case of the second volume, their full witness lists. These two volumes are but preliminary stages in the advancement of The Angevin Acta Project, an effort by J. C. Holt and Nicholas Vincent to collect, edit, and print every known charter and letter of Henry II and his sons. The project is sponsored by the British Library and the University of Cambridge, and although the finished product has not yet appeared in print, the dataset of over 3500 documents is available for study through the UK Data Archive. When published, the compilation should be the definitive source of Henry’s diplomatic activity that corrals all existing collections of his charters.77 Also useful are the edited collections of the grants and charters of Henry’s French peers Louis VII and Philip Augustus, although they are at times maddening for their lack of detailed witness lists.78 G. W. S. Barrow had produced a calendar of Scottish charters issued by William the Lion. For Wales, a 1996 handlist of the acts of the Welsh princes has recently been supplemented by an excellent full-text collection.79

77 The collection is titled, The Letters and Charters of Henry II, king of England 1154 –1189, ed. N. Vincent, 4 vols. (Oxford, forthcoming). For commentary on the project, see N. Vincent, “The Charters of King Henry II: the Royal Inspeximus Reconsidered,” in Dating Undated Medieval Charters, ed. M. Gervers (Woodbridge, 2000), 99–102; for a project description, see J. C. Holt, “The Writs of Henry II,” in The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on “Pollock and Maitland,” ed. J. Hudson, Proceedings of the British Academy 89 (1996): 47–64; and idem, “The Acta of Henry II and Richard I of England 1154–1199; the Archive and its Historical Implications,” in Fotografische Sammlungen mittelalterlicher Urkunden in Europe, ed. P. Rück (Sigmaringen, 1989), 137–40. Other collections exist as well. Ancient Charters, Royal and Private, prior to A.D. 1200, ed. J. H. Round, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, vol. 10 (London, 1888), nos. 35–53, is but a limited offering. R. W. Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary of King Henry II (London, 1878), mentions several charters but generally paraphrases their content. There are also scores of scattered documents in Early Yorkshire Charters, eds. W. Farrer and C. T. Clay, 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1914–63). 78 For Louis, see Études sur les actes de Louis VII, ed. A. Luchaire (Reprint, Brussels, 1964); for Philip, Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. M. H.-F. Delaborde, 4 vols. (Paris, 1916). To this collection has been added a fifth volume: Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste roi de France. Tome V, Suppléments d’actes, actes perdus, additions et corrections aux précédents volumes, eds. J. Favier and M. Nortier (Paris, 2004). Catalogue des actes de Philippe-Auguste, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1856), is an abbreviated calendar of many of the charters in the later collections. 79 Regesta Regum Scottorum, vol. II: the Acts of William I, King of Scots, 1165–1214, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1971); Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers, 1132–1283, eds. K. L. Maund and H. Pryce (Cardiff, 1996); The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, eds. H. Pryce and H. Insley (Cardiff, 2005).

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Those charters whose dates can be certified often correspond to information found in narrative chronicles, various surviving letters, or the copious financial and legal records of Henry II’s reign. By financial we are referring primarily to the Great Roll of the Pipe (or Pipe Rolls), the summary of accounts payable and receivable flowing through the Exchequer. There were in Henry’s reign two terms of the Exchequer, the Michelmas term and the Easter term, and it was the job of the Scribe of the Treasurer and the Scribe of the Chancery to receive, confirm, and then compile the royal accounts paid in Henry’s characteristic ‘short cross’ silver pennies. The result is a large set of extant financial records for Henry’s regnal years, which are well-documented for the years 1155–1189.80 In the Pipe Rolls are records of expenditures for military equipment such as crossbow bolts or wagons, outlays for castle construction and destruction, the collection of scutage, and the granting of money fiefs, honours, and castles to individuals. Many of Henry’s laws were preserved in monastic cartularies by chroniclers such as Roger of Howden and Gervase of Canterbury, and the texts are of sufficient legitimacy as to justify their historical use.81 Literary Sources Other tertiary sources of information are the surviving collections of personal correspondence passed between notable individuals and hagiographical accounts that concern church matters during Henry II’s reign. Letter-writing as an art form reached a certain pinnacle

80 For Richard fitz Neal’s description of the Exchequer, see Dialogus de Scaccario, eds. A. Hughes, C. G. Crump, and C. Johnson (Oxford, 1902); for a summary, see Introduction to the Study of the Pipe Rolls, in Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, (Reprint, Vaduz, 1966), III. For the early reign, see The Great Rolls of the Pipe for the Second, Third, and Fourth Years of the Reign of King Henry the Second, 1155–58, ed. J. Hunter (London, 1844); and after 1158 Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, vols. 1–38. There is no text comparable to the Dialogus for Normandy; on the nature of this problem, see C. H. Haskins, “The Government of Normandy under Henry II,” AHR 20 (1915): 277–91. 81 J. C. Holt, “The Assizes of Henry II: the Texts,” in The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, eds. D. A. Bullough and R. L. Storey (Oxford, 1971), 85–106; for the laws themselves, see Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward I, ed. W. Stubbs, 9th ed. (Oxford, 1913), 145–241.

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in the twelfth century, but it was relegated primarily to ecclesiastical circles that included the most educated men of the day.82 Between 1149 and 1189, some of the more prolific letter-writers were also quite eloquent: Thomas Becket, John of Salisbury, Gilbert Foliot, and Arnulf of Lisieux are but a few examples.83 Most edited collections of their letters also include those they may have penned for others, such as the frequent correspondences that John of Salisbury composed and dispatched for Theobald of Canterbury as well as letters received from various other persons. Very few of these letters discuss military matters in more than a passing sentence or two, but at times these remarks can verify the movements of armies through different areas or the locations and/or temperaments of individuals involved in the campaigns. A final source of information for the military affairs of Henry II is twelfth-century literature, particularly Anglo-Norman romances, songs of the troubadours, or metrical narratives. It is from such ‘courtly literature’ that ideals like chivalry are integrated into the definition of knighthood, where soldiers on horseback represent not just military power but a noble image of proper combat. They often depict in specific detail individual combat between knights and are thus more detail-oriented in regards to practical warfare. The use of literary evidence for military history is a tricky affair, however. The purpose of the Chansons was to entertain an audience, and they are thus given to exaggeration. Whether they are retelling old legends or depicting contemporary figures on crusade, the authors of these texts are prone to excessive valorization and suspicious plotlines. The literature nonetheless has something to offer military historians, as Catherine Hanley notes: . . . the portrayal of warfare extends to more than just battle scenes: war has a social function and an impact on those who take part in it

82 The best survey of ars dictaminis is still J. J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1974), 194–268. 83 See The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, ed. A. Duggan, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2000); The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume One: the Early Letters (1153–1161), eds. W. J. Millor, H. E. Butler, and C. N. L. Brooke (Revised, Oxford, 1986), and The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume Two: the Later Letters (1163–1180), eds. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1979); The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, eds. Z. N. Brooke, A. Morey, and C. N. L. Brooke (London, 1967); The Letter Collections of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. and trans. C. P. Schriber (Lewiston, 1997); or the older Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. F. Barlow, Camden 3rd Series, vol. 61 (London, 1939).

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. . . there is also considerable interest and variety in the narrative techniques used to depict war: the narrator of a chanson de geste may construct his scenes in a number of different ways in order to produce varying effects on his audience.84

Pertinent questions of analysis differ depending on the sort of text being used. Authors like Chrétien de Troyes, who invented the Arthurian romance, wrote for royal patrons with contemporary events on their minds. Their characterizations of warfare are either representative of the period, idyllic images of the past, or both; as Richard Kaeuper puts it, “ninth-century legends were being rewritten in terms of twelfth-century problems.”85 As such they reveal more about the mentalities of war than actual historical events. By comparison, L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal tells a tale of an actual person doing extraordinary deeds.86 Strickland writes, “the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal is effectively the sine qua non for the study of warfare, the tournament and knightly values in the later twelfth century, without which our knowledge would be irreparably diminished,” whereas “because in many respects their representation of warfare is clearly considered distanced from reality, the use of chansons has been consciously restricted.”87 Gillingham has noted that in the 19,214 lines of poetry in William Marshal’s story 3,150 lines are devoted to tournaments and 8,350 lines devoted to war, making the poem a useful source of military information indeed.88 The story of Marshal was composed between 1226 and 1229,89 making it in some ways a dubious account for the warfare of Henry’s reign but an excellent one for the nature of Angevin warfare. Other literary works of similar approach include the aforementioned chronicle of Jordan

84

Hanley, War and Combat, 105–6. R. W. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 319. 86 Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide, trans. D. Gilbert (Berkeley, 1992). Erec and Enide is thought by some to have been written about Henry II’s son Geoffrey, but the argument is purely conjecture; see J. J. Duggan, The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes (New Haven, 2001), 9–13. On William Marshal, see L’Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, ed. P. Meyer, 3 vols. (Paris, 1891–1901); and the newer History of William Marshal, Vol. 1, eds. A. J. Holden, S. Gregory, and D. Crouch (London, 2002). 87 Strickland, War and Chivalry, 8–9. 88 J. Gillingham, “War and Chivalry in the History of William the Marshall,” in ANW, 253. 89 D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219 (London, 1990), 2. 85

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Fantosme and the Conquête d’Irlande, a Norman poetic account of the arrival of the English into Ireland, 1166–1172.90 While the spread of relevant literature is rather small in comparison to the number of chronicles, letters, and edicts from the mid-to-late twelfth century, it remains an important component of the extant evidence for the reign of Henry II.

90 Damian-Grint, New Historians, 79–81. For the poem, see The Song of Dermot and the Earl, ed. G. H. Orpen (Oxford, 1892).

CHAPTER TWO

HENRY’S POLITICAL AND MILITARY CAREER Henry’s boyhood ended with his crossing of the English Channel in April 1149. He arrived at Devizes on the 13th to find the country gripped in a “wretched and frightful state of affairs.”1 His mother Matilda had reluctantly withdrawn from England to the Continent, thus allowing Stephen a freer hand in ruling the country, but the king himself was beset by schism in the English church. The dispute centered on Stephen’s inability to see his son Eustace (d. 1153) anointed as co-king and heir to the English throne, which was impossible because Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury (d. 1161), the only bishop legally allowed to perform the ceremony, refused to do so without permission from Rome. That permission would never come, as Pope Eugenius III (d. 1153) would not issue the order until Stephen confirmed Henry Murdac as archbishop of York, whom the pope had already consecrated on 7 December 1147. Murdac was thus the first English bishop consecrated without royal approval since the Conquest, a serious political defeat for the king amidst a tumultuous relationship with the English church.2 So long as Stephen remained opposed to the nomination, Eustace could not be anointed king; in the meantime, because of Stephen’s lack of firm control in Yorkshire, Murdac was able to enter the county and begin acting as archbishop. Stephen’s opponents seized the opportunity to move against the king on this new ecclesiastical front, particularly King David I of Scotland (1124–1153), the grand-uncle of Henry Plantagenet, who journeyed south into his Yorkshire lands to support Murdac’s position. David had since 1126 been one of the more ardent supporters of Matilda’s claim to royal succession and had ample political motivation to assist her son. Assisted by his own son and Ranulf, earl of Chester (d. 1153), David knighted both Henry fitz Empress and Roger, earl of Hereford (d. 1155), at Carlisle on Whit Sunday 1149

1 2

Gesta Stephani, 214–15. S. Marritt, “King Stephen and the Bishops,” ANS 24 (2002): 129–44.

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(22 May).3 The ceremony marked the beginning of Henry’s adult life at age sixteen and was a beacon of hope to the opposition forces which had lately lost momentum. Henry had already spent over a month in England before his knighting, issuing charters at Devizes as the Duke of Normandy, which was technically untrue because he had not yet received Normandy and would not until after year’s end.4 The signatories indicate a wide range of support for the young Angevin, with notables such as the earls of Cornwall, Gloucester, Hereford, and Salisbury in attendance, along with other important men.5 In particular, Ranulf of Chester became a steadfast ally to Henry from 1149 onwards, offering substantial resources to the Angevin efforts.6 In May, Henry traveled north to Carlisle for his receipt of knighthood, thus beginning what has been called the ‘Henrician Phase’ of the civil war. He and his newfound allies David, Ranulf, Roger, Hugh Bigod, the earl of Norfolk (d. 1177), and others determined to seize the moment and march southeast towards York with an army of Scots. The motivations behind this attack are unknown. R. H. C. Davis has suggested that the Angevin party hoped for a quick capture of the city, but perhaps David also hoped to marshal sympathetic allies in York through a show of unified strength. Paul Dalton argues that the attack was instigated by Henry Murdac, although the evidence for this is circumstantial at best.7 From two accounts of the event, the Gesta Stephani and the chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon, it appears that Stephen received word in advance

3

G. W. S. Barrow, David I of Scotland (1124–1153): the Balance of New and Old (Reading, 1985), 17; Davis, King Stephen, 101–7. 4 See the dispute over Henry’s return to the Continent in C. H. Haskins, “Normandy under Geoffrey Plantagenet,” EHR 27 (1912): 423, n. 26; R. L. Poole, “Henry II, Duke of Normandy,” EHR 42 (1927): 569–72; and Z. N. and C. N. L. Brooke “Henry II, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine,” EHR 61 (1946): 81–9. 5 D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154 (London, 2000), 241. For the charters, see Regesta Regis, nos. 666 and 705. 6 On Ranulf ’s loyalties, see J. H. Round, “King Stephen and the Earl of Chester,” EHR 10 (1895): 87–91; R. H. C. Davis, “King Stephen and the Earl of Chester Revised,” EHR 75 (1960): 654–60; G. White, “King Stephen, Duke Henry and Ranulf de Gernons, Earl of Chester,” EHR 91 (1976): 555–65; and P. Dalton, “The Armed Neutrality of Ranulf II of Chester,” ANS 14 (1991): 53. Ranulf ’s support could be considerable, as he once provided Stephen with 300 knights during the siege of Wallingford in 1146; see Bradbury, Stephen and Matilda, 136. 7 Davis, King Stephen, 107; P. Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire, 1066–1154 (Cambridge, 1994), 173.

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and personally intervened by riding to York himself. In the meantime, the Angevin party approached with a significant army in hopes of besieging the city, but Stephen barred the way with assembled ranks of cavalry and infantry. Despite the number and quality of Henry’s supporters their forces were not similarly arrayed, and Stephen’s army was growing from numbers of newly arrived allies. Rather than risk losing a decisive battle the rebels retreated, took their leave of each other, and “turned back home to their kingdoms.”8 The newly knighted Henry and Roger, for Henry had few other choices, and returned to Hereford by a circuitous route in the wilderness in order to escape Stephen’s sentries. The king responded by sending his son Eustace to lay a series of traps on the road from Dursley Castle, where Henry was staying, to Bristol, his intended destination. The wily Henry received advance warning and eluded them all, first reaching Bristol with Eustace hot on his heels and then Devizes, an Angevin stronghold from the earlier segments of the civil war. In frustration, Eustace ravaged Gloucestershire and in September was joined by his father; Stephen, returning from assorted military affairs in Yorkshire, ravaged the area around Salisbury with his knights, then Marlborough, and finally Devizes. Davis interprets the march as a baiting strategy, in which Stephen hoped to lure Henry into battle by burning the nearby food supplies; David Crouch considers it an effort not to oust Henry but rather to break the power of the families Marshal and Salisbury.9 In either case the Angevin allies were in a defensive posture and could not hope to match in any one area the strength of the combined royal forces. Young Henry was finally able to launch his own campaign, the first of his military career, when Ranulf of Chester launched a diversionary attack into Lincolnshire in the northeast, threatening to cut off Stephen from Yorkshire. The king marched towards Lincoln and Henry took the opportunity to leave Devizes and march into Devon along with the forces of William, earl of Gloucester (d. 1183), and Roger of Hereford.10 This march in the fall of 1149 should be

8 Gesta Stephani, 216–17; Historia Anglorum, IV: 29. John of Hexham dissents from these two accounts by stating that the projected attack on York never physically materialized at all; see Historia Regum, 323. 9 Davis, King Stephen, 109; Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, 244. 10 On the role and position of William see D. Crouch, “Earl William of Gloucester and the End of the Anarchy: New Evidence Relating to the Honor of Eudo Dapifer,”

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considered Henry’s first proper military campaign, for unlike the march to York earlier in the year Henry stood at the head of an army, directed its actions, besieged towns, and ravaged the landscape, all the while being assisted, not led, by the English earls. On this campaign Henry also achieved his first military victory at the harbor town of Bridgport, taking the town by storm and acquiring the allegiance of its castellan. Further efforts in the south were stymied by Henry de Tracy, Stephen’s military governor in Devon and Somerset, “a man of war and well tried in all martial exercises,” who chose not to engage in battle but instead hole up in his fortifications, particularly Barnstaple in Devon.11 Young Henry was therefore not able to vanquish his enemies as he may have wished, although he did manage to relieve Devizes from the attack of Eustace before year’s end. Yet despite this vigorous resurgence in 1149, anti-Stephen forces in England remained in a precarious position. Outside of receiving a new leader in Henry, and with him perhaps a new swagger, the state of political and military affairs in the country had actually changed very little. Stephen and Eustace retained strong armies and marched at will, and because Henry had not brought very many troops with him when he arrived for his knighting, the coalition was in desperate need of additional manpower. Therefore, between the end of 1149 and March 1150 Henry returned to the Continent to collect more soldiers from Normandy and Anjou. The exact moment of his departure is unknown, perhaps either December 1149 or January 1150.12 In any case he was gone for more than three years, not returning to England until 1153. Robert of Torigini’s first report of Henry on the Continent is to note that he received, at the age of seventeen, the duchy of Normandy from his father Geoffrey, which was Henry’s rightful inheritance through his mother.13 For the remainder of 1150 Duke Henry stayed by his father’s side at the sieges of Montreuil-Bellay, and he did not perform homage to his new liege

EHR 103 (1988): 69–75; and R. B. Patterson, “An Un-Edited Charter of Henry Fitz Empress and Earl William of Gloucester’s Comital Status,” EHR 87 (1972): 755–7. 11 Gesta Stephani, 210–11. 12 Brooke and Brooke, “Henry II, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine,” 84. 13 Torigini, 161; see also the verses of Etienne de Rouen, Draco Normannicus, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 2 (RS 82, 1885), II: 602.

