However, despite Henry’s early success in England, the continental parts of his empire needed attention too. Henry’s brother Geoffrey claimed that he had been left Anjou and Maine by Geoffrey Plantagenet, and Louis VII refused to acknowledge Henry’s right to Aquitaine. Though Louis may have seemed the more intractable enemy – and in time would turn out to be – Henry quickly pacified him. Henry met Louis at the Norman border in 1156 and did homage for Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine in exchange for Louis’s formal recognition of him as Duke of Aquitaine. Henry’s brother Geoffrey refused to come to terms and fortified his three castles of Chinon, Mirebeau and Loudon to raise a rebellion, but he received little support and when Henry marched against him with his already legendary siege train, Geoffrey gave up his castles in exchange for an annuity.19
Henry and Eleanor then made a progress around Aquitaine to receive homage from their vassals and dispossess those who had proved troublesome, destroying their castles for good measure. This encouraged the residents of Nantes, Brittany’s most important port, to renounce their allegiance to the Count of Brittany and ask for Henry’s assistance, and Henry replied by giving them his brother Geoffrey as the new Count of Nantes.20 Nantes was particularly important as the seaport at the mouth of the Loire, and as such controlled the export of the wines of Anjou and Touraine, which at this time were much more important than the wines of Bordeaux. In fact, it was only because of the collapse of the Angevin Empire and loss of Anjou and Touraine that in the 13th-century Bordeaux became the main port for exporting wine to England, and its position has never faltered in the subsequent 800 years.21
Louis VII had demanded the eastern part of Normandy (called the Norman Vexin) in exchange for recognizing Geoffrey Plantagenet and Henry as Dukes of Normandy, but Henry was determined to restore the rights of his grandfather Henry I. He sent Thomas Becket, his chancellor and most trusted adviser, on an embassy to Paris in 1158 with the specific purpose of overawing the French with his power. Though Henry himself had no love of magnificence, he was well aware of its uses, and Becket was the perfect person to fulfil the role. William FitzStephen described Becket’s arrival in France and his procession, which included 250 footmen, 200 knights and squires, greyhounds, mastiffs, monkeys, falcons and wagons loaded with gold, silver, books and elaborate garments including twenty-four changes of clothes for Becket. When the enormous retinue had finally passed, the French were at last treated to the sight of Becket himself, and observers said, ‘What a magnificent man the king of England must be if his chancellor travels in such great state.’22 Which was exactly the point, though Louis later quipped to Walter Map, in a quote worthy of an Angevin ‘… the King of England, who lacks nothing, has men, horses, gold, silk, jewels, fruits, game and everything else. We in France have nothing but bread and wine and gaiety.’23 At no other time in history can the cheerful rustic simplicity of French royalty have been compared so disadvantageously to English style and wealth.
Becket’s mission was a success and it was soon announced that Louis’s daughter Margaret would marry Henry’s eldest son. Margaret’s dowry would be the Norman Vexin, which would thus revert back to Normandy. Since both Margaret and Young Henry were barely out of infancy, Louis would retain the dowry until the marriage actually took place and Margaret was given into Henry’s custody, though only on condition that she not be raised by Eleanor, a telling detail showing Louis still could not forgive his former wife, and pointedly questioned her morals.24
We can only imagine the anxiety Louis VII must have felt at the growing power of his Angevin enemy, particularly as he was still without an heir. After his marriage to Eleanor ended in 1152, Louis married Constance of Castile, who bore another two daughters. In 1160 she died in childbirth, and nothing could be greater evidence of the pressure for an heir than the fact that five weeks later Louis married his third wife, Adela of Champagne. Without a male heir France risked going the way of England in the reign of Stephen, and this could not be tolerated. So when, in August 1165, the queen of France finally gave birth to a son, it was a cause for national rejoicing. Gerald of Wales was a student in Paris and described being woken in his rented rooms on the Ile de la Cité by the pealing of all the bells in the city and the light of flames shining through his window. He first thought the city was on fire, but when he rushed to his window he saw the streets were filled with people celebrating and declaring, ‘By the grace of God there is born to us this night a King who shall be a hammer to the King of the English.’25 The baby was named Philip, but also called Dieudonné, ‘God-given’, and in time he would justify these hopes by taking nearly all the Angevin continental possessions for France.
Thomas Becket: The Turbulent Priest
Becket’s mission to France and his personification of Henry’s majesty was the high point of his chancellorship. Becket and Henry had been close friends since Henry’s accession, even engaging in an impromptu wrestling match to decide who would give his cloak to a beggar26, and Becket ably supported Henry in his attempts to claim (or re-claim, as Henry would have it) royal rights usurped by the Church. For this reason, Henry chose Becket, his most trusted friend and capable administrator, to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury when the position became vacant in 1161. This unleashed a quarrel that ended in Becket’s murder and near ruin for Henry.
