Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  Between February 1157 and late 1158, Eleanor and her children remained in southern England, chiefly itinerating between Winchester, Salisbury and London.64 The queen’s mobility, however, was increasingly constrained by her latest pregnancy, and at Oxford, on 8 September 1157, she gave birth to Richard.65 For King Henry, Richard’s birth must have been the cause of great relief; he once more had two sons, and thus another heir should child mortality again rob him of his elder son. But in August 1157 it had been Henry II’s own life that was threatened. The king had returned to England at Easter to defuse mounting tensions between Earl Hugh Bigod and Stephen’s son William of Blois, which posed a serious threat to the stability of East Anglia and perhaps even to the kingdom itself.66 He had then launched a major campaign to subdue the ascendant Welsh ruler Owain of Gwynedd, but Henry and a group of his men had been cut off by a Welsh ambush. For a terrible moment, it was believed that he had been slain, but Henry had recovered the situation and pressed home the campaign until Owain submitted.67 Had he been killed, young Henry would have become king as a child of two, and a long regency would have spelt great uncertainty for a kingdom still barely pacified after the years of civil war. It may well have been with this contingency in mind that Henry had entrusted his queen and family to the protection of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury and Thomas Becket, his chancellor and intimate friend.68 As it was, Henry concluded a triumphal year, in which he reasserted his authority over the magnates of England, the king of Scots, and the Welsh princes, by a great crown-wearing at Lincoln, where the court feasted on venison brought from the king’s forests as far apart as Worcestershire, Nottinghamshire and Essex.69 The death of his turbulent brother Geoffrey in July 1158 removed a long-standing danger, while in September that year Eleanor gave birth to another son, also named Geoffrey, after Henry II’s father Count Geoffrey le Bel.70

  When Henry II again crossed to Normandy in August 1158, the young prince Henry remained with his mother and his younger siblings at Winchester.71 Though London was rapidly becoming the greatest commercial centre in England, the cross-Channel nature of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings’ domains had ensured the continuing vitality and significance of the former capital of Wessex, strategically located within easy reach of the ports of embarkation at Portsmouth and Southampton. The Exchequer was now permanently based at the royal palace of Westminster, but the royal castle at Winchester, built by William the Conqueror in the south-west corner of the city, remained the principal treasury of the kingdom and it was here that the royal regalia was kept, as well as the Domesday Book, that great and unprecedented survey of wealth and tenure.72 Henry II was to spend considerable sums throughout his reign on the castle and royal apartments within, and young Henry would come to know it well.73 The city itself, an ‘urbs nobilissima’, had been ravaged by fire during the siege of 1141, when St Mary’s abbey, Hyde abbey and more than forty churches had been burned, and war damage must still have been visible in the 1150s.74 But the peace and economic stability ushered in by Henry II’s accession enabled a period of rebuilding and growth, and there were signs too that old political scars were healing. In 1155, Henry of Blois, the bishop of Winchester and King Stephen’s brother, had fled the kingdom without Henry II’s permission to take refuge at Cluny, leaving his castles to be demolished by the king. By late 1158, however, the bishop had returned to the king’s peace, and to his episcopal city, where he very likely had contact with Eleanor and the royal family. Winchester was to be a principal residence for the queen’s household, but she also travelled between other major sites such as Salisbury and Sherborne.75

  Something of the domestic life of the young Henry can be glimpsed in this period. His master, Mainard, was assisted in the care of the prince by royal administrators such as Hugh de Gundeville, who had charge of some of his expenses.76 Hugh had been a constable in the household of Henry II’s uncle, Robert of Gloucester, then of his son Earl William, before moving into the royal service.77 Holding estates in Dorset, Hampshire and Gloucestershire, he farmed the royal manor of King’s Somborne in Hampshire, and many of his duties related to the king’s affairs in Winchester, including maintenance of the royal family.78 Hugh is found purchasing horses for the king, and as a constable it is likely that he oversaw the young Henry’s first training in horsemanship. As with all nobles, this began early; a famous Carolingian proverb ran that unless a boy could ride by seven he was fit only to be a clerk, and Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious was noted to have been a skilled rider by that age.79 Similarly, in 1159–60, the prince was in the care of William FitzAldelin, another rising curialis or ‘man of the court’, who appears a little later as one of the king’s marshals.80 Training in arms also began early, with scaled-down weapons and even armour being provided to accustom youths to their usage; the Pipe Roll for 1160 records among the queen’s expenditure payment for ‘boys’ shields’.81 The rolls also reveal the kind of expensive luxuries enjoyed by the queen and her family, including pepper, cumin, cinnamon and almonds, as well as incense.82 At Salisbury in November 1158, young Henry may have been taken ill, for the Pipe Rolls record payment of 100 shillings to Girard, the boy’s doctor.83 The ever-present reality of child mortality was reflected in the confirmation of a charter of Henry II in favour of the abbey of Saint-Sauveur- le-Vicomte, given at Westminster some time between 1155 and 1158, before his return to France, for the souls not only of his parents and grandfather, Henry I, but ‘for the health of my young children’.84 The young prince was strong enough to cross over to Normandy with Eleanor in December, but by then, the king had already begun to plan for his son’s future marriage.85

  Betrothal and Marriage

  Henry II’s relations with the French king Louis VII had been strained long before he succeeded to the throne of England.86 Geoffrey of Anjou’s marriage to Henry I’s daughter Matilda had confronted Louis with the grave threat of the unification of Anjou and the Anglo-Norman realm. Although Stephen’s coup d’état in 1135 had prevented the immediate realization of such an alliance, his failure successfully to defend Normandy after 1137 had allowed Geoffrey of Anjou steadily to reduce Normandy to his control. Rouen fell to the Angevins in 1144, and the following year Louis was forced to recognize Geoffrey as duke of Normandy, though he demanded the great fortress of Gisors and part of the Norman Vexin as his price.87 In 1151, Louis had extracted more of this vital border county from Henry in return for the Capetian king’s recognition of his succession to the duchy by the acceptance of the duke’s homage. Yet Louis could not realistically expect his powerful neighbour readily to accept so significant a diminution of his territory for long. Nevertheless, in his attempts to regain his lost possessions Henry initially chose his preferred path of diplomacy rather than a policy of open aggression against Louis.