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lord Louis VII of France until August 1151. Louis himself was not altogether pleased by the prospect of a rival kingdom comprising of Normandy, Anjou, and England. His best recourse was to enlist the aid of Stephen in order to put down the Angevin threat. Stephen himself remained in England, besieging Worcester twice in 1150 and 1151, but he did send Eustace, an appropriate choice considering Eustace had married Louis’ sister Constance and was thus the king’s brother-in-law. Eustace’s presence on the Continent signified the last great effort by Stephen to secure his rights in Normandy.14 Henry clashed with both Eustace and Louis by relieving Arques Castle from their attack in the late spring or early summer 1151, and Henry’s subsequent attack upon Torigini was deterred by them in return. In August, Louis took an army to a point between Melun and Mantes on the Seine and encountered the forces of Henry and his father Geoffrey, but illness prevented a battle from taking place. A truce was settled, and Louis accepted Henry’s homage for Normandy. Soon afterwards two events occurred that would drastically change the landscape of the western Continent. The first was the death of Henry’s father Geoffrey le Bel on 7 September 1151, which occurred before Henry could assemble the nobles of Normandy to discuss an invasion of England. Geoffrey was only thirty-nine at his demise, young for a man who had often showed great vigor in governance and warfare, and Robert of Torigini attributes his death to a severe fever. His last will and testament proved to be highly controversial: on his deathbed he is said to have given Anjou to Henry and only four castles to Henry’s brother Geoffrey (d. 1186). William of Newburgh tells us that three of these castles were Loudun, Mirebeau, and Chinon, all notable strongholds in Anjou. Yet the absence of substantial lands was surely frustrating for Geoffrey and is comparable to Henry I’s receipt of money (but no land) from William the Conqueror in 1087.15 The period after the death of Geoffrey saw a renewal of strategic discussions between Henry and his barons, now Norman and Angevin alike, concerning the expedition to England. In the spring of 1152 occurred the second notable event, Henry’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204), the heiress to the duchy

14 Warren, Henry II, 41–2; Historia Anglorum, IV: 30–31; H. J. Tanner, “Reassessing King Stephen’s Continental Strategies,” Medievalia et Humanistica 26 (1999): 101–18. 15 Torigini, 163; Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 113–14.

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of Aquitaine, on 18 May. This was made possible by the annulment of Eleanor’s marriage with Louis VII in February 1152.16 Less than eight weeks later Henry took her as his wife. The marriage itself has been seen as a grand romance in which a dashing knight swept Eleanor up in an exciting display of chivalric love, but in fact it constituted only a small blip on the radar of the chroniclers alive at the time; only the later authors, looking back at an event which presaged a number of dramatic events in the 1170s and 1180s, thought to comment in any detail.17 The consequence of Henry’s marriage was to arouse the anger of men on the Continent who feared his sudden increase in power, for now Henry not only was the master of Normandy, Anjou, and Maine, but through marriage stood to gain the duchy of Aquitaine. Although Louis VII had not himself devoted much effort to the governance of the south, he had never relinquished his own lordship over Aquitaine and still fancied himself duke.18 Very quickly he realized that Henry’s strength could soon dwarf his own and moved swiftly to quash him. Joining Louis was Henry, count of Champagne (d. 1181), who was engaged to Louis and Eleanor’s daughter Mary and thus until the annulment had stood to gain Aquitaine for himself. Eustace also returned to the Continent, wishing to defeat Henry and preserve his inheritance of England. Finally, Louis was joined by Henry’s own brother Geoffrey, who felt cheated out a rightful inheritance by the dying wishes of his father. The coalition struck at Neuf Marché, and although it fell, Henry’s counterattacks into the Vexin persuaded Louis to make peace. As a result, Henry was finally able to sail to England.19 Events in England would force Henry to launch his invasion before the spring thaw of 1153. Stephen had mounted a series of winter attacks across the countryside, fighting battles, raiding villages, and 16 Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 92–4; Draco Normannicus, 603. For discussions of causation, see Warren, Henry II, 43–4; J. A. Brundage, “The Canon Law of Divorces in the Mid-Twelfth Century: Louis VII c. Eleanor of Aquitaine,” and C. B. Bouchard, “Eleanor’s Divorce from Louis VII: the uses of Consanguinity,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, eds. B. Wheeler and J. C. Parsons (New York, 2002), 213–22 and 223–36, respectively. 17 The drama is epitomized in A. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (Cambridge, 1950), 79–81. 18 C. W. Hollister and T. K. Keefe, “The Making of the Angevin Empire,” The Journal of British Studies 12 (1973): 21. 19 Torigini, 165–6; Historia Anglorum, IV: 31; Gervase, I: 150.

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generally gaining the advantage wherever he rode. The rebels were outmanned and eagerly awaited Henry’s return, but he had been delayed by death, marriage, and two major stints of warfare. In the meantime the plight of the opposition had not improved. After shoring up his power in the counties Stephen turned his attention to Wallingford Castle, the most eastern Angevin castle and a strong rebel base that had frustrated Stephen twice before. In 1139 a potential assault was thwarted by the well-supplied motte-and-bailey structure, so Stephen ordered two counter-castles built to the west of town between Wallingford and Bristol in order to prevent potential sallies by the Angevin garrison. Robert of Gloucester demolished both countercastles in 1140, and Stephen returned in 1146 with 300 knights from Ranulf of Chester, but once again a direct attack failed to materialize.20 Stephen ordered another counter-castle built: called Crowmarsh Giffard, its construction was more solid than that of its predecessors and may have been built on a motte.21 After taking the town of Newbury by storm, the king returned to besiege Wallingford for a third time in 1152 and built either one or two additional countercastles.22 Crowmarsh was apparently still standing, for Robert of Torigini dates its destruction to 1153, but Stephen probably felt it necessary to tighten his ring of fortifications.23 The counter-castles, combined with the size and position of Stephen’s army, were serious threats to the garrison in Wallingford Castle. Together with Roger of Hereford and some of Duke Henry’s men, the Angevin garrison attempted a sally, but Stephen’s forces easily defeated the rebels and chased them back into the castle.24 In a treacherous move, Roger next made a secret deal with Stephen and surrendered himself in return for the king’s assistance against the castle of Worcester, which had been taken from William de

20 Historia Novella, 37. One of the counter-castles may have been named Brightwell; see D. J. King, Castellarium Anglicanum, 2 vols. (New York, 1983), I: 13. 21 Historia Anglorum, IV: 24; Gesta Stephani, 94. 22 Gesta Stephani, 226–7, notes “he hastily built two castles”; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, IV: 32, says that Stephen built one castle by the entrance to Wallingford bridge in order to cut off food supplies; Gervase, I: 151, also notes only one castle. For commentary see Bradbury, Stephen and Matilda, 161; R. Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), 283; Warren, Henry II, 48; and C. F. Slade, “Wallingford Castle in the Reign of Stephen,” Berkshire Archaeological Journal 58 (1960): 41–2. 23 Torigini, 173. 24 Gesta Stephani, 226–7.

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Beauchamp (d. 1211) by some of Waleran of Meulan’s knights. Roger and Stephen marched to besiege Worcester while leaving some forces around Wallingford.25 Though Roger had betrayed the Angevin garrison his deceit probably saved the castle by leading the English army away from the scene. Now free from harm and safely in league with the king, at Worcester Roger switched his loyalties once again and secretly sent word to Duke Henry, asking him to travel speedily with troops to England. According to the Gesta Stephani, Stephen was well aware of this intrigue. Were he a different sort of king who discarded honor in the face of treachery, Stephen might have imprisoned Roger for his duplicity; instead, Stephen refused to break his new alliance (and thus his word), and he moved most of his army back to Wallingford, leaving Roger in charge at Worcester. Not surprisingly, once he was alone Roger secured Worcester through bargaining and became Stephen’s enemy once again.26 Henry landed at Wareham by mid-January 1153 with over 3000 soldiers and moved to attack Stephen’s castle at Malmesbury.27 The move had the effect of drawing the king away from Wallingford and to the north, and by the time Stephen and Eustace arrived not only had the town fallen but Henry had invested the castle. Henry gathered his forces and met Stephen across the River Avon but battle was not joined. Malmesbury keep was consequently surrendered in the absence of military succor and perhaps because of treason by its castellan Jordan. Jordan was directed by Stephen to oversee the keep’s destruction, a stipulation the Gesta Stephani claims was arranged between Henry and Stephen in a truce drawn up on the Avon’s banks. Instead, Jordan surrendered the castle to Henry, thus giving Henry yet another stronghold in western England. As respective portions of his army went their separate ways, Stephen returned to London dispirited and suspicious that some of his barons were considering desertion to the duke’s side.28 Henry let his army rest for the remainder of the winter and began campaigning anew in the spring. We are told that the duke set off

25 The confusion surrounding Stephen’s Worcester campaign(s) is addressed in Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, 289–90. 26 Gesta Stephani, 228–31. 27 Wareham as the landing point is argued in Davis, King Stephen, 118, n. 14. 28 Historia Anglorum, IV: 34; Torigini, 171–2; Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 89; Gesta Stephani, 230–33.

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in pursuit of the remnants of Stephen’s army, but his movements suggest a rather haphazard progress of moving from target to target, sometimes led by his own design and sometimes by the wishes of his allies. Because of charters that are difficult to precisely date and vague comments in the narrative evidence, historians have had some problems tracing his path across England in 1153.29 What is clear is that Henry spent the middle months of the year acquiring castles through force or negotiation, thereby gaining new territories and allies such as Robert, earl of Leicester (d. 1168). By August, Henry was strong enough to address the ongoing siege of Wallingford. He besieged Stephen’s counter-castle of Crowmarsh and once again managed to lure the king’s army into a potential confrontation. When Stephen and Eustace arrived Henry took down his ramparts and arrayed his army against them from across the River Thames. Battle was never joined, however, and the two sides agreed to a truce that included Stephen’s recovering of some eighty hostages and the demolition of Crowmarsh, which had been the cause for the situation.30 Henry spent the remainder of the autumn attacking the castle at Stamford and sacking Nottingham. Henry’s prospects in England continued to improve over the course of 1153. He had taken or received several towns and castles and campaigned largely without hindrance, while his enemies had experienced several political setbacks. Stephen’s ongoing attempts to have Eustace crowned as a living heir to the throne had been stymied since April 1152, when Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury refused to crown Eustace as a living heir. When other bishops refused Stephen’s request that they overstep the metropolitan’s primacy in the matter and crown Eustace themselves the king arrested them. Theobald himself escaped to exile in Flanders. Eugenius III backed the archbishop’s prerogative, and once Stephen regained his composure Theobald returned to England just a few months later.31 In the end, the coronation issue worked itself out without royal or ecclesiastical interference. After the demolition of Crowmarsh Castle in

29 Gesta Stephani, 235–6. See the chronologies in Davis, King Stephen, 120; Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, 262–72; J. T. Appleby, The Troubled Reign of King Stephen (New York, 1970), 64–7; and H. A. Cronne, The Reign of King Stephen 1135–54: Anarchy in England (London, 1970), 64–7. 30 Historia Anglorum, IV: 34; Gesta Stephani, 237–9; Gervase, I: 153. 31 A. Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury (New York, 1969), 36–9.

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1153, Eustace, upset at Stephen’s inability to engage Henry in battle, embarked on a personal rampage of frustration, laying waste to the lands of Bury-St. Edmund’s. On the evening of 10 August Eustace sat down to dine, took a bite of his meal, promptly had a seizure, and died a week later. The food upon which he dined had come from the abbey, and the question of assassination or food poisoning is as of yet undecided.32 Stephen was left with only one remaining son, William of Boulogne (d. 1159), who decidedly lacked the political aspirations of his older brother. As the non-action at Wallingford had demonstrated, Stephen’s remaining barons were hesitant to fight Henry and perhaps sensed that an end to the civil war, which had been fought at least sporadically since 1139, was finally in sight. In fact, peace negotiations had already begun, with Theobald and Henry, bishop of Winchester (d. 1171), communicating with ducal representatives for several months during the summer and autumn of 1153. In the meantime, Henry’s strength had only grown in terms of both allies and territory. Four undated charters, which we can reasonably assign to late September or October 1153, indicate that Henry traveled south from Nottingham to the traditional Angevin base of Devizes and thence southeast to Wilton. In a grant to Bermondsey Priory, Henry promised royal confirmation of rents once his rights to the throne were confirmed, an indication that the duke’s confidence in his position was rising.33 From Wilton Henry rode east to Winchester, arriving there in early November to settle permanently a peace with Stephen. The agreement is one of the classic feudal documents of English history. Henry pledged fealty to Stephen as his lord with the condition that he become the king’s direct heir to the English throne. William of Boulogne in turn would pay homage to Henry as his lord, and the duke would reward his new vassal with all of Stephen’s lands in Normandy, most of which had been lost during the civil war. Specifically named are the honour of Warenne and the castles of Bellencombre and Mortemer, as well as several unnamed castles and all the villages and revenues of Mortaine, of which William was count. Finally, all of Stephen’s earls and barons would perform liege homage to Henry, destroy the unauthorized

32 See T. Callahan, “Sinners and Saintly Retribution: the Timely Death of King Stephen’s Son Eustace,” Studia Monastica 18 (1976): 109–17. 33 Regesta Regis, no. 90.

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castles built during the anarchy, and surrender to him the remainder of their fortifications at the time of his accession. The formal proceedings commenced on 6 November, the charter was signed in December at Westminster, and the rites of homage were performed at Oxford on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1154 (13 January). Although the peace was indeed brokered by ecclesiastical forces, the evidence of the period 1149–1153 should give the duke some measure of credit for enabling the Winchester settlement through force of arms.34 In practice, the terms of the treaty meant little until Henry actually became king, and there are no extant royal charters in which Henry attests to Stephen as his lord.35 In late February Henry again met with Stephen, complaining that many of the baronial castles still stood, but Stephen denied the charge. Henry then left England before Easter (4 April), returned to the Continent, and remained there until Stephen’s death on 25 October 1154. Some historians have attributed his departure to the strained relations with Stephen and also a possible plot against the duke’s life hatched by a conjunction of the English barons, Flemings (perhaps William of Ypres), and Stephen’s son William. The evidence is doubtful at best. The source of the rumor, Gervase of Canterbury, did not begin writing his chronicle until 1188, and neither Henry of Huntingdon nor Robert of Torigini mentions the plot. The supposed conspiracy between nobles, Flemings, and princes is rather akin to the rebellions of 1173 and 1174, and one wonders if Gervase was projecting more current events backwards into Henry’s ducal reign.36 The more likely scenario is that Henry was once again turning his attention to the Continent and, as Crouch notes, that he brought his two most important allies in England, Robert of Leicester and Reginald, earl of Cornwall (d. 1175), along for the journey speaks volumes.37 With England for the most part secure, the duke surely

34

Argued by Leedom, “Settlement of 1153,” 360. See J. C. Holt’s excellent “1153: the Treaty of Winchester,” in The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, ed. E. King (Oxford, 1994), 291–316. The Latin text of the treaty can be found in Regesta Regis, no. 272; in English translation, see EHD, 404–7. It is mentioned in all of the narrative chronicles: see Torigini, 177; Historia Anglorum, IV: 38; Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 91; and Gesta Stephani, 240–1. 36 Reported by Gervase, I: 158; on the conspiracy see Davis, King Stephen, 126; Warren, Henry II, 53. 37 Crouch, Reign of King Stephen, 280–1. 35

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grasped the danger to his inherited lands in Normandy, where Louis VII was again moving against the border of the province. With the aid of Flemings Louis had besieged and eventually received the castle of Vernon in July 1153, and in September he launched a surprise attack on Verneuil and burned a portion of the town. In the next year Louis married his second wife, Constance, daughter of Alfonso VII (1126–1157), the king of Castile. Louis must have been thinking not only of the need for an heir (which he would not receive until his third wife Adela of Champagne delivered the young Philip II in 1165) but also of a way to expand his influence around Aquitaine. Accordingly, upon landing Henry first marched to assert his suzerainty over his Norman lands; second, he moved into Aquitaine to suppress a rebellion there and shore up his position in the south. The importance of Aquitaine is evident by the length of Henry’s stay there: despite Normandy’s position as the bedrock of his continental power, the duke remained in Aquitaine until late June. He was back in Rouen by 24 June to confirm the election of Robert of Torigini as prior of Bec. Peace talks between Henry and Louis were then initiated in August and Henry received the castles of NeufMarché and Vernon, two places Louis had besieged and taken after Henry’s reception of Normandy. In return, Henry compensated the French crown for its expenditures in the taking of the castles in the first place, to the sum of two thousand marks. The remainder of Henry’s time in the autumn of 1154 was spent besieging his rebellious cousin Richard, son of Robert of Gloucester, at Torigini, and then campaigning in the Vexin alongside Louis VII (who was, after all, his feudal lord) against Joscelin Crispin.38 It was during this second siege of Torigini that Henry received word of Stephen’s death on 25 October 1154 at the hands of a severe illness, perhaps dysentery. The last year of Stephen’s life was essentially tranquil, and apart from intense discussions with the unhappy Henry in late February, the king had been able to reign in peace. Henry’s English allies, such as Hugh Bigod and William, earl of Gloucester, ceased to present either military or political difficulties, and the indications are that the royal administration continued in its regular manner. Mints in Gloucestershire and Devon began turning out coins emblazoned with Stephen’s image for the

38

Torigini, 174 and 179–81.