Historians have explained Becket’s abrupt change from upholder of royal rights to defender of the Church by saying that Becket was a single-minded character who believed in inhabiting fully any role he undertook. As chancellor, he indulged in all the ceremony and luxury of the role, yet once he had become Archbishop of Canterbury he changed entirely, wearing a hair shirt and shunning any ostentation. Though as chancellor he had acted to enforce Henry’s will, as Archbishop he opposed any action he felt compromised the rights of the Church and fell out with Henry within a year of assuming the office. This view originates with Ralph of Diceto, who said of Becket:
However, as he put on those robes reserved, at God’s command, to the highest of his clergy, he changed not only his apparel but his cast of mind. For he wished no longer to be bothered with the concerns of the chancery but rather that he might be allowed to retire from it and thus have more time to devote to addressing his flock and watching over the affairs of the Church. Therefore, Thomas sent a message to the king of England, then in Normandy, resigning his chancellorship and surrendering the seal. Such a resignation had its sole cause in his own conception of the duties of his new office.27
Henry believed that the Church should act to reinforce his authority and good governance of the kingdom, but Becket felt himself bound to a higher power and chose exile in France rather than submission.
Many sympathized with Becket, as best demonstrated in the anonymous song In Rama sonat gemitus composed between 1165–1170, which comments on Becket’s exile by comparing Henry to King Herod and Becket to a new Joseph in exile in the ‘Egypt of France’.28 There were several attempts at reconciliation, but Becket remained inflexible over what he saw as any infringement of the church’s rights, even opposing royal rights that had long been in existence, and no reconciliation could be achieved. Henry then exacerbated the problem considerably: he chose to have his eldest son Henry crowned as king in his own lifetime, a practice the Capetians had long used to ensure the succession, but in Becket’s absence he had the coronation carried out by the Archbishop of York. A further attempt at reconciliation seemed successful, but according to Ralph of Diceto, Becket hedged his declarations of allegiance to Henry with phrases such as ‘saving my order’ and ‘saving God’s faith’, with the result that ‘… just as our ancestors used to pay very close attention to formulae in law, so the king kept taking issue with certain phrases in the archbishop’s words’.29 Nothing could be more calculated to enrage Henry than a petty legalistic attempt to avoid obligations to the throne.
Nevertheless, the two men finally reached an agreement at the end of 1170, under which Becket returned to England. Becket promptly excommunicated the A
rchbishop of York and the other two bishops who had crowned Young King Henry. Henry was at his Christmas court in Normandy, and it was here that the most famous episode of his reign unfolded, though it is not clear exactly what he said.
What seems to have happened is that Henry became so frustrated that he expressed his wish that the problem would go away. ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ is the well-known phrase attributed to him, though this is apocryphal. What does seem to be true is that he expressed some sentiment of wanting to be rid of the Becket affair, and four of his knights took this literally. They went to Canterbury cathedral and burst in with drawn swords shouting for Becket. He faced them fearlessly, and knelt before the altar in prayer. The knights then struck him on the head and murdered him at the altar. This was one of the most shocking events in European history and gained wide notoriety. Whatever the merits of his case and his lack of direct involvement, Henry was blamed for the murder. Henry himself was utterly horrified: Becket was killed on 29 December 1170, and when Henry heard the news on 1 January 1171 he locked himself away for three days.30
Becket’s death reverberated around Europe and condemnation of Henry was universal. Louis VII wrote to the pope to complain and the Archbishop of Sens wrote, ‘I have no doubt that the cry of the whole world has already filled your ears of how the king of the English, that enemy to the angels and the whole body of Christ, has wrought his spite on that holy one.’31
Becket’s death marked the moment when Henry’s seemingly unstoppable run of good luck and success came to an end, and he soon faced the most serious threat to his authority he had yet seen. Worse, the threat came from his own family, and Henry had sowed the seeds of this himself by crowning his eldest son Henry as co-king.
Young King Henry: Chivalry and Tournaments
Young King Henry, as he is known, is a figure about whom we know quite a lot, though his early death – and seemingly his character – prevented him from matching the deeds of the other Angevins. Young Henry’s character was very different from his father’s, and he is the outstanding early link between the Angevins and chivalry. After Geoffrey Plantagenet’s precocious use of heraldry, there might have been a notable gap before Richard I’s emergence as the perfect troubadour knight, but Young Henry admirably filled it. Young Henry was a key figure in the development of what would become arguably the most iconic activity of the Middle Ages, the tournament, in the period that saw the rise of tournaments and the knight-errant, best described by the contemporary Chrétien de Troyes in his paradigmatic Arthurian romances.
Throughout the early 1170s Young Henry toured Normandy and Anjou to participate in tournaments and perform the traditional monarchical function of magnificent display that was so alien to his father’s character. Although many contemporary and modern historians view this as idleness, this role should not be underestimated and there could be serious consequences for rulers unwilling to reinforce their right to rule through display. Although Henry II demonstrated that territorial acquisition, ruthless political control and general success were highly effective, the aristocracy were also expected to be magnificent and generous. Young Henry’s reputation did the Angevins no harm in noble circles, even if the Church had other views. The modern view of Young Henry tends to be that he was an idle poseur whose escapades contributed nothing to his father’s (and nominal co-ruler’s) reign, but we should not disregard the impact his fame as a generous and successful tourneyer may have had.