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first time in decades, and Stephen seems to have enjoyed a general resurgence in his public image as well.39 Such newfound respectability had its dangers—Henry of Huntingdon speaks abstractly about the evil counsel whispered into his ears while Duke Henry was absent, pushing him to rescind the peace—but in the end Stephen upheld the strictures of Winchester. In order to return the honour of Drax in Yorkshire to the Paynel family, which had formerly been dispossessed for its allegiance to Matilda, Stephen besieged the castle there in the summer of 1154 and defeated Philip of Colleville. Stephen’s faithfulness to his word, a characteristic he displayed throughout his entire reign, bore fruit after his death. England was indeed at peace, and Henry himself found no reason to hurry to claim the throne as both Stephen and Henry I had done. Instead, the duke waited until 7 December to cross and was not crowned at Westminster until the 19th. Contrary winds in the Channel may also have been to blame, but in all likelihood, with peace having been agreed upon in both England and Normandy, Henry had no reason to speed up his affairs. Such deliberateness of motion was to be a hallmark of the first Angevin king of the English.40 Henry II was crowned at Westminster on 19 December 1154 and thereafter set himself to the governance of a kingdom vast in scope and diverse in population. His immediate concern was to stabilize the country and assert his royal authority. To this end he sought to confiscate or destroy the illegal castles left over from the anarchy of Stephen’s reign; in addition, Henry expelled all foreign mercenaries from English lands.41 While few could have been sad to see the Flemings depart, considerable resistance developed against what some nobles saw as a deprivation of their traditional right to private castles on lands held through homage. It was a risky political move because Henry had little money with which to reward loyal magnates, and his main supporters were those who championed his cause against Stephen. The policy of confiscation did not make the king many new friends.42 Nevertheless, with many nobles giving in to the king’s demands Henry got what he wanted, although the intractable

39 40 41 42

G. J. White, “The End of Stephen’s Reign,” History 75 (1990): 18–19. Historia Anglorum, IV: 39–40. Torigini, 183. J. A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), 135–6.

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William le Gros and Hugh Mortimer both had to be persuaded by force. William surrendered upon hearing of the approach of Henry’s army, but Hugh was not to be intimidated and fortified his castles against the king. In the summer of 1155 Henry besieged Bridgnorth Castle for several days until its garrison surrendered; likewise, he took Cleobury and Wigmore but graciously offered Hugh a full pardon of his crimes.43 This display of force was enough to convince the barons of his seriousness, and Henry did not face a rebellion from the nobility in England for another decade. Once so established, Henry II laid out his other plans of strong governance, first turning his attention to the seizure of castles in his continental lands. Henry sailed from Dover in January 1156, landed in Picardy, and proceeded to Rouen. Before asserting his will he met with Louis VII in the Vexin and did homage for the lands of Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, and Aquitaine.44 Louis could not have been thrilled at his fortunes, but perhaps he took some solace in the fact that, for the moment, the powerful Henry was acting the part of an obedient vassal. The person of more immediate concern was Henry’s brother Geoffrey, who had been deprived of any substantial lands by their father. Geoffrey le Bel’s will had given Henry, already the duke of Normandy, the county of Anjou, leaving brother Geoffrey with only four castles, including Mirebeau (Poitou) and Loudun and Chinon (Touraine), which was notable for its natural defenses even before Henry improved its walls with semicircular stone towers.45 Back in Rouen Henry had a conference with his brother and Theodoric, count of Flanders, to contest Geoffrey’s claims to Touraine and Maine. As noted above, it was the count of Anjou who controlled both these regions and Henry was hardly going to acquiesce to his brother’s demands. The fact that he had paid homage to Louis strengthened his cause, but there was a price: Henry became England’s first king to pay homage to a French monarch.46 Geoffrey, for his part, left Rouen and marched to Nantes, taking the city with the consent of its citizens. Situated in a powerful strate-

43

Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 163; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 301; Gervase, I: 161–2. Chronica, I: 215. 45 Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 113–14. 46 That is, to pay physical homage as well as owe fealty or service; see C. W. Hollister, “Normandy, France, and the Anglo-Norman Regnum,” Speculum 51 (1976): 235. 44

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gic location by commanding the mouth of the Loire River, Nantes sat as a constant threat to the borders of Anjou and Poitou. Henry no longer had a choice in the matter and set about besieging Geoffrey’s castles in late February. One by one they fell: first Mirebeau, then Chinon, and finally Loudon, which was surrendered in May. Geoffrey and Henry agreed to terms by July: Henry retained his lands and by the assent of the people became the heir to the county of Nantes should his brother die. In exchange, Geoffrey received annual payments of £1,000 from England and £2,000 from Anjou.47 Henry spent the remainder of 1156 on the Continent, moving from Anjou to Normandy in September, and then he traveled south to Limoges in October. He sent an army northwest into Poitou to occupy Thouars and expel its viscount Geoffrey, who had helped defend Chinon against him earlier in the year.48 In 1158, Henry would be compelled to return to Nantes when his brother died on 26 July. Duke Conan IV of Brittany (d. 1171) took possession of the county, and although Conan had once assumed the dukedom of Brittany with Henry’s blessing he had now overstepped his bounds. The early years of Henry’s reign were characterized by the exertion of power over rebellious vassals, and Brittany was no exception. With Louis VII charging his vassal to pacify the Bretons, Henry called in the obligations of his Norman knights and mustered an army at Avranches on Michelmas (29 September). Conan submitted to Henry and ceded Nantes back to the king.49 Scotland and Wales Expansion of royal authority continued to interest Henry II after sailing from Barfleur to Southampton on 8 April 1157. On 19 May he demanded the surrender of the castles of Hugh Bigod and William of Blois, King Stephen’s only remaining son. This was an effort to bring East Anglia back under the sway of the king and away from that of the Bigod family, which had since the days of the anarchy been successful in amassing great wealth. Hugh himself appears to have been in the favor of Henry, evidenced by his regular appearances

47 48 49

Ymagines Historiarum, I: 302; Torigini, 187–90. Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary, 19–20. Torigini, 196–7; Warren, Henry II, 76–7.

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at court between 1154 and 1158, but the king’s policy of castle confiscation was not constrained by friendship.50 It was also in this year that the king first turned his attention to English borders in the north and west. In July he met with the Scottish king Malcolm IV at Chester. In 1149, Stephen had promised Northumbria to the descendents of King David I, but Henry saw this as a usurpation of his rights and wanted the land returned. Malcolm paid homage to Henry, surrendered Northumberland and its castle of Newcastleupon-Tyne, and also Bamburgh, Westmoreland, and Carlisle in Cumberland. To Malcolm was restored the earldom of Huntingdon that had been lost during the anarchy. Their feudal bond notwithstanding, Henry and Malcolm’s relationship was rocky: because Malcolm had not actually provided Henry with military service, the king did not knight him until 1159 and then only as a reward for the Scot’s assistance on the Toulouse campaign. The consequence of Malcolm’s knighthood was a rebellion of six Scottish earls the very next year, men upset about his acquiescence to Henry’s every wish concerning northern English lands.51 Malcolm was besieged at Perth, but after resisting the siege the Scottish king gathered an army and conquered Galloway.52 As for Henry, he looked to the rebuilding of Wark Castle with a three-story tower keep and perhaps a defensive ditch; this fortress would later be staunchly defended against Scottish invasions in 1174.53 In sum, the king of the English got what he wanted in terms of both land rights and stability in his northern regions. The central military event of 1157 was Henry’s first campaign in the Isles after his coronation, the invasion of Gwynedd in northern Wales. Unlike Scotland, which had periodically entered into stable relationships with the Anglo-Norman kings since the days after the Conquest, Wales was a splintered region of shifting alliances and difficult geography. All of the Anglo-Norman kings save Stephen had

50 Torigini, 192–3; A. Wareham, “The Motives and Politics of the Bigod Family,” ANS 17 (1995): 238–9. 51 Ymagines Historiarum, I: 302; Chronica, I: 217; Torigini, 192; Chronicle of Holyrood, 129–32. See also A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292: Succession and Independence (Edinburgh, 2002), 72; and A. O. Anderson, “Anglo-Scottish Relations from Constantine II to William,” Scottish Historical Review 42 (1963): 16. 52 Chronica, I: 217. 53 Armitage, Early Norman Castles, 367 and 388.

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attempted to subdue the Welsh in one way or another with mixed results, and during his reign his lack of attention westward had allowed the Welsh to regain a firm grip on their lands. By 1154, three major principalities existed in Wales: roughly, Deheubarth in the south, Powys in the center, and Gwynedd in the north, and one by one they rebelled against English authority. Initial problems arose in 1157 when Prince Owain of Gwynedd (d. 1170) seized power for himself by asserting his authority over that of the English as well as his own relatives. First came the exiling of his two brothers Cadwaladr and Madog, who were also the heirs to Powys; second, Owain attacked Henry II’s castle of Tegeingl. The seizure of power was not uncommon, but Henry could not accept an attack against his own possessions and so marched against Owain in the summer. The campaign has been noted for Henry’s use of scutage: his first levy of scutage had occurred in 1156, and in the next year he collected only one-third of the knight service owed to him in England for the war in Wales. This is also the first campaign for which we have detailed evidence about the nature of the king’s army, its rough itinerary through Wales, and a forest battle at Coleshill Wood that involved Henry in personal, mortal combat.54 After surviving an ambush in the forest, Henry pushed forward and Owain fled north. In time, the prince acquiesced and pledged fealty to the king, so despite the rocky progress of the campaign Henry had achieved the objective of his campaign by forcing submission. Before leaving Gwynedd, Henry fortified the castles of Rhuddlan and Basingwerk.55 The Welsh campaign of 1157 is symptomatic of Henry’s first few years as king: a policy of direct confrontations with his enemies and the reclamation of what he saw as his royal rights. While the 1157 campaign secured the submission of the northern princes, it did not really solve the problem of violence on the March. The Welsh were an intractable bunch, frequently moving against baronial lands on the Anglo-Welsh border, either by attacking castles or raiding into England itself. Not surprisingly, then, no other region in England contained more fortifications than the March: over

54 On scutage, see T. K. Keefe, Feudal Assessments and the Political Community under Henry II and his Sons (Berkeley, 1983), 25. The best accounts of the 1157 are Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 106; Hergest, 135; and Peniarth, 59. 55 Torigini, 195.

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300 castles occupied the border before 1215, most of them arrayed across the central Marcher lands in order to force Welsh incursions to the north or south, areas in which England had larger urban populations and thus higher numbers of available troops. Most of the castles were of the motte-and-bailey sort, constructed out of wood and as necessity demanded.56 Nevertheless, in the late 1150s southern Wales had yet to be dominated. Prince Rhys ap Deheubarth (d. 1197), much weaker initially than Owain and looking to expand his fortunes in the south, engaged in hostilities against the Marcher lands of Roger of Clare and Walter Clifford in 1158. Henry II first tried a diplomatic solution. Rather than mount a campaign against Rhys, he summoned the prince to court and offered him castles amidst the baronial lands in an attempt at pacification. Earl Roger reacted negatively to the offer and, using a deceitful treaty as cover, seized plunder and garrisoned castles in Rhys’ lands. When the prince complained to Henry, the king ordered Roger to pay reparations, but his concern ultimately lay with his earl and not the Welshman. Consequently, when Roger refused reparations and Rhys attacked his castles in response, Henry marched into Wales with an army. No fighting occurred, but Henry took hostages from Rhys as surety for his future good conduct.57 Such conduct was not forthcoming: in 1159, the very next year, Rhys attacked more castles and was beset by an army composed of five Marcher earls and Cadwaladr of Gwynedd, who had married into the Clare family and had an interest in their well-being.58 A truce was concluded, and Rhys spent the next three years quietly minding his own affairs. In 1163, however, Rhys would finally incur the wrath of Henry II by moving against not only baronial lands but interests of the English Crown. He attacked the castle of Llandovery, a fortress in which the Angevin court had invested substantial funds for its strengthening and reconstruction. Llandovery had been built by the Norman Richard Fitzpons, taken by the Welsh in 1116, and then recovered in 1158. Its defenses were bolstered by a stone tower and improved guardhouse, but the castle fell nonetheless to Rhys and Henry was

56 R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), 90–1. 57 Brenhinedd y Saesson, 159–61. 58 A. H. Williams, An Introduction to the History of Wales, 2 vols. (Cardiff, 1962), II: 38.

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compelled to intervene in Marcher affairs once more.59 The king had spent 1160–1162 on the Continent but, unluckily for Rhys, had recently returned in January 1163 for the installation of Thomas Becket (d. 1170) as archbishop of Canterbury. Henry assembled a sizable force in April, entered Glamorgan, quickly marched through Gower and Carmarthen, and finally encountered Rhys at Pencader. There, persuaded by his uncle Owain, Rhys surrendered, was taken prisoner, and returned to England with Henry. At the Council of Woodstock on 1 July 1163 Rhys performed homage for Henry, Malcolm IV, and Prince Owain, and was thereafter allowed to return to southern Wales.60 The show of force had sufficiently cowed Rhys, although Deheubarth itself would remain a persistent problem for the Angevin kings for years to come.61 The strategy of intimidation produced only limited results in the rest of Wales as well. By 1164, the Becket affair was reaching crisis proportions, and the Welsh leadership perhaps saw an opportunity to rid itself of English rule. This time the different princes combined their forces into a concerted effort: Owain and Rhys, along with the chieftains of Powys, renewed attacks by sending Owain’s son David to set upon Tegeingl in the north. Henry was in Normandy at the time sitting in on conferences with Louis VII, Philip of Alsace, the new count of Flanders (d. 1191), and ambassadors from the court of Emperor Frederic Barbarossa (1152–1190). Among the latter Henry conversed with the archbishop of Cologne and secured a tentative agreement to marry one of his daughters to the duke of Bavaria.62 Upon hearing of the troubles in Wales, however, the king hurriedly returned to England in the early summer of 1165. While Owain was convinced that Henry fought the Welsh out of pure hatred, Henry’s campaigns to assert his supremacy fit in well with his governing style in the 1160s.63 A massive campaign culminated in an indecisive battle in the Vale of Ceiriog, and Henry ended up retiring back into

59

Fry, Castles of Britain and Ireland, 313. Expugnatio, 374; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 311; J. E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, 2 vols. 3rd ed. (London, 1939), I: 511–13. 61 See J. Gillingham, “Henry II, Richard I, and the Lord Rhys,” Partitia 10 (1996): 225–236. 62 Torigini, 224. 63 See the letter from Owain to Thomas Becket in 1165; Correspondence of Thomas Becket, I: no. 57. 60

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England with twenty-two Welshmen as hostages. His frustration getting the best of him, they were all blinded. Among the victims were Owain’s sons David and Conan and Rhys’ sons Cadwallon, Cynwrig, and Maredudd.64 The larger implication of the campaign’s failure was an increase of both power and prestige on the part of the Welsh princes and a lessening of English control over the Welsh March. Yet the Welsh lack of allies hampered any effort to secure a prolonged independence. Several times Owain tried enlisting the military aid of Louis VII without result. Prior to the 1165 campaign, Owain put himself at Louis’ command in a letter; after the campaign, he wrote to Louis again. This time he boasted of the victory at Ceiriog, stressed the fact that Henry had taken the brunt of the casualties, and once again asking for aid in order to punish the English for invading, as he opined, without cause. Finally, in 1168 Owain actually sent messengers to France to requesting a military alliance.65 All his efforts were in vain, and it seems that Anglo-Welsh hostilities actually died down between 1168 and 1182, there were no notable Welsh incursions during the Great Revolt of 1173 and 1174, and indeed, for the rest of his reign Henry would come to rely upon Welsh mercenaries as a significant component of his armies. The Continent Henry II pursued a foreign policy on the Continent that was quite similar to his first moves in England: negotiation followed up by force when necessary. The main difference between the two geographical areas is simple: in England, the king was concerned about internal stability, while across the Channel his actions were all geared toward the acquisition of land. In August 1158, Henry arranged the betrothal of his eldest son Henry to Margaret, Louis VII’s daughter through his second wife Constance. The young Henry was but four years old, and Margaret still an infant. Her dowry was to be the Norman Vexin above the River Epte. The betrothal was only pos-

64 Hergest, 147; Peniarth, 63–4; Brenhinedd y Saesson, 167 and 320; Annales Cambriae, 50; Chronica, I: 240. 65 Acts of Welsh Rulers, no. 193 [October 1163 X July 1165]; no. 196 [November 1165 X March 1166]; and p. 23.

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sible through a great show of affection and loyalty to King Louis, who was of course suspicious of his Angevin rival and not keen on simply gifting an important slice of territory. In order to persuade Louis, Henry’s chancellor Thomas Becket, being the collector of dues and fines as well as a personal friend of the king, imposed a betrothal tax upon the nobles and then rode to visit Louis with the proceeds: 200 knights, legions of servants all dressed in new clothes, gifts of silk and pelts, tapestries, twenty-four changes of clothing, and eight wagons. Two wagons were filled with nothing but barrels of ale— the mission was a success and the children were engaged. By 1158 Henry had established himself as the dominant force outside of Paris and had political control over Normandy, Anjou, and Maine as well the ancillary provinces of Touraine, Poitou and the county of Nantes. His success as a politician and general had so far been overwhelming. The sum of Henry’s military disappointments on the Continent thus far amounted to two non-actions at Arques and Torigini in 1151, where his army refused to fight the forces of his overlord Louis VII, and the loss of Neuf Marché in the summer of 1152, an event for which Henry was not even present. Every other campaign had gone in favor of the Plantagenet: counterattacks in the Vexin to relieve Neuf Marché, the defeat of his brother Geoffrey not once but twice, first in 1152 and again in 1156, seizing strong castles and winning over the loyalty of the citizens of Nantes. It is no surprise, then, that Henry had sufficient time and security to look after affairs in England, Scotland, and Wales in the 1150s and 1160s. There was one area in which he had not yet asserted his lordship, however, and that was Aquitaine. Medieval Aquitaine was said to have been, in the words of one geographer, “an unstable area, caught between the French and English monarchies, a vast inorganic mass.”66 Henry spent some time there as duke and had in the summer of 1154 marched through Aquitaine to suppress rebellions, urged on, no doubt, by his strong-willed bride. Henry’s need to settle affairs had been complicated by the rival claim of Eleanor’s former husband Louis VII. In addition, there was some question as to whether or not Henry could lay claim to the adjacent region of Languedoc, which had

66 X. de Planhol and P. Claval, A Historical Geography of France, trans. J. Lloyd (Cambridge, 1994), 178.

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traditionally been prized by the counts of Poitou. Centered on the cities of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Narbonne, it was an extremely rich and fertile area with Toulouse as the centerpiece.67 When the Poitevin lords gained control over Bordeaux in the twelfth century they sought to acquire the valuable trade routes through Toulouse by way of hereditary right.68 The bloodline of Toulouse fell into dispute in 1093 with the death of Count William IV. William left no male heirs but a daughter, Philippa, the wife of William IX the Troubadour (d. 1126) and mother to William X (d. 1137), Eleanor’s father. This is a tale remarkably similar to that of Eleanor’s husband, for Henry himself claimed the throne of England through his mother Matilda, the daughter of Henry I. Just as the Angevin claim to England had caused a civil war, so too the dispute over Toulouse brought about political difficulties. William of Newburgh claims that William IX, needing money to pay for his extravagant living, pawned the city of Toulouse to Count Raymond V (d. 1194), the descendent of Raymond IV of St. Gilles (d. 1105).69 Raymond of St. Gilles was a famous participant in the First Crusade and became the first Count of Tripoli, and he was also the brother of the heir-less William IV.70 The historical ties between Toulouse and Aquitaine were substantial enough for Henry II to assert his lordship there. If successful, he would receive control over much of Languedoc. In this he was naturally opposed both by Louis, who sought to contain Henry’s ever-growing empire, and Raymond V. The marriage of Henry and Eleanor made Louis and Raymond allies through necessity: in 1154 Raymond married Louis’ sister Constance, the widow of Stephen’s son Eustace.71 Although the French king had in 1141 asserted his own claim to Toulouse through Eleanor, the burgeoning power of Henry forced him to stand with his brother-in-law to oppose the Angevin’s designs. The army, which was probably the biggest of his entire reign, mustered at Poitiers in an attempt to cow Raymond 67 J. Given, State and Society in Medieval Europe: Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (Ithaca, 1990), 19–24. 68 Warren, Henry II, 83–5. On the political development of Toulouse and the south, see G. Duby, France in the Middle Ages, 987–1460: from Hugh Capet to Joan of Arc, trans. J. Vale (Oxford, 1991), 230–4. 69 Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 121–2. 70 On Raymond’s legacy see H. E. Meyer, The Crusades, trans. J. Gillingham, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1988), 67–8. 71 R. Benjamin, “A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156–90,” Historical Research 56 (1988): 26–7.

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V, but the count refused to submit, placing his confidence in both his allies and the protective city walls of Toulouse.72 Henry’s only remaining alternatives were to abandon his claim for the moment or lead a military campaign from Poitiers to Toulouse. He chose the latter. The grand army arrived at Toulouse by the first week of July, but while it was marching south Louis VII wisely decided to oppose Henry’s ambitions. A noose was tightening around the French demesne, the Angevin king was growing in power, and the addition of Languedoc would have effectively cut off French access to Rome by reducing the routes to those running through Burgundy and Savoy. So as Henry settled down to survey Toulouse, Louis suddenly arrived and entered the city with what soldiers he could gather in a show of support for Count Raymond V. Due to the presence of Louis in the city, Henry, according to Roger of Howden, sat before the city for a long time and wasted his resources, then left the city having accomplished nothing.73 For the first time in four years the French had successfully resisted the king’s expansionary moves. Yet contrary to Howden’s account, which was written many years later, Henry did put his army to some use by ravaging the land around the city, burning villages, sending raids north, and besieging, capturing and fortifying the city of Cahors. In late September, sickness penetrated the ranks of Henry’s army and it finally returned north and abandoned the campaign. Notably, King Stephen’s last remaining son, William of Boulogne, died from illness during the campaign, as did William of Mortaine, whose earldom passed to Henry II by virtue of William’s lack of an heir.74 The focus of historians upon the failure of the 1159 Toulouse campaign has in some measure pulled proper attention away from its immediate aftermath. Warren claims that the seizure of the country of Quercy was the only enduring accomplishment of his campaign, but there was more to Henry’s success than that.75 In the aftermath, 1160–1161 was in some ways a banner year for Henry II. Even without Toulouse itself Henry still controlled much of Languedoc and consolidated his wife’s claim to Aquitaine through

72

Torigini, 201–2. Chronica, I: 217; see also Ralph Diceto’s brief account in Ymagines Historiarum, I: 303. 74 Torigini, 203 and 206; Chronica, I: 217; Herbert of Bosham, Mats. III: 175–6. 75 Warren, Henry II, 87. 73

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ravaging operations, the taking of Cahors, and the fortifying of various castles. Moreover, Henry had retained the entirety of his continental lands and even added critical castles in the Vexin while ravaged Louis’ own demesne. He clearly had the upper hand, and when Louis agreed to a treaty in May 1160 it was disadvantageous to him. Henry used his newly-won gains as bargaining chips: he released Evreux and its castles in exchange for the French recognition of all the Angevin’s lands, including the southern lands outside of Toulouse. Toulouse highlights the biggest and most enduring point of contention between Henry II and Louis: the border region of the Vexin. According to the treaty, the Vexin could only be gained through a successful marriage between Henry’s son Henry and Louis’ daughter Margaret, whose betrothal had been secured in 1158. If the marriage occurred within three years, Henry would receive the Vexin to the benefit of his son. The Knights Templar was to occupy the castles of Gisors and Neaufles-Auvergny and act as guarantors of the treaty. With both sides satisfied, oaths were taken and the treaty concluded, but very soon after relations soured once again. Three of the Templars, Robert de Pirou, Tostes de St. Omer, and Richard de Hastings, treacherously handed the castles over to King Henry. In his fury King Louis banished the knights from France; Henry, never one to refuse a gift, welcomed the knights into England and rewarded them handsomely.76 But the treaty itself was not voided, and on 2 November 1160 the toddlers Henry and Margaret were indeed married at Neuborg. Henry II took possession of his castles, and further provoked Louis by attacking Blois in 1161. 1161 and 1162, therefore, were the best of times for the English king and one of the high points of his reign. In spite of the disappointing campaign at Toulouse, Henry had managed to maintain nearly all of his territories, and he even made some important strategic gains near the heart of Louis’ domains. The two sides were again reconciled in September 1162 through the personal mediation of Pope Alexander III at Touci on the River Loire.77

76 The treaty is mentioned in Ymagines Historiarum, I: 305; and Torigini, 206. Although Warren claims that the stipulations were not recorded by the chroniclers, they are actually in Chronica, I: 217–18; otherwise, see Recueil des Actes de Henri II, II: 151–3; and Warren’s claim in Henry II, 88. 77 Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary, 57.

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In stark contrast to the activity of the preceding three years, 1162 was a year in which Henry II did not engage in any notable military endeavors. Most of his activity was concerned with the regulation and fortification of castles. In January he received from Geoffrey de Mayenne the castles of Goron, Ambières, and Châteauneuf on the River Colme.78 By March, Henry had returned to England and held a conference at Dover with Thierry of Flanders to outline and confirm the obligations owed to him.79 In May, Henry persuaded his friend and chancellor Thomas Becket to become the next archbishop of Canterbury. Becket was an appropriate choice for the position in Henry’s eyes, although his predecessor Theobald had probably never imagined the chancellor taking his place at the head of the English Church.80 Henry’s desire to see his friend consecrated stemmed from his desire for revenues from vacant bishoprics, soldiers raised from church lands, and perhaps a better rapport between church and state, but the move would soon be his undoing. Becket experienced a conversion experience after his consecration and within a year became a stubborn opponent of the Crown.81 In March 1166, following his struggles against the Welsh the previous year, Henry returned to Normandy and marched into Maine to quell the rebellions of William Talvas, count of Sées (d. 1171), and his grandson John, count of Ponthieu (d. 1191), both of whom were led in their aggression by Ralph de Fougères. The rebels were resisting the orders of Queen Eleanor, who had been left in charge of Normandy while Henry was on campaign in Wales, but their efforts on the whole had been unsuccessful.82 Henry moved to strike the rebels and particularly Fougères, whom he had actually favored earlier in his reign. First, he received the castles of Alençon and La Roche Mabille from William and John, probably through nothing more than a show of force. In particular William Talvas symbolized the power shifts that had occurred since Henry’s accession to power in the 1150s: once an important ally of Geoffrey le Bel, he had now lost lands in both England and Normandy due to the rising power of Henry II.83 78 79 80 81 82 83

Torigini, 211–12. Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary, 60. Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, 168–9. See M. Staunton, “Thomas Becket’s Conversion,” ANS 21 (1998): 193–211. Ymagines Historiarum, I: 329. K. Thompson, “William Talvas, Count of Ponthieu, and the Politics of the

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Following these events, King Henry also acquired in 1166 the last major continental component of the Angevin Empire, the duchy of Brittany. Brittany was an attractive territory, lying as it does to the west of Poitou, Anjou, Maine, and Normandy, not to mention its coastline and proximity to such bastions of Angevin strength as LeMans, Angers, and of course the church at Mont-St. Michel. Henry’s favorable position as the count of Nantes enabled him to keep a close eye on Brittany to the north. The duchy itself had been in a state of virtual civil war for ten years as Conan IV struggled with his stepfather Eudo de Porhoët, the second husband of his mother Bertha, for control over Brittany. As old feuds within the duchy were resurrected Henry was the immediate beneficiary: already perched on the fringes in Nantes, it was no difficult feat for him to assert his presence among the Bretons. For years it had been clear that Conan IV could not control the divided factions in Brittany, much less maintain good order.84 Henry II was a supporter of Conan, and in 1166 the duke agreed to the marriage of his daughter and heiress Constance to Henry’s son Geoffrey. The infants were of course too young to rule, so as his son’s guardian Henry became the de facto duke of Brittany and Conan took what Michael Jones has called the “twelfth-century equivalent of early retirement.” Henry thus ruled the duchy until Geoffrey reached sufficient age in 1181, and he continued as count of Nantes until Michelmas 1185, meaning that Geoffrey only held the combined Breton territories for less than one year.85 By the end of 1166 the Angevin Empire was complete in the sense that Henry II now had direct control over those territories he had inherited through blood or marriage, as well as the neighboring duchies and provinces that ensured a contiguous sphere of influence. To some extent he had been forced to fight for his gains, but with the exception of Toulouse and Wales in 1165 while his opponents had proven tenacious Henry had in the end beaten them all. Following

Anglo-Norman Realm,” in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, eds. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), 183. 84 J. A. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire, 1158–1203 (Cambridge, 2000), 32–35. 85 Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 146–7; M. Jones, “The Capetians and Brittany,” Historical Research 63 (1990): 8; The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her Family, 1171–1221, eds. J. Everard and M. Jones (Woodbridge, 1999), 1.

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his acquisition of Brittany through the marriage of Geoffrey, the king could now look forward to a future of relative tranquility, and the late 1160s were characterized by the advent of innovative legal reforms such as the Assize of Clarendon and the Inquest of the Sheriffs, both enacted before the martyrdom of Thomas Becket in December 1170, an event that would bring a drastic end to Henry’s decisive personal rule.86 In the meantime, the king’s greatest concern was to keep a close eye on those who sought to undermine his strength and authority on the Continent, most particularly Louis VII and his allies. While Henry had busied himself afterward in Wales and Brittany Louis VII had watched from the sidelines as the English king dabbled in matters outside of the French realms of control, but in April 1167 fresh problems arose across the Continent. The first monies promised by both Henry and Louis to the Holy Land in June 1166, raised through a special five-year tax, had been collected and deposited at Tours, awaiting transport to Jerusalem. Henry wished to send the funds through his own ambassadors; Louis sought control over everything because Tours belonged to the French. Meanwhile, there were new problems in Aquitaine. The treaty enjoined between the two kings in May 1160 stated that Henry was to retain control over Languedoc with the exception of Toulouse itself, but when Henry moved in 1167 to enforce his rule there he found opposition. The disputed region was Auvergne, ruled locally by Count William VIII (d. 1182), who had sworn to Henry in person that his nephew would succeed him. In early April 1167 William disinherited his nephew, leading Henry to demand he stand before a jury to explain himself. William refused, seeking instead to forge an alliance with King Louis. When Henry took the affront personally and sent a body of soldiers south into Auvergne to ravage William’s lands, Louis responded by sending attacks into Normandy and burning several villages in the Vexin between Mantes and Pacy.87 Henry responded by returning to Normandy and attacking Chaumont, earning himself a truce that was to last until Easter 1168 (31 March). Next, Matthew, count of Boulogne (d. 1173), threatened to invade England on behalf of the French, forcing Henry to take preventative measures by stationing

86 87

Both documents are found in Select Charters, 167–72 and 174–7. For the wars of 1167–1168, our primary authority is Torigini, 230–9.