The brightly coloured image of the mounted knight with couched lance, man and horse draped and crowned with heraldic devices, is perhaps the defining image of the period, although these elaborately choreographed jousts belong to the age of King René in the 15th century. In the 12th century, tournaments were full-scale battles fought with real weapons in which opponents were captured and ransomed, and which differed from outright war only in the existence of refuges where combatants were not allowed to be attacked, and the fact that opponents weren’t usually killed, though this is a very grey area. In actual battle, noble opponents were almost always captured for the large ransoms they could provide, so death tolls were very low by our standards, while on the contrary, personal feuds were often prosecuted in the course of tournaments with deadly results, and accidental deaths were also common. Tactics which to us seem most unchivalrous were employed even by such paragons of virtue as William Marshal. Groups of knights fought together in tournaments as teams and might wait until late in the tournament when the other combatants were exhausted, then ride in and take captives. The contemporary response to this behaviour was to applaud it as tactical cunning rather than see it as treachery.32
Tournaments were the chosen sport of younger, landless knights who had no employment and nothing to lose, and as William Marshal will demonstrate, the best practitioners could make their fortune and achieve respectability. As with every sport, this only applied to those who performed at the highest level and there are also countless stories of knights bankrupted by ransom payments or killed ignominiously leaving their families destitute. Famous victims included Henry II’s son Geoffrey of Brittany and Robert of Flanders, a hero of the First Crusade who, according to William of Malmesbury in one of the earliest references to tournaments, ‘tarnished that noble exploit’ by dying in a ‘tournament, as they call it’ in 1111.33 This accounts for the Church’s unyielding hostility to the tournament and the issuance of decrees forbidding anyone killed in a tournament being buried in consecrated ground.
Secular authorities also opposed tournaments for more practical reasons: the unrestrained mock combat could all too easily become real combat that ranged over fields and through villages, destroying peasants’ livelihoods and in many cases their lives. The ‘little battle of Chalons’ was an infamous tournament that evolved into a real battle, but it was by no means unique. Henry II prudently forbade tournaments in England and was a strong enough ruler to enforce the ban, which explains Young Henry’s preference for the continent. The marches of France, Normandy and Flanders were the breeding ground of tournaments, precisely because they lay between the dominions of the Angevin king, French king and Count of Flanders and were not subject to strong control. It was not until the reign of Richard the Lionheart that tournaments became legal in England, and he allowed them for the reason he allowed most things: he needed money, and sold licences for tournaments as a revenue enhancement project.
In the later Middle Ages criticism of the tournament was commonplace because it was thought to be decadent, sadly fallen from the purity of its origins in the 12th century, and indeed such criticisms became common even in the 13th century. However, despite the undoubted changes in the way tournaments were conducted, and their ultimate replacement by the more easily regulated joust, they served the same function in every period, as an aristocratic sport that provided training for warfare. Modern historians may dispute the utility of even the violent 12th-century tournament in preparing knights for actual warfare, but however distinct the tactics used in war may have been from those practised in tournaments, the latter still provided a dress rehearsal for warfare: the same armour and weapons were used, the warhorse had to be controlled under chaotic circumstances and the knight himself had to control his fear and become used to receiving and dealing blows.
There was another thread to the 12th-century tournament that is frequently ascribed to its ‘decadence’, and that is the presence of spectators and the incorporation of entertainment into the event. 14th- and 15th-century representations of the tournament or joust – notably King René’s treatise on tournaments – always show spectators, particularly female spectators, watching and applauding. However, we learn from William Marshal’s biography that ladies were present at the tournaments he attended, and that William entertained them by singing, at which he was famously accomplished, and that the knights and ladies danced. Minstrels were also present at these early tournaments and expected to be rewarded, and William gave a minstrel one of his captured horses on at least one occasion,
which can have done no harm to his reputation.34 This emphasis on the social aspect of the tournament as early as the 1170s flies in the face of later criticism that tournaments and jousts were empty social occasions remote from their original purpose.
William Marshal: The Perfect Knight
William Marshal served as the factual counterpart to the knights of Chrétien de Troyes’s romances, and it is to his biography – the first biography of an ‘ordinary’ person (i.e. not a saint or a ruler) in medieval history – that we owe our knowledge of early tournaments and the rise of chivalry, as well as a great deal about Young Henry. William Marshal was also a key player in nearly a century of Angevin history, having made his first appearance as a child hostage in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda and ending his days as the most respected man in England and regent for Henry III after John’s death. In between he served Henry II, became the tutor and companion of Young Henry, nearly killed Richard in a skirmish, and attempted to preserve John’s kingdom when the king himself threw it away. William’s rise to prominence came solely because of his prowess and chivalric behaviour, because he was the younger son of a nobleman and had to make his own way, and through his success in the new sport of tournaments he became wealthy and famous enough to marry an heiress, become an important baron and ultimately rule England as regent.
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 15