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an army on the English coast under the command of the justiciar Richard de Lucy.88 The invasion never materialized, but warfare did erupt in Brittany over Eudo de Porhoët’s claim to the duchy on the merits of his wife Bertha’s lineage (now deceased). Joining him was the viscount of Thouars as well as sympathetic nobles in the county of Leon, Aquitaine, and France. By the end of August, Henry had marched with an army as far as Leon, and the operation successfully concluded within just two weeks.89 By October, Henry was back in Normandy, mourning the death of his mother Matilda on 10 September, but in January 1168 he returned south to Poitou to confront revolts in Lusignan. After leaving Eleanor of Aquitaine in charge of the area he returned north.90 By March Henry was in Normandy once again, negotiating with Louis over the continuance of their August 1167 treaty, which was set to expire at the end of the month. In addition, the rebels in Poitou had captured some of Henry’s men and given those hostages to Louis. Henry demanded that Louis stop conniving with his vassals and that he release the hostages. Louis refused to do so without sufficient compromise on the part of the English king, and the best the conference could achieve was a continuance of the truce until 1 July. On 7 April, the truce was broken by the murder of Earl Patrick of Salisbury, once of the hostages and the man in charge of Henry’s army in Aquitaine.91 As a result, Henry spent the remainder of 1168 engaged in warfare against Louis and his allies, including Eudo de Porhoët, John, count of Ponthieu, and Philip of Flanders. His campaigns ranged across Flanders, Brittany, Normandy, and Perche, and his successes were enough to finally bring Louis to a sensible peace accord.92 Assisted by two Papal Commissioners sent to mediate in the Becket dispute, the kings agreed upon a treaty on 6 January 1169 at Montmirail in Perche. Louis agreed to release his hostages and Henry and his sons performed satisfactory acts of homage. These were designed to alleviate Louis’ fears of an overpowering Angevin Empire by dividing the inheritance of Henry II amongst his sons before his death. The core stipulations were as follows: 88

Gervase, I: 203. Torigini, 232. 90 Torigini, 235–6. 91 Warren, Henry II, 103. 92 The whole series of events is recorded in Torigini, 236–7; see Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary, 116–7, for a reckoning of the precise dates. 89

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1. Henry II paid homage to Louis and his son Philip II for Normandy; he would hold Touraine from the Count of Blois 2. Henry “the Younger” paid homage to Louis for Anjou, Maine, and Brittany, as well as the Stewardship of France 3. Geoffrey held Brittany from Henry the Younger 4. Richard paid homage to Louis for Aquitaine and Poitou, and was to marry Louis’ daughter Alice93 The treaty of 1169 should rightly be seen as the origin for all of Henry II’s future difficulties with his sons, the French, and an assortment of rebellious vassals that would move against him in the coming decade. By dividing his empire and assigning each portion to his young, impressionable sons the king was inviting trouble. At the start of 1169, however, the solution probably appeared rather tenable. It ended the warfare of the past year, and, most importantly, ensured that his domains would remain under the control of his own family. That his family would soon turn against him was, of course, an unknowable future development. Yet Henry did not believe that Louis’ intentions were completely selfless and to the good of all parties concerned, and his desire to maintain a strong grip on the empire remained. Although his sons had paid homage to the French king, Henry was still the man in charge of both governance of his realm and the maintenance and operation of his military forces. He returned to England in 1170, passed his Easter (5 April) at Windsor, and conducted the Inquest of the Sheriffs in London, in which all the sheriffs were to be deprived of office until such time as the barons could ascertain the truth of their respective revenues and payments to the Exchequer.94

93 For details of the treaty, see Torigini, 240–1; Gervase, I: 207–8; and Herbert of Bosham, Mats. III: 418–19. The conditions are also explained in a letter from John of Salisbury to Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter (d. 1184); see The Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume Two, no. 288. 94 For the pertinent documents see EHD, nos. 47–49. The Inquest seems not to have been aimed at breaking hereditary connections in the office of sheriff, however, and several former sheriffs resumed their employment; see J. Boorman, “The Sheriffs of Henry II and the Significance of 1170,” in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, eds. G. Garnett and J. Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), 273–4.

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chapter two The Conquest of Ireland

Henry II’s military success on the Continent during the 1160s was considerable; in contrast, his warfare against the Welsh had been lackluster and his efforts to handle his new archbishop Thomas Becket were heavy-handed. After receiving the submission of Rhys ap Deheubarth at the Council of Woodstock in July 1163, Henry turned to judicial matters that would ultimately damage his excellent political reputation. At issue was Philip de Brois, a minor clerk who had murdered a knight and attacked a sheriff, but was absolved of his crimes by bishop’s court at Lincoln. The sheriff complained to Henry, who then proposed that Philip be tried before the royal courts. Becket, whom Henry expected to side with the Crown, intervened and prevented this from occurring. The dispute did not go away, for at the Council of Westminster in October Henry demanded that any clerk accused or convicted of great crimes should be sentenced by royal courts. Becket agreed with the king in principle but with the caveat “saving my order,” a convenient dodge that confused the issue and denied Henry full satisfaction. As a result, in January 1164 the king issued the Constitutions of Clarendon, decrees stating, among other things, that clerks were to be tried by both royal and ecclesiastical courts but sentenced in the royal court only. Urged by Alexander III and his cardinals to take a pacifistic position, Becket agreed to this in order to promote good order in the realm. Many churchmen and Becket’s own monks at Canterbury murmured their disagreement with his having abandoned age-old legal protections for the church in one swift moment, and soon Becket recanted his position at the Council of Northampton in October 1164.95 Henry now took a hard line with his archbishop: he demanded not only Becket’s consent to the Constitutions but also made a series of punitive financial demands that included Becket’s return of monies from the castelleries of Eye and Berkhampstead (which he paid) as well as monies borrowed for the former chancellor’s military operations on the Toulouse campaign of 1159. Finally, Henry demanded receipts from all the vacant bishoprics and abbeys held by Becket during his days as chancellor—the total amount required of Becket exceeded 30,000 marks, an outrageous and wholly unrealistic number.96 This 95 96

For the pertinent passages relating to these councils, see EHD, nos. 124–29. W. Urry, Thomas Becket: his Last Days (Stroud, 1999), 11.

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was a remarkable claim, for in maintaining vacancies Becket had acquired great funds for the king and the chancellor had, of course, only done Henry’s bidding in this regard. Now, however, the issue inflamed his rival bishops in England who had either felt slighted by Becket’s swift rise to the archbishopric or those who were merely jealous, and the list of bishops allied with Henry against Canterbury included Gilbert Foliot and Roger de Pont, archbishop of York (d. 1181). Foliot in particular was unwavering in his attacks on Becket, accusing him of betraying the Church by taking money from it with which to wage bloody war.97 Facing imminent arrest, Becket chose to flee. On 14 October 1164 the archbishop sneaked out of Northampton in the disguise of a Gilbertine lay-brother, taking only one servant and his pallium and seal. Several days later on 2 November, Becket left Sandwich in a small skiff and landed at Oye, Flanders, outside of Henry’s jurisdiction on the Continent, and began his life of exile.98 Negotiations between the king and archbishop became severely strained for the next six years. The dispute between Henry II and Thomas Becket had less to do with legal wrangling than the nature of the relationship between church and state. Henry wanted control and even dominance over his empire and tolerated little by way of rebellion. He had acted towards Becket as he had against all those who had previously chosen to oppose him. First, Henry made clear his will, second, he allowed each man to submit and reconcile himself with the court; failing this, Henry took stern measures to assert his control. The difference between Henry seizing a rebel’s castle, demanding a vassal’s homage, or requiring a bishop’s obedience was slight. Thomas Becket met his end in his own cathedral on 29 December 1170. The immediate cause of his death was the crowning of Henry II’s son Henry ‘the Younger,’ which occurred at Westminster Abbey on 24 May that same year. Under normal circumstances the Archbishop of Canterbury would have performed the ceremony, but as Becket had been in exile since 1164 the young Henry was crowned by Roger de Pont, who was aided in the act by Hugh de Puiset, bishop of Durham (d. 1195), Walter, bishop of Rochester (d. 1182), 97 D. Knowles, The Episcopal Colleagues of Archbishop Thomas Becket (Cambridge, 1951), 68–71. For Foliot’s attack see Correspondence of Thomas Becket, I: no. 109; or, Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, no. 170. 98 F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (Berkeley, 1986), 115–16.

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Gilbert Foliot, and Jocelin, bishop of Salisbury (d. 1184).99 Other bishops such as Roger of Worcester (d. 1179) refused to so violate Canterbury’s primacy. When Henry and Becket finally reconciled at Fréteval on 22 July, the king promised Becket the opportunity to recrown young Henry upon his return. Once back in England on 30 November, however, the archbishop produced letters from Alexander III (drawn up at Becket’s request) that authorized his excommunications of Gilbert Foliot and Joscelin as well as the suspension of Roger of York and others who had assisted with the young Henry’s coronation.100 The bishops were unable to reason with Becket and so sought out Henry II in Normandy. Hearing the news, the king exclaimed, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!”101 Four knights, Reginald fitzUrse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard le Bret, departed Henry’s court in response and began a hasty journey that ended with their grisly deed in Canterbury Cathedral. The crowning of young Henry had a secondary effect of infuriating Louis VII because his daughter Margaret had not been crowned alongside his son-in-law. Louis’ method of complaint was to assemble an army and invade Normandy in the summer of 1170 to correct the slight. Henry II sailed to Normandy in response and the two sides were quickly reconciled at Vendôme when the king promised to conduct a second coronation ceremony for both young Henry and Margaret. While on the Continent, Henry II was struck by an illness, and the malady was so severe that he dictated his first will that divided his lands amongst his children. The will followed in much the same fashion as had the treaty with Louis in January 1169: Richard received the lands belonging to his mother Eleanor, meaning principally Aquitaine; Geoffrey received Brittany; and young Henry received Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. All three were instructed to do homage to Louis VII for these lands. The child John, youngest of Henry’s sons, received a county in Mortaine but no gainful lands

99 Chronica, II: 4–5; Gervase, I: 219. This occurred in the tradition of the Capetian line in France, which had since the reign of Hugh Capet crowned a living successor. 100 Knowles, Episcopal Colleagues, 137. 101 Barlow, Thomas Becket, 235. The legendary phrase, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” is in reality apocryphal; see Urry, His Last Days, 66.

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to speak of, earning him the nickname “Lackland.”102 In November, Henry II had recovered and took an army into Berry to claim rights over the bishopric of Bourges, which he felt belonged to the duchy of Aquitaine. Given its proximity to the French demesne and its north-central location, Henry’s claim to Berry as an appendage of Guienne was perhaps spurious, although his acquisition of the castles Montmirail and St. Agnan from Henry de Vienne in the spring of 1169 did extend his influence into the contested lands. Regardless of legitimacy, an army led by Louis and Theobald, count of Blois (d. 1191), arrived at Bourges first. Henry had already performed homage to them both and was politically outmaneuvered. A truce was therefore agreed upon and Henry, at least temporarily, rescinded his claim to Berry.103 Upon hearing of the murder of Becket in December, Henry reportedly shut himself in his room for three days and mourned the loss of his old friend.104 He did not return to England until 1 August 1171, no doubt wishing to keep his distance while news of Becket’s death swept through England and outraged the common population. Meanwhile, he busied himself with a series of defensive moves against the wrath of Rome that was sure to follow. He was in a difficult situation, for no matter how innocent his intent may have been his words had spurred the four knights to their murderous deed. Ecclesiastical indignation against the king quickly manifested itself across the West and most severely when William, archbishop of Sens (d. 1176), placed an interdict on Henry’s continental lands in the spring of 1171. Alexander III and his cardinals mused over letters of outrage from religious and secular leaders alike, and excommunication became a common subject. Some damage control was in order, and the first envoys from Henry’s court arrived in France in March 1171 to plead before Alexander III. These men were unsuccessful, but another group, which included of the abbot of Valasse and Richard Barre and Henry Pinchon, the archdeacons of Salisbury and Lisieux, convinced the pope to postpone his judgment until Henry could swear his penance in person.105

102 103 104 105

Chronica, Chronica, Letters of Chronica,

II: 5–6. II: 13–14. Arnulf of Lisieux, no. 72. II: 27–9; EHD, 771–2.

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The stipulation that Henry physically present himself for judgment offered the wily king an opportunity in which procrastination played a major role. His penance would be easily delayed by a military expedition to Ireland. This was a campaign the king had been considering since 29 September 1155, where he laid out plans for an Irish invasion at a council in Winchester.106 The idea did not appear out of thin air but is said to have been conceived by Pope Hadrian IV (1154–1159) in the papal bull Laudabiliter. The controversy over the veracity of Hadrian’s bull has been rather intense, due not only to the vagaries surrounding the evidence, but also no doubt to the ubiquity of past and present Anglo-Irish hostilities. Regardless of his authority to actually invade the island, in 1171 the king saw a chance to improve his image in the eyes of Rome by settling the troubles of the Irish church.107 Henry II left Brittany for England in August 1171, spent two months gathering an army, and assembling a fleet at Pembroke for the voyage across St. George’s Channel. He departed on 16 October and landed at either Waterford or Croch, not returning to England until 17 April 1172, a full seven-month absence.108 The political cause of English involvement was the forced exile of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, in 1166. Diarmait requested the assistance of English soldiers but Henry would not provide any of his own troops, although he did allow the Irish king to recruit what volunteers he could find in England and Wales. The draw of potential Irish fiefs was strong and many soldiers agreed to fight, the most notable recruit being Richard ‘Strongbow’ fitzGilbert, earl of Clare/Hertford (d. 1217). Strongbow agreed to assist Diarmait in return for money and the hand of his daughter Aífe, which brought with it hereditary rights to Leinster itself.109 He obtained permission from Henry and launched his expedition to Ireland, which was heavily financed by loans from the Jew Josce of Gloucester, in August 1170.110 The rapid success of Strongbow in taking Dublin soon became a concern to Henry as he pondered the possibility of losing

106

Torigini, 186; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 300–1; Gervase, I: 77. On the issue of Laudabiliter, see the appendix. 108 Torigini, 252. 109 Chronica, I: 269; M. T. Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1989), 79–80. 110 The Jews of Angevin England: Documents and Records, ed. J. Jacobs (New York, 1977), 51–2. Jacobs argues that were it not for the loans the Irish expedition would not have been feasible. 107

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control over conquered lands to both his vassal as well as several other Anglo-Norman principals roaming about Ireland.111 In response, the king sequestered Strongbow’s lands, closed the English ports to Ireland, and ordered that all Englishmen who had gone to assist the Irish should return home by Easter 1171.112 Before they could return, Diarmait died and his rival Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair besieged Strongbow, now the rightful heir to Leinster, within the city of Dublin for over two months.113 Strongbow’s men were outmatched by Ruaidri’s warriors, and he was forced to appeal to Henry II for assistance on the basis of old diplomatic ties between England and Leinster. While avoidance of penance for his part in the murder of Thomas Becket undoubtedly played a major role, it was Strongbow’s situation that was the ultimate cause of Henry’s personal intervention in 1171 and offered the king a convenient opportunity to assert his influence over Irish lands while sailing on a mission of succor for his endangered vassal.114 While Strongbow awaited the reinforcements, Gerald of Wales wrote that he and his supporters made a surprise sally out of Dublin and crashed into the Irish soldiers. The small band of less than two hundred men fought gallantly and routed the enemy, whom Gerald numbers at over 30,000 strong. Such a tale can scarcely be believed in its entirety and is more fantastic than Herodotus’ narrative of the Battle of Marathon. After English left Dublin the city was captured by O’Rouric, the one-eyed king of Meath. Strongbow sailed to England to meet with Henry II at Gloucester to confirm the king’s military assistance, promising his fealty as well as the city of Dublin to the king in return for assistance, to which Henry assented. Before his departure for Ireland Henry made his way to St. David’s, pausing along the way to discipline some minor Welsh lords and take the castle Usk. The king arrived in Ireland on 18 October 1171, never once employing his soldiers in battle or siege because one by one the Irish

111 L. Hays and E. D. Jones, “Policy on the Run: Henry II and Irish Sea Diplomacy,” Journal of British Studies 29 (1990): 298–300. 112 M. T. Flanagan, “Strongbow, Henry II and Anglo-Norman Intervention in Ireland,” in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, eds. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), 67. 113 Flanagan, Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century, 167–8. 114 Flanagan, “Anglo-Norman Intervention in Ireland,” 77.

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lords made their voluntary submissions to the English king.115 By the time he left, most of the Irish nobles and bishops had submitted to his rule without a fight. William of Newburgh wrote that the king subjugated the island “by the terror of his name, without bloodshed,” and some princes offered tribute to Henry and delivered hostages back to England.116 Strongbow was relieved and Henry entertained several Irish princes at his Christmas court in Dublin that same year, “the king having now silenced all opposition by his presence.”117 While his absence in Ireland helped to sooth angered hearts over the Becket affair, Henry also took the opportunity to address what had been the central concern of the 1155 bull Laudabiliter, the reform of the Irish Church. While the submission of the Irish princes had little to do with Hadrian’s bull, the submission of the Irish bishops and clergy most certainly did.118 As soon as Henry arrived in Ireland he “threw a religious aura round his new position” and played the role of reformer.119 Henry commanded that a synod be held at Cashel in 1172 to consider and evaluate the health and welfare of the Church in Ireland. Christian O’ Connarchy stood as the synod’s presider, and Ralph, an abbot in Shropshire, stood as Henry II’s representative.120 There, the bishops agreed to eight constitutions of reform and accepted the reformation as a blessing from the king of England.121 Henry II spent the early months of 1172 in Dublin and then Waterford, making arrangements for the lordship of Ireland. He granted to Hugh de Lacy (d. 1186) the lands of Meath, the city of Dublin, and the justiciarship of Ireland in exchange for the service of one hundred knights. Henry also granted Waterford and Wexford to Robert fitz Bernard, left the kingdom of Leinster to Strongbow and his heirs, and ordered castles built in the east country.122 Henry’s

115

Expugnatio, 277. Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 169; Bartlett, Norman and Angevin Kings, 87. 117 Gerald of Wales’ account is Expugnatio, 280; see also A. J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London, 1980), 50. 118 F. X. Martin, “Diarmait Mac Murchada and the Coming of the AngloNormans,” in A New History of Ireland, eds. A. Cosgrove, T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne, 10 vols. (Oxford, 1976–2005), I: 91. 119 J. A. Watt, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 1970), 38. 120 Idem, The Church in Medieval Ireland, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 1998), 34. 121 Expugnatio, 281–3. 122 Chronica, II: 33–4; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 350. 116

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army departed for Wales on 26 March, but the king himself, waiting for a fair wind, did not return to St. David’s until 17 April. To what degree this respite in the form of an invasion prevented his excommunication is unknown, but Henry’s conquest of Ireland clearly had some influence with Alexander. On 1 March, having heard of the arrival of papal legates Theodinus and Albert in Normandy, he sought to return to England and then the Continent to meet them. Contrary winds kept him at Wexford for the entire month of March— that Henry was delaying his appearance before the papal court is certainly a possibility for his lengthy stay in Ireland—but once he left Wales his journey to the Continent took only eighteen days. On 30 May he appeared in person before the papal legates at Avranches, and, accompanied by his wife Eleanor and the bishops of Rouen, Evreux, and Worcester, Henry received his penance for his role in the death of Becket. The judgment found him guilty of intemperance of word but not deed; consequently, he was not excommunicated and the interdict on his lands was lifted. In exchange for his absolution, Henry promised to become crucesignatus and travel to either Jerusalem or Spain within four years, as well as provide funds for the maintenance of 200 Knights Templar in the Holy Land.123 For the first time, Henry had been forced to accept terms from a position of diplomatic weakness. He had long dictated events through force of will or arms, and every treaty yet concluded had been favorable to him in one way or another. Yet Becket’s death had sent a shrill of horror through Western Christendom. Henry’s capitulation at the feet of Pope Alexander proved to be just the opening the king’s enemies needed, and within months the Great Revolt against him would arise. Interestingly enough, Henry never explicitly invoked the privilege of Laudabiliter in his 1171 expedition, although the point remains important in the eventual justification of English actions in Ireland.124 His dominant performance in Ireland probably had less to do with

123 For Henry’s purgation and Charter of Absolution, see Chronica, II: 35–7; and Ymagines Historiarum, I: 351–2. For specific studies see A. J. Duggan, “Diplomacy, Status, and Conscience: Henry II’s Penance for Becket’s Murder,” in Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte: Peter Herde zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. K. Borchardt and Enno Bünz (Stuttgart, 1998), 265–90; and idem, “Ne in Dubium: The Official Record of Henry II’s Reconciliation at Avranches, 21 May 1172,” EHR 115 (2000): 643–58. 124 Watt, Church and the Two Nations, 37.

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a papal bull than his swift movements and strength of his personality. Alexander III approved of the invasion after the fact and urged the king to purge the illicit and abominable practices in Ireland for the good of the English, the Irish, and Christendom. The pope issued three letters in September and October 1172 that supported Henry’s Irish activities and urged him to continue his humble work in the name of God: And so we exhort and beseech your majesty and enjoin upon you for the remission of your sins that in this work which you have so laudably begun you will even more intently and strenuously continue, so that, even as you have to the remission of your sins undertaken so great a task as regards that people, so also for the benefit to their souls you shall be worthy of an eternal crown.125

In light of the recent papal schism and the overtures of antipope Calixtus III (r. 1178) towards state leaders, Alexander had a definite need for allies. Maintaining good relations with Henry was vital to his survival.126 Alexander later offered a privilege of Ireland similar to that of Hadrian IV’s, which was read at a council at Waterford in 1173–4, and Henry’s conquest and reform of both the Irish Church and the country’s lands was fully accepted by Rome.127 In the end, Nicholas Brakespeare’s hopes of a reformed church in that country were in some way fulfilled through the English invasion, despite the fact that some of the older Irish monasteries were actually attacked and seized by various Norman nobles.128 After 1172, Henry II did not expend a great amount of thought or effort on Eire. When he did, it was to call upon Strongbow and his other barons there for military assistance. These included Hugh de Lacy, who retained Meath and Dublin for the service of one hundred knights. Henry also gave the kingdom of Cork to Robert

125 Irish Historical Documents, 1172–1922, eds. E. Curtis and R. B. McDowell (New York, 1968), 21. Gerald of Wales also provides a useful record of all the relevant Irish documents in his later work on the conduct of princes; see De Principis Instructione Liber, ed. G. F. Warner, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, VIII: 195–200. 126 G. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1216, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1968), I: 310. 127 Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland: 1171–1251, ed. H. S. Sweetman, 2 vols. (London, 1875), I: 6–7; Watt, Church in Medieval Ireland, 30. 128 P. Ó. Néill, “The Impact of the Norman Invasion on Irish Literature,” ANS 20 (1997): 179. Minor figures were rewarded as well: Walter the Goldsmith received a small plot of land for one tenth of a knight’s fee; see Acta of Henry II and Richard I, no. 288.

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fitz Stephen and Milo de Cogham for the services of sixty knights, although Henry kept the city of Cork for himself. He gave the kingdom of Limerick to Hubert fitz Hubert and others in exchange for sixty knights’ service but, again, kept the city of Limerick for himself. Given that towns had formed a critical basis for his support during the recent rebellions, as well as their substantial revenue through fees and tolls, we can easily discern Henry’s interest in the Irish cities. Most of these grants of land were confirmed again in May 1177 at a royal council at Oxford. In that year, however, there was to be a new twist: with the permission of Alexander, Henry created his son John king of Ireland.129 He insisted that his nobles holding Irish lands pledge their fealty not only to Henry but also John, and thereafter they owed knight service to both men. John’s kingship was a new approach to the lordship and reform of Ireland; rather than simply handing out fiefs to interested nobles, Henry had developed an interest in injecting his family into a leadership role. John was undeniably the apple of his father’s eye, and Henry showed great concern for his welfare. In 1177, however, John was only nine years old and would not become involved in Irish governance in any meaningful way until 1185.130 Good diplomatic relations between the papacy and England, at least on the matter of Ireland, persisted under Henry’s successors and final approval of English rule there was cemented when Innocent III granted Ireland to then-King John as a vassal kingdom in 1215.131 Having now added Ireland to his domains, Henry II had by 1173 dominated nearly every region he had set his sights upon, and in those areas in which he had fallen short (Wales, Toulouse, the Vexin) he either received the homage of the magnates there or was in the process of obtaining the land by way of treaty. The indications are that the king, now with his days of conquest largely behind him, was ready to divide the responsibility for the maintenance of the Empire amongst his sons. That he did not move quickly enough in this regard was the trigger for the rebellion of his son Henry the Younger and the outbreak of the Great Revolt of 1173 and 1174.

129

Chronica, II: 133. S. Duffy, “John and Ireland: the Origins of England’s Irish Problem,” in King John: New Interpretations, 226–8. 131 See Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, I: 310; Watt, Two Nations in Medieval Ireland, 40. 130

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Yet we may forgive Henry II his delay because his sons were still of young ages: while Henry was the oldest at a robust eighteen, Geoffrey and Richard followed at fifteen and fourteen, respectively, and John was too young to be of much consequence.132 None of the sons would demonstrate great generalship or soldiery during the revolts, and Henry II spent the bulk of his time fighting more seasoned magnates from across his lands. The Great Revolt was the centerpiece of Henry II’s military career. It was huge in scope, constituting of six different fronts (three in Normandy, one in Poitou, and one each in central and northern England) and multiple enemies including Louis VII, Philip, count of Flanders, Matthew, count of Boulogne, William, king of Scotland, Robert, earl of Leicester, and several other notable magnates and their armies. Henry’s campaigns to quash the resistance featured all the hallmarks of High Medieval warfare, including castle and town sieges, pitched battles, skirmishes, ravaging, relief actions, and the incorporation of mercenaries into the ranks of the feudal armies. Showcasing his abilities as a commander by directing armies and delegating authority, Henry defeated all the forces arrayed against him and, by the fall of 1174, emerged from the war stronger and more powerful than ever. The End of Louis VII In the fall of 1175, reports Roger of Howden, a mysterious and deadly disease broke out across England, killing seven or eight people a day. This was followed by a severe famine that struck not only England, but Anjou and Maine as well. Looking back, the misery was a grim foreshadowing of the final period of Henry II’s reign in which success and satisfaction became disappointment and despair.133 Yet in 1175 such a dismal ending to the king’s enormously successful reign was unthinkable, for he had become arguably the most powerful leader in the West. Still, pockets of resistance remained as residual

132 Henry the Younger, however, appears to have been more involved in administrative affairs than previously thought. I thank Matthew Strickland for letting me read his forthcoming article, “On the Instruction of a Prince: the Upbringing of Henry, the Young King,” in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, forthcoming in 2007). Professor Strickland is currently working on a more extensive study of young Henry as well, the first major effort on the subject since 1925. 133 Chronica, II: 85; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 406.

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effects of the Great Revolt and of particular concern were the southern French provinces, the regions in which Henry had not actually waged warfare during the uprisings. Auvergne, Aquitaine, Poitou, and especially Berry became focal points of resistance, not so much against the king himself as against the terms of the Treaty of Mont Louis that demanded the reduction of illegal castles. In mid-1175, and then again after Easter 1176 (4 April), Henry sent his sons Richard, Geoffrey, and eventually young Henry to the Continent to clean up the mess. Richard in particular began to distinguish himself, receiving four castles through surrender and besieging and taking the castles of Aesse, Molineaux, the strong Neufchâtel-en-Bray, and the city of Limoges. Henry II himself ordered the destruction of several castles in England, including Leicester and Framlingham, both strategically important during the rebellions, and with the Assize of Northampton divided England into six judicial units.134 For some time, Henry II had looked to the construction of alliances through the marriage of his relatives. In 1169, his daughter Eleanor was given to Alfonso VIII (1158–1214) of Castile. He arranged the marriage of his sister Emma to David, son of Owain ap Gwynedd, in 1174. William II ‘the Good,’ king of Sicily (1166–1189), sent several notable magnates to England to ask for the hand of his daughter Joanna, and the two were married in Palermo on 13 February 1177.135 Henry’s reputation as a strong monarch would even lead to another political marriage after his death. Recognized as a major leader in the West, he became involved in international relations beyond his own territorial interests, and on Ash Wednesday 1177 (17 February), the king served as arbitrator over a territorial dispute between Alfonso VIII and Sancho VI ‘the Wise,’ king of Navarre (1150–1194) and Alfonso’s uncle. Henry deliberated with his barons and bishops over the matter and arrived at a judgment: because neither side had addressed the contentions of the other in its plea, both Sancho and Alfonso were rewarded the lands to which they laid claims. Good relations between England and the Iberian regions and Navarre in particular continued, and in 1191 his son Richard would marry Berengaria, the sister of Sancho.136 134 Chronica, II: 87–91 and 93–4; Ymagines Historiarum, II: 414. For the Assize, see Select Charters, 178–80. 135 Ymagines Historiarum, I: 334 and 414–15; Gervase, II: 82; Chronica, II: 95. 136 Chronica, II: 122–31; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 418–20. On the marriage, see

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By 1177, sufficient time had passed for Henry II to put the lingering memories of the rebellions behind him by forgiving the rebels and restoring their lands. With the exception of Poitou his domains had been quiet for nearly a year, and the earls, having pledged their loyalty and acting accordingly, were to be compensated. On 8 May, the king rewarded those who had remained loyal: the Stutevilles received the castles of Roxburgh and Edinburgh—a fine prize after Roger’s valiant defeat of the Scots at Wark in 1174! To the Neville family he gave the castles of Norham and Scarborough, and Roger de Conyers was given the fortress of Bishop Hugh de Puiset, who had betrayed the king by giving financial support to William the Lion.137 No doubt Henry saw the advantage in placating his nobles, rather than keeping them down. Therefore, after the feast of St. Hilary he restored to Robert of Leicester all his former lands in England and Normandy except for the castles of Montsoreau and Pacy-sur-Epte (near Bonneville), which he desired for his own use. Hugh of Chester, who had rebelled in Brittany, also received back his lands. Hugh Bigod, was the major exception during these restorations: Framlingham Castle was destroyed and Hugh died in 1177 while on crusade, having never recovered his lands in Norfolk from Henry II. Of great concern to Henry during these post-rebellion years was the maintenance of good order in England, and in this vein he also pursued the reforming of the Curia Regis. In 1178 he re-divided the English counties into four judicial districts, appointing to each district two clerks and three laymen—the origin of the Common Bench.138 The relative tranquility of 1176 and 1177 coincided with one of Henry’s longest stays in England during his reign. When he finally left on 18 August 1177 it was to deal once more with the French.139 At issue were the marriage agreements made between the Angevin

A. Goodman, “England and Iberia in the Middle Ages,” in England and her Neighbors, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, eds. M. Jones and M. Vale (London, 1989), 74–5. 137 Chronica, II: 118 and 133–5. 138 See W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 5th ed., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1891), I: 524–5; and P. Brand, “‘Multis Vigiliis Excogitatam et Inventam’: Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law,” HSJ 2 (1990): 205–6. 139 More study is needed on the reign of Louis VII from 1175 to 1180. In one of the more recent biographies, Ives Sassier devotes only 25 pages out of 473 to this period; see Louis VII (Paris, 1991).

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and Capetian houses. In November 1160, the young Henry had married Louis VII’s daughter at Neuborg, and, according to stipulations in the original betrothal treaty of 1158, he was to gain the Vexin as her dowry. There was also the matter of Richard and Alice, whose betrothal was decided in January 1169 at Montmirail after a year and a half of warfare against Louis and William of Auvergne. One of the stipulations was for Richard to pay homage to Louis for Aquitaine and Poitou and eventually marry Alice. Richard was only eleven at the treaty’s ratification, but Louis had clearly been thinking ahead in his efforts to regain Aquitaine. Between 1169 and 1177 several problems had taken precedence over the marital relations of the children, including Becket’s murder, the conquest of Ireland, and of course the Great Revolt. While Louis faulted Henry for postponing the marriage, the delay was fairly understandable. Yet in 1177, it was Henry forcing the issue by first demanding the receipt of the Vexin and, second, claiming that Richard was to receive as Alice’s dowry the town of Bourges and lands in Berry. The evidence, however, indicates that Alice actually had no dowry in the first place, and Warren has argued that there is no justification for Henry’s claim.140 Nevertheless, at Winchester on 2 June the king called in the obligations of his barons in England and Normandy and prepared for war, even ordering fleets to be assembled at Portsmouth and Southampton.141 For once, the tables were quickly turned against him. Instead of convening a council with Henry to discuss the problem, Louis appealed directly to the papacy, and in May the Cardinal Legate Peter, titular of St. Chrysogonus, arrived in France.142 He carried with him an order from Alexander III that Henry allow Richard to marry Alice; failing this, the entire Angevin Empire was to be placed under interdict.143 Henry received word of the legate’s

140 Warren, Henry II, 145. The lack of a dowry was noted by John of Salisbury in 1169; see Letters of John of Salisbury, Volume Two, no. 288. 141 Eyton, Court, Household, and Itinerary, 215. 142 Identified by I. S. Robinson as Peter of St. Grisogono; see The Papacy, 1173–1198: Continuity and Change (Cambridge, 1990), 169. 143 Christopher Holdsworth has found that papal legates feature prominently in peace negotiations during Henry II’s reign in 1167, 1172, 1174, 1177, 1180, 1182, 1187, 1188, and 1189, and this list excludes the numerous instances of legatine involvement with the Becket affair; see “R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture: Peacemaking in the Twelfth Century,” ANS 19 (1996): 10–11.

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arrival and, understanding the larger scope of the problem, postponed his feudal summons on 1 July. He then prepared to cross over to the Continent to negotiate, but the trip was delayed by over a month, first by contrary winds and then to a reopening of a leg wound he had sustained in Norfolk in 1174 when a horse kicked him in the leg. Upon landing, he first dispatched Geoffrey into Brittany to deal with some rebellious vassals, and the king then marched to Ivry in late August to put down Waleran de Ivry, who was holding the town against him.144 It was there on 25 September that Henry and Louis concluded an agreement, the Treaty of Ivry (elsewhere ‘Nonancourt’), in regards to the marriages of their children. Henry’s request for Alice’s dowry of Bourges and Berry was denied, and the men never did reach a compromise on the matter; instead, each agreed to respect each other’s lands except for those disputed areas. Technically, therefore, Henry was not violating treaty when he proceed afterwards to summon the Norman host, march into Berry, and take Châteauroux and the Limousin. In July 1178, Henry II returned to England, where he saw to the knighting of his son Geoffrey at Woodstock on 6 August.145 Throughout 1178 and 1179 Geoffrey handled himself ably, ravaging the lands of Guihomar, viscount of Leon, in order to ensure his father’s ducal control over western Brittany. Continuing military success remained the hallmark of the Angevins. By comparison, Henry’s old foe Louis was much worse off: in August 1179 he fell ill and deigned to have his young son Philip crowned king on the feast of the Assumption of Mary (15 August), but then Philip fell ill after getting lost during a hunting trip. With his only heir lying at death’s door, Louis crossed the Channel and traveled to the tomb of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury to pray for healing.146 He was granted safe conduct by Henry II, who actually received his lord with great honor and escorted him to Becket’s shrine personally on 23 August. Philip recovered and was crowned at Rheims on 1 November 1179—the Capetian

144 Geoffrey was sent to Brittany several times at his father’s request: 1175–76, 1177–78, and 1179–81; see Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 95–6. A charter in his and Henry II’s name was issued to Saint-Méen Abbey in this year; see Charters of Duchess Constance, 11. 145 Chronica, II: 150 and 166; Ymagines Historiarum, I: 426. 146 From three wives Louis had received five daughters and only one son: Mary and Alice from Eleanor; Margaret and Alice from Constance of Castile; and Agnes and then finally Philip from Adela of Champagne.

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line would live on, and Canterbury Cathedral received from France an annual payment of one hundred barrels of wine so long as he lived.147 By the dawn of 1180 Henry had been king of the English for a little over twenty five years and was, as he had been in 1156, 1161, 1169, and 1175, in a commanding political and military position over France.148 While in residence at St. Denis, Louis fell prey to a paralytic illness, lost the feeling in his right side, and consequently missed his son Philip’s coronation. Instead, Philip was served by Henry the Younger, who carried a golden crown, and Philip of Flanders, who wielded the coronation sword. The latter would prove to be most influential over the policies of the fourteen-year old Philip, and with Louis stricken by illness his son began making the major decisions for France. Citing his father’s illness and inability to use good judgment, King Philip deprived Louis of his royal seal and the reign of that monarch was for all intents and purposes commuted.149 Philip of Flanders was one of the oldest, most wizened men at court and his influence was felt immediately when, on 28 April 1180, King Philip married the ten-year old Isabella of Hainaut, daughter of Philip of Flanders’ sister Marguerite. Afterwards, the new queen was crowned (and Philip recrowned) at St. Denis on 29 May by the bishops of Sens, Paris, and Orléans. The wedding of Philip and Isabella caused a whole host of problems in France. Philip of Flanders benefited by having a relative in the royal family and gave as Isabella’s dowry the region of Artois, further strengthening the relationship between Flanders and France.150 The prerogative of William, archbishop of Rheims (d. 1202), over royal coronations, however, had been violated; moreover, both William and the Queen Mother Adela were of the house of Champagne,

147 On Guihomar, see Torigini, 281; and Chronica, II: 192. Thereafter, Guihomar and his wife went on crusade; see Warren, Henry II, 563. On Louis and Philip, see J. Bradbury, Philip Augustus: King of France, 1180–1223 (London, 1998), 38–9; Torigini, 282–3; Chronica, II: 192–3; and Ymagines Historiarum, I: 432–3. Henry generously granted Christ Church freedom from carriage dues for this wine; see Acta of Henry II and Richard I, no. 70. 148 On the comparison, see V. Moss, “Normandy and England in 1180: the Pipe Roll Evidence,” in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, 187. 149 Ymagines Historiarum, II: 6. 150 J. W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986), 14–16.

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which now saw its prestige lessened in the specter of Flemish influence over the young king. As a result, the Champagne party did not attend Philip’s wedding, the consummation of which triggered two events of military import. First, Adela of Champagne began fortifying the castles in her lands as a precaution against the ambitions of Flanders. The young Philip promptly ordered the lands of his mother seized, collected 3,000 soldiers from his new ally Baldwin of Hainaut, and Adela was forced to flee to safety with her brother Theobald of Blois. Never one to miss a chance to weaken French power, Henry II landed in Normandy shortly before Philip’s wedding and met with Adela and Theobald, who swore their confidence in him through oaths and the giving of hostages. Satisfied, Henry summoned the knights of Normandy as well as England in order to invade France on behalf of the Queen Mother.151 The army was never put to use, for Henry and Philip made peace together between Gisors and Trie on 28 June. The legal holdings of each king as stipulated in the 1177 Treaty of Ivry were reaffirmed, and Henry renewed a moneyfief contracted between himself and Philip of Flanders by receiving Philip’s homage and promising 1,000 marks of silver for the service of 500 knights. Regarding the rights of Adela and the house of Champagne, Philip promised to pay his mother a daily pension of £7 Paris and restore her dowry lands to her upon the death of Louis. Obviously aware of his impending death, Louis VII divided his wealth among the poor of France before expiring at Paris on 19 September 1180, three months after the peace between the Angevins, French, and Flemings. He was buried at the Cistercian monastery at Barbeaux.152 The military legacy of Louis is not very praiseworthy, and for nearly thirty years he had been consistently outmaneuvered by his vassal Henry II. Could the English king now contend with the aspirations of the young Philip Augustus? The Death of Henry the Younger The death of Louis VII brought about a new phase in the political landscape of Western Europe. Under his reign, France had been

151 152

II: 7.

Torigini, 289–90; Chronica, II: 196–7. Catalogue des Actes de Philippe-Auguste, no. 1; Chronica, II: 197–8; Ymagines Historiarum,

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able to maintain its structural integrity but had made few gains outside of the Ile-de-France. Whenever it appeared that Louis had gained an advantage, such as his relief of Toulouse in 1159 or the intrigue behind the Great Revolt, Henry II had each time managed to find another way to impose his will in disputed areas. By the French king’s death in 1180 Henry had been making serious inroads into Berry and was consolidating his rule in the south, using Richard as a tool of his overlordship. But following the Treaty of Gisors there was little left for which to fight, so the English king busied himself by attending to matters of efficient governance. In December 1180 at LeMans, and then again in England in January 1181, assizes of arms outlined the specific military equipment to be held at all times by freemen in Henry’s domains. Both Philip II and Philip of Flanders, thinking it a sound idea, ordered similar assizes in their own domains.153 Ranulf de Glanville (d. 1190), the knight who had captured William the Lion at Alnwick in 1174, was appointed justiciar. A series of statutes erroneously attributed to Glanville were issued in 1181, and in them many of the laws ordered by William the Conqueror were reaffirmed.154 These included measures to protect citizens on the Sabbath, laws stating the punishment of false clerks, thieves, and murderers, and royal policy towards the practice of usury and the social position of the English Jewry. Henry II’s ability to tend to his own affairs was largely a result of warfare between France and Flanders, all of it a consequence of Philip of Flanders’ ambitious efforts to gain land during the early reign of the young new king. Frustrated by the intrusions of Henry in favor of Champagne, Count Philip took matters into his own hands. Seeking to lay claim to the lands inherited through his wife, namely, Amiens, Vermandois, and Valois, he formed a warlike alliance with Stephen, count of Sancerre (d. 1191). Count Stephen, who was in fact King Philip II’s uncle, paid homage to Count Philip for the castle of St. Brice. Towards the end of 1181, Count Philip marched into and ravaged the lands of Raoul, count of Clermont-en-Beauvais

153

Chronica, II: 253. The authorship of Glanville was later attributed to the laws, Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliae qui Glanvilla vocatur, perhaps by the justiciar’s advisors; see F. West, The Justiciarship in England, 1066–1232 (Cambridge, 1966), 61–2. Ranulf died fighting with Richard I at the siege of Acre; see Domesday Descendants II: Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 2002), 478. 154

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and Philip II’s constable, as well as Noyon and Senlis. Peace was arranged in 1182 and Count Philip received Vermandois, but when his wife Elizabeth died on 26 March 1183 that claim disappeared. In the absence of a male heir, Philip II was quick to claim the territory returned to the Crown.155 Henry II worked to broker the peace between king and count, and Philip of Flanders ultimately relinquished his claim to Vermandois.156 Yet beyond offering advice and support, Henry II largely stayed out of the fray until his son Henry started to get too close to the new French king. Although the chronicle references are vague, it appears that Henry the Younger was taking advantage of his friendly relations with Philip and looking for ways to acquire portions of his father’s lands with French assistance. The chronicler Ralph Diceto writes that the brothers Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey all lent military assistance to King Philip, Hugh III, count of Burgundy (d. 1191), and the Queen Mother during 1181. Their combined forces eventually caused Count Philip to flee and seek safety within a tower at Crêcy. Whether all three sons were involved is questionable, however, because when Roger of Howden recorded the king’s trip to Normandy that year he named only young Henry as the culprit. The son denied any misdoings and Henry II, ever the forgiving father, promised Henry the services of one hundred knights and a stipend for his and his wife’s overseas expenses.157 On 22 February 1182, Henry II held a council in Waltham (Hampshire) in order to make out his will. His first will, made out in the midst of a severe illness in the summer of 1170, did not reflect the enormous changes in the king’s family during the 1170s and needed to be revised. The will is recorded by Gervase of Canterbury and is most striking for what it does not say. Henry arranged for portions of his estate to be used for crusading efforts in the east, and much of the document parcels out funds for Cistercian, Carthusian, and Cluniac houses in England, Normandy, and Anjou. No lands or wealth, however, are disbursed to his sons, and the only refer-

155 Ymagines Historiarum, II: 8–9; Chronica, II: 267; mentioned briefly in Gervase, I: 297. See also Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 17–18; and W. H. Hutton, Philip Augustus (Reprint, London, 1970), 34–5. Available scholarship on the FrancoFlemish war of 1181 appears to be limited and is barely touched in the standard biographies of Philip II. 156 As evidenced in a letter of Henry II in De Principis Instructione Liber, 189–90. 157 Chronica, II: 266–7.

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ences to his family are injunctions for the legal conduct of both them and the will’s executors.158 Henry may have thought that the treaty of 1170, combined with the peace made at Mont Louis in 1174, signified his intentions towards his sons and did not warrant repetition. Yet tensions between the brothers had been mounting, and Henry II learned of their disunity when the family spent the Christmas of 1182 together at Caen. He ordered Richard and Geoffrey to pay homage to Henry the Younger, and while Geoffrey obliged without complaint Richard refused. The stated cause of their friction was Richard’s fortifying of the castle of Clairvaux, which lay in an area of Poitou traditionally controlled by the count of Anjou. Anjou was young Henry’s birthright, upon which he saw Richard to be infringing. Warren has suggested that this may have been a convenient excuse while the true reason for the sudden animosity was young Henry’s ambitions towards Aquitaine. Despite Richard’s successful warfare in the south he was ineffective in terms of diplomacy, and the barons had not united behind his governance. In the summer of 1182, some of them threw in with young Henry.159 This dispute over homage was also a consequence of the sons’ prior oaths: in 1169, Richard had paid homage to Louis VII for Aquitaine, and in 1174, Richard and Geoffrey paid homage to their father. At no point had Richard ever paid homage to one of his brothers for anything, much less Aquitaine, which Richard held by virtue not of the house of Anjou but through his mother Eleanor. The result of the infighting was a renewal of Angevin family violence. Richard left his father’s court in January 1183 and withdrew to Poitou, building castles and fortifying others in preparation for war. He was pursued there by Geoffrey and young Henry, who, having declared himself an ally and benefactor of Poitou, brought several rebellious Poitevin counts and their retinues along for the trip. Young Henry traveled of his own accord and initiated warfare against Richard, of which we are lacking any details save for Roger of Howden’s comment that Henry inflicted many losses on his brother.160 Geoffrey, on the other hand, had been commissioned by

158

Gervase, I: 298–300. Warren, Henry II, 587. For the outbreak of rebellion see the accounts in Chronica, II: 274; Ymagines Historiarum, II: 18; and Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 233. 160 Ymagines Historiarum, II: 19; Chronica, II: 274–5. While treacherous, the magnates’ behavior was understandable given that young Henry was himself a king and, 159

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his father to assemble the barons of Poitou and Aquitaine at Mirebeau in order to sort out their alliances with his sons. Instead, Geoffrey entered Brittany and rebelled against his father—history was beginning to repeat itself in the Angevin family.161 Matters in Brittany had been stewing since 1182, when Henry II had sent an army to burn down the castle of Rennes, and in 1183 a consortium of Breton nobles joined Geoffrey alongside a host of hired Brabanters.162 This army invaded northeastern Poitou and began to ravage it, and another betrayal occurred shortly afterwards. Now left with only three sons who purported to do his bidding, Henry II allowed young Henry to travel to Limoges in order to hold a peace conference between the brothers. Geoffrey traveled to Limoges first and entered the city. Arriving next were Henry II and Richard, perhaps traveling together. Two accounts, neither mutually exclusive, state that the king either wished to combat his sons’ wicked designs or that Richard himself called upon his father for military assistance.163 Had young Henry simply been at odds with Richard over the issue of homage there might have been reconciliation, or at the very least a rejoining with the elder Henry. Such was not the case: Henry had been hatching plans for years that involved the gradual absorption of his brothers’ lands and was not prepared to relinquish what could be a favorable opportunity. As Richard and Henry II approached the gates of Limoges, a shower of arrows descended upon them, and a knight standing next to the king was wounded. The full treachery of the brothers Henry and Geoffrey was finally visible to their father, but doubt still lingered in his mind. Perhaps Henry refused to believe that his sons had ordered the garrison to fire upon their father, and he evidently managed to enter the city and conduct some sort of negotiations. At one point in their discussions another volley of arrows descended upon the king from the citadel of St. Martial; one arrow flew directly at the king’s chest but was luckily intercepted by the

at the time, the likely successor to the throne of England; see M. Strickland, “Against the Lord’s Anointed: Aspects of Warfare and Baronial Rebellion in England and Normandy, 1075–1265,” in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, 78–9. 161 The tradition of revolt would outlive Henry’s sons; see the general discussion in M. Aurell, “Révolte nobiliaire et lutte dynastique dans l’empire Angevin (1154– 1224),” ANS 24 (2001): 25–42. 162 Torigini, 302. 163 Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 233; Chronica, II: 275.

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lifting head of his mount. Henry II departed the city to resume negotiations from a safer locale. The tenor of Henry II’s relationship with his sons had dramatically changed in the period between 1174 and 1183. During the Great Revolt, the king was more than eager to send armies against his sons, but in 1183, approaching the age of fifty, Henry was more interested in reconciliation and compromise. Several different considerations were at work. First, although the sons had again gathered in discontented nobles, it was Geoffrey and young Henry leading the action themselves. While this was abhorrent to the elder king it was nonetheless preferable to their alliance with his overlord the king of France or powerful semi-independent vassals such as the king of Scotland or the count of Flanders. This was strictly a family dispute, albeit a violent one, and Henry perhaps felt able to sort out the problems for the benefit of his empire and everyone involved. Second, the military threat to Henry was not as severe as it had been in 1173 and 1174. Henry the Younger, after all, did not possess any major lands because the Treaty of Mont Louis had only provided him with annual revenue and two castles in Normandy. Geoffrey and Richard possessed greater lands in Brittany and Aquitaine from which to draw troops, but in 1183 Richard had not himself rebelled and Geoffrey, though acting Duke of Brittany since 1181, still had to contend with his father’s control of Nantes and the influence that position held with the southern Bretons. This mitigating factor is evidenced by Geoffrey’s need to hire mercenaries to round out his army in 1183. Finally, Henry II had not actually embarked upon a major campaign since 1174. Most of his efforts between the Great Revolt and 1183 were small-scale and aimed at the destruction of certain castles or the expression of royal authority. When he did levy the Norman host in 1180 to defend the rights of Adela of Champagne, negotiations with Philip II ended the need for conflict. With these and the other factors in mind, it is not altogether surprising that Henry II decided against a campaign against his two sons and sought to negotiate instead. It would be a difficult learning experience for the elder king. After the events at Limoges Henry sent envoys to meet with young Henry, who were slain by the Limoges garrison. Envoys sent to Geoffrey were likewise assaulted: Jerome de Musterol was stabbed in the head while Oliver fitz Ernest was thrown off a bridge into the water, all while Geoffrey looked on. The final blow arrived in the form of

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Brabanter bands hired by Philip II, viscount of Aimar, and Raymond, count of Turenne, who entered the Limousin and ravaged about in the cause of the young Henry.164 Negotiations had clearly failed and the crisis was deepening. Perhaps with a heavy heart, Henry II at last turned to warfare. He was fortunate at this moment that Richard decided to return to Aquitaine to campaign successfully against the barons there, for this allowed Henry to focus his efforts. In May 1183, he invested Limoges, and his sons’ money and provisions quickly began to disappear.165 In ensuing days they sought to acquire additional funds. Geoffrey looted the shrine of St. Martial and used the gold and silver to pay the wages of his Brabanters. Young Henry left the city and joined in the attacks in Aquitaine but later returned and tried to reenter Limoges, only to be prevented from doing so by its citizens. Running low on supplies, he sacked the tomb of St. Andemar in Quercy and soon after was stricken with illness “by the judgment of God”: it was an attack of dysentery, a “flux of the bowels.”166 He died on 11 June 1183, and the rebellion around him promptly collapsed. He had been the lynchpin holding the divergent rebels together, yet they had fought not on his behalf but rather for the opportunities that the rebellion presented. After his death his former allies returned home or gave up the fight: with the experienced armies of Henry and Richard now controlling Poitou and Aquitaine there was little chance of success. Geoffrey returned to Brittany and made peace with his father before the year was out, and Limoges was surrendered on 24 June. Henry II’s empire was once again at peace, but with the intrusion of Philip II of France into Angevin affairs the specter of conflict remained. The Wars against Philip Augustus With Henry the Younger now dead, Henry II had to disperse his inheritance among his other sons. The most likely choice was Richard: as the oldest son remaining, he was to received Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. Geoffrey would keep Brittany, and Richard’s former 164

Gillingham, Richard I, 73–4. Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, I: 293. 166 Chronica, II: 276–9; Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 233. Henry’s death is also noted in the Angevin chronicles Chronicæ Sancti Albini Andegavensis and Breve Chronicon Sancti Florentii Salmurensis, in Chroniques des Églises D’Anjou, 44–5 and 193, respectively. 165

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lands in Aquitaine would pass to John, who had no lands of his own save for the promise of a future kingship in Ireland. While the plan sounded reasonable to the elder king, who had worked out a system of prioritization based on age, Richard did not accept his terms. Through years of fighting in the south, Richard had actually grown quite fond of Aquitaine and refused to relinquish the duchy, even if John paid him homage for it.167 Henry grew angry at his refusal and suggested that John ought to take Aquitaine for himself. While the king was busy mediating the renewed conflict between Philip II and Philip of Flanders in summer 1184, John tried to do just that by marching with Geoffrey and a Breton army into northern Poitou.168 Richard responded with attacks into Brittany, and peace was not made until nearly Christmas 1184, but it was tenuous at best and the matter of inheritance remained unsolved.169 All of these territorial disputes wore greatly on the mind of Henry II, who, in the years following the second rebellion of his sons, seemed anxious to live out the remainder of his reign in peace. His outreach even included paying homage to Philip II on the feast of St. Nicholas (6 December) 1183, something that he had not done to that point. By this point, Henry II’s days of conquest were long over. The only moments in which he levied armies were to defend the rights of his vassals, protect his borders, and settle disputes between others. He had not mobilized soldiers by his own volition since October 1177, when he marched on Châteauroux and Limoges; since then, he had fought once at the request of Adela of Champagne and again on behalf of Richard in order to settle a rebellion. In all other cases, he sent his sons to police the duchies granted to them. In July 1184, Henry finally summoned an army again when he marched to Worcester to threaten Prince Rhys with invasion for warfare on the March that had been raging since 1182. In that year, several younger Welsh nobles assaulted the castle of Abergavenny and burned everything except its great square keep; then, they murdered Ranulf Poer, sheriff of Herefordshire, and were only put down when Ranulf de Glanville brought an army south to restore peace. King Henry himself did not campaign into Wales, for Rhys met him at Worcester

167 168 169

Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, I: 308–12. Torigini, 311; Gervase, I: 309. Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, I: 319–20.

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and offered hostages as surety that he would punish those responsible for the violence.170 This was par for the course, for whether or not he actually conducted warfare in Wales, the result was always the same: the princes made promises and offered gifts, which Henry accepted in hopes of a placid region. In military terms, however, the actual subjection of Wales was a problem left to his successors Richard, John, and the later Plantagenet kings, including Edward I.171 1185 ushered in new developments that would return Henry II to the personal conduct of warfare. The year began with the reception of Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 1191), who had traveled west to plead for military assistance with which to fight the ambitions of Saladin in the Holy Land. Henry and Philip II promised material support in the form of a three-year tax. On 31 March, John was knighted and sent to Ireland with Ranulf de Glanville by his side, and in the same year Henry managed to convince the new pope Urban III (1185–1187) to permit John’s coronation as king of that country. Now all three of his sons possessed inheritances of land, a development notable enough to warrant mention in the oftenabbreviated Angevin chronicles.172 John was received well enough by John Cumin, bishop of Dublin (d. 1212) and built three castles at Tibrach, Archfinan, and Lismore. Yet the Irish quickly wearied of the insolent newcomer who laughed at their beards, and when John became greedy and refused to pay his mercenaries their wages they abandoned him.173 He returned to England somewhat dispirited on 17 December. John’s Irish adventure, however, had provided Henry II with an opportunity: he sent Geoffrey into Normandy and gave him the county of Nantes. With John having a kingdom of his own, Warren suggests that Henry was now considering turning young Henry’s former inheritance over to Geoffrey instead of Richard. As

170 Chronica, II: 290; Lloyd, History of Wales, I: 568–9; on Abergavenny see Fry, Castles of Britain and Ireland, 297. 171 Ymagines Historiarum, I: 397–8. In 1172, Rhys was created justice of south Wales, perhaps because his lands lay over the route to Ireland; see A. J. Roderick, “The Feudal Relation between the English Crown and the Welsh Princes,” History 37 (1952): 205. 172 John of Marmoutier describes them as such: Ricardus comes Pictavensis et assignatus a patre; Gaufridus totius Britanniæ nactus est principatum; Johannes, de promissione patris et provisione securus, diversas Hyberniæ portiones, si desuper ei datum fuerit, in monarchiam reducet”; see Chroniques d’Anjou, 342. 173 See Warren, King John, 35–7, for a hearty description of John’s stay in Ireland; also, Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 228–34.

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duke of Normandy, count of Anjou and Maine, and duke of Brittany, Geoffrey would rule a coherent territory and the move made political sense.174 The ploy was aimed to provoke Richard’s jealousy and was effective, for Richard fortified Poitou and began sending raids into Brittany. Now Henry unveiled his second move: releasing his wife Eleanor from imprisonment, a state in which she had resided since her deception of 1173, the king demanded that Richard return Poitou to his mother, its rightful heir, and threatened his son with “a rod of iron and war” should he refuse. To sharpen his point Henry traveled to Normandy and spent Easter (21 April) at Rouen, levied an army in Normandy, and prepared for war.175 Richard returned Poitou to Eleanor and ceased his hostilities. Yet the problem of Henry’s domains still remained essentially unsolved and was in fact exacerbated when Henry appointed officers of his own in Aquitaine in April 1186, greatly offending Richard who as duke saw the move as an infringement of his rights.176 Two events in the spring and summer of 1186 temporarily disarmed the hostile situation when Henry and Richard turned to deal with military affairs in their own territories. First, Richard waged war against Toulouse in March and became otherwise occupied.177 Second, Henry departed for England in order to deal with Roland fitz Uhtred, who had disinherited Duncan, earl of Fife (d. 1204), by seizing Galloway. Roland and William the Lion engaged in hostilities in May, and by early July Henry was at Northampton assembling an army by collecting scutage with which to hire Welsh mercenaries. His army moved northwest to Carlisle, where he ordered his vassals King William and David of Huntingdon, as well as Ranulf de Glanville and Bishop Hugh of Durham to bring Roland before him. Roland surrendered his claim to Galloway, swore fealty to Henry, and promised to keep the peace on pain of excommunication by Jocelin, bishop of Glasgow (d. 1199).178 For all concerned

174

Warren, Henry II, 597. Chronica, II: 304; Ymagines Historiarum, II: 35; Gervase, I: 326. Judging Eleanor’s involvement in governance after her release is difficult, however, for there is scant evidence and most of her charters date to after Henry II’s death; see Richardson, “Letters and Charters of Eleanor,” 200. 176 Ymagines Historiarum, II: 40. 177 Gervase, I: 334. For Richard’s actions in the south, see Benjamin, “A Forty Years War,” 278–80. 178 PR 33, xxiii–xxiv; Chronicle of Melrose, in Anderson, Early Sources, 309–10; Historia 175

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parties the need for the king and his son to deal with matters of governance provided a bit of breathing space, and tempers cooled down in the meantime. The division of the Angevin Empire was thrown into disorder once more with the unexpected death of Geoffrey in Paris on 18 August, who was trampled while riding in a tournament.179 Geoffrey had only recently come into his own in terms of statesmanship, issuing an assize on knights’ fees in 1185 that demonstrated his ducal authority.180 But at his death a semi-secret alliance between Brittany and France was suddenly revealed. Geoffrey, it turns out, had paid homage to Philip at his coronation in 1179; moreover, he died at Paris and issued his final charter there.181 This was suspicious enough, but even closer ties were revealed when Philip II demanded that he be given charge of Geoffrey’s daughter Eleanor (1184–1241), who was at that point the only heir to the duchy of Brittany.182 Henry refused to let Philip have such a valuable gift. He sent envoys to Paris, and it was agreed that peace should be kept until 13 January 1187. Feeling secure in his position, Henry now returned to England. Next, problems arose in the always-contentious region of the Vexin in October 1186. The French knight Richard de Vals fortified a castle between Gisors and Trie, at which the constable of Gisors, Henry de Vere, rode out with some men to dissuade him. Richard took his own men to meet the constable halfway and the two groups skirmished with each other, with Richard being wounded and put to flight. King Philip reacted negatively and ordered that any of Henry II’s subjects found within French borders were to be arrested and their property seized; the order was reciprocated by Henry for any Frenchmen found inside his own domains. Taking advice from his magnates, Philip soon relented, but it was clear that animosity was in the air and tensions were high.183 Henry sent his envoys back to extend the treaty until Easter 1187 (29 March), but he was pessimistic about the course of Anglo-French relations and in December

Rerum Anglicarum, I: 237; D. D. R. Owen, William the Lion, 1143–1214: Kingship and Culture (East Linton, 1997), 72–3. In 1185 Henry II had restored the earldom of Huntingdon to David, of which he had deprived him during the Great Revolt. 179 Ymagines Historiarum, II: 41. 180 Charters of Duchess Constance, 24–5; Everard, Brittany and the Angevins, 111–15. 181 Charters of Duchess Constance, 31–2. 182 Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton Chronique de Rigord, I: 77–8. 183 Chronica, II: 315.

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sent Ranulf de Glanville to south Wales in order to secure the services of mercenary archers.184 After Christmas 1186, the cardinal subdeacon Octavian arrived in England at the behest of Pope Urban III for the purpose of crowning John king of Ireland. This was a matter Henry had arranged the year before, but Octavian’s timing could not have been worse. After spending the winter together, Henry brought the cardinal to the Continent to participate in a meeting with King Philip in late February. Landing at Witsand, they spent some time in Flanders before conferring with the French at Gué St. Remy. Philip’s claim to Eleanor, daughter of the Duchess Constance, was rendered somewhat impotent by both the birth of her son Arthur on Easter Day and her marriage to Ranulf “de Blundeville,” earl of Chester (d. 1232), but the king was still upset with the affairs near Gisors.185 The meeting was a failure and both sides parted in animosity: Philip would not relinquish his claims to the Vexin, and there was no point in arguing further. In 1187, both sides began to prepare for war. Philip entered Berry and besieged the three castles of Issoudon, Fréteval, and Châteauroux. The first two were surrendered to him by Urso de Fréteval and Robert II, count of Nevers, but Châteauroux was defended by Richard and John, and they refused to turn the fortress over.186 Henry arrived in relief on 23 June and both kings assembled their armies in anticipation of open battle. Preventing this was first a temporary truce, then a proposition to decide the outcome through individual battle between knights, and finally, a two-year truce brokered by Octavian and other bishops present. The armies subsequently parted without issue.187 The most famous anecdote from the confrontation was the conversation had between Philip and Richard. During the first truce, which the commanders used to prepare the field for war, Philip made overtures to Richard in an attempt to persuade him to leave his father’s side. The quarrels between Richard and Henry were well known and it was a smart tactic. Philip of Flanders was sent to talk

184

Eyton, Court, Household, Itinerary, 274. Ymagines Historiarum, II: 48. 186 Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, II: 5–7; Chronica, II: 317–18. 187 There are several contemporary accounts of the non-action at Châteauroux: Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, II: 6–7; Historia Rerum Anglicarum, I: 248–9; Chronica, II: 317–18; Gervase, I: 369–71; Ymagines Historiarum, II: 49; and the Chronicle of Hainault, 107–8. 185

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with Richard and thereupon plied him with a tale of how Henry had debauched Alice, his bride to be. While Richard was receptive and perhaps suspicious of his father, he was not yet at the point of treachery.188 Yet he evidently heard something pleasing during his talks with the French, and after the truce he returned to France with King Philip. They apparently became fast friends and spent every waking moment together, both at dinner, sport, and in bed.189 Whatever the nature of the relationship, the friendliness between his son and Philip did not please a father who was already questioning Richard’s motivations. Henry’s suspicions proved to be accurate. He sent a series of messengers to recall Richard to Angers. In late August, the duke of Aquitaine proceeded southwest from Paris to Chinon, ostensibly to join his father; instead, Richard broke into the castle at Chinon, seized his father’s treasure there, and carried it back to Poitou, where he used the funds to fortify his own castles. Richard’s motivations at this point are not well-documented, but it appears that he lost some of his rebellious ardor when separated from the influence of King Philip. The heat of the moment passed, and by September he rejoined his father at Angers and paid him homage. With the Richard question settled for the moment, Henry took the opportunity to move his army west into Brittany and besiege the castle of Montrelais that had been seized by the rebel Harvey de Leuns after the death of his son Geoffrey the year before.190 Henry then kept Christmas at Caen, thinking his affairs were well enough in hand to return to England in January 1188. The king made it as far as Barfleur before he was forced to turn back to Normandy. The reason for his extended stay on the Continent was the sudden warlike overtures of Philip II. Hearing of the English king’s impending departure, Philip levied the French host and boasted that he would invade Normandy unless Henry surrendered Gisors and its lands, or, alternatively, force Richard to finally marry his half-sister Alice.191 Each king had some legitimacy in regards to each

188

De Principis Instructione Liber, 232–3. Chronica, II: 318. J. A. Brundage has called their relationship intimate and writes, “Richard was by preference a homosexual”; see Richard Lion Heart (New York, 1974), 257–8. His sexuality has lately become a popular example in academic queer studies, but see Gillingham’s retort in Richard I, 84 and especially 264–6. 190 Chronica, II: 318. 191 Chronica, II: 334–5. 189

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claim. For the former, one could argue that Henry had a distinct right to Gisors, for in 1158 the marriage arrangement between young Henry and Louis VII’s daughter Margaret stated the Vexin as her dowry, and despite their young age, the two children were indeed married in November 1160. No doubt the matter was a source of conflict between Normandy and England, but there was legal precedent and good reason for Henry to not relinquish the city. The betrothal of Richard and Alice was another matter entirely. First betrothed in 1169 in the Treaty of Montmirail, the two had never married, despite the stipulation in the 1177 Treaty of Ivry that they do so. The wedding was integral first to the plan of Louis VII, and then that of his son, to recover Aquitaine, which had been lost in 1152 in the divorce from Eleanor. Thus either of Philip’s demands, if met, would yield strategically vital territory back to the French Crown. Henry was not prepared to give any ground, and he had little practical reason to do so. Despite the recent rebellions of his sons and ascendancy of Philip II, the English king was indisputably still the strongest military power in the West. In response to the French levy, Henry remained in Normandy in January 1188 and met Philip at a conference at Senlis, between Gisors and Trie, on the feast of St. Agnes (21 January). It was a sizable affair that included several important magnates and bishops, but while the meeting brought about the creation of the Saladin Tithe for crusading relief it did nothing to reach a compromise on the political matters at hand. Both kings attempted to bury the hatchet by taking the cross together, but it was, like the crusading talk in the 1177 Treaty of Ivry, a futile proposal. Ambroise relates, “the devil made great efforts to restore the discord between the two kings.”192 Henry would not live to see the Holy Land, and matters on the Continent were far too dangerous to be left alone while on a long