  Thus it was that in August 1158, following the death of his brother Geoffrey, Henry II took the opportunity to establish more peaceful relations with the French king. He had already sent his chancellor Thomas Becket to France that spring to open negotiations about the marriage of the young Henry to Margaret, Louis’ daughter by his second wife, Constance, the daughter of Alfonso VII of Castile. The boy was now only three and Margaret herself not yet fully a year old, but it was common practice for royal children to be betrothed at such a tender age. Becket arrived in Paris in great magnificence at the head of a huge and gorgeously apparelled retinue, intending ‘to display and lavish the opulence of England’s luxury’.88 Exploiting the successful negotiations carried out by Becket, the two kings met on the river Epte between Gisors and Neufmarché to discuss the proposed marriage. King Louis was anxious to secure peace: though he had exploited first the war between Stephen and the Angevins, then the rebellion of Geoffrey Plantagenet with some success, a policy of direct military confrontation with Henry II had proved unwise. Louis, moreover, was profoundly concerned about the succession to the throne of France. His two daughters by his first marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie and Alice, had respectively been married to Henry, cou
nt of Champagne, and his brother Theobald V, count of Blois, thereby forging a strong bond with the house of Blois-Champagne. Yet the continuity of the Capetian dynasty in the direct male line was still in danger. The political price of the divorce from Eleanor had been heavy: not only had the duchy of Aquitaine reverted to Eleanor, but by her marriage to Henry II it had come under the control of Louis’ Angevin rival, thereby enormously increasing his power and prestige. Yet Louis’ new wife, Constance of Castile, had borne him only daughters, Margaret and Alice. His agreement to Margaret’s marriage to young Henry has thus been regarded as potentially ‘a dynastic safety net’, but for the Capetians the prospects were scarcely propitious.89 If Louis was to die, there were a number of potential claimants, including the sons of his sister Constance and Raymond of Toulouse, or perhaps Henry, count of Champagne, the husband of his eldest daughter, Marie.90 Alternatively, the marriage of young Henry and Margaret offered the possibility that the Angevins might absorb the house of Capet. Louis cannot have relished either eventuality, and must have hoped that since the actual union of Henry and Margaret would be a distant prospect because of their very young age, he might yet have a son by Constance.

  There was, moreover, a potential benefit for the king of France. The strategic value of the Vexin made it all too clear that Henry would seek to obtain its restoration as soon as he could, by force if need be. Accordingly, Louis agreed to make Margaret’s dowry the Vexin, with its key castles of Gisors, Neaufles and Châteauneuf-sur-Epte. It was further agreed that if young Henry died Margaret was to marry another of Henry II’s sons, under the same terms.91 To Louis, the move seemed an astute piece of diplomacy; he thereby asserted the Capetians’ legal claim to the Vexin while at the same time holding out to Henry the prospect of its return to de facto Plantagenet control, but seemingly not for many years. In addition, Henry II settled a handsome dower on Margaret. In Normandy, she was to hold the city of Avranches, two castles, 200 livres angevins in revenue from the duchy, and the dues from 200 knights’ fees. In England, she was also to receive the city of Lincoln, £1,000 of revenue, and dues from 300 knights’ fees.92 For Henry, this was a small price for what seemed a sure way of eventually recovering the strategically vital territory of the Vexin, and even held out the hope – however distant – that he would obtain the throne of France for the Plantagenets by marriage. After all, it had been by marriage, not the sword, that in one extraordinary year, 1128, his grandfather Fulk V had obtained the kingdom of Jerusalem for himself through the hand of Queen Melisende, and succession to the Anglo-Norman realm for his son Geoffrey by his marriage to the Empress Matilda.93 And it had been the failure of the male line of the kings of Aragon that in 1137 had permitted Count Ramón Berenguer of Barcelona to obtain the kingdom by marriage to Ramiro’s daughter Petronella.94 More immediately, Henry II was anxious to obtain Louis’ sanction for a campaign in Brittany against Conan IV, who had seized the county of Nantes on the death of Geoffrey Plantagenet in July 1158.

  Contemporaries regarded the proposed marriage agreement as an important move towards peace after the hostilities of the previous decades. When Henry II visited Louis again in September 1158, a great diplomatic effort was made on both sides to extend courtesies and honours.95 Having allowed Becket to exhibit the wealth he could command, Henry’s visit was deliberately low key, as he sought to retain Louis’ support for his actions against the Bretons. Henry was greeted ‘with inestimable honour’ by Louis, his queen and by nobles of the kingdom. In his turn, Henry graciously declined the king’s offer to have him met by a procession at every church in Paris, but gave alms and behaved ‘magnificently and liberally towards everyone, especially the churches and Christ’s poor’.96 It was in such a honeymoon atmosphere that Henry was able to take back with him the infant Margaret on his return to Normandy. It was a diplomatic triumph of the highest order – and one the French would come bitterly to regret.97 The harsh reality of Margaret’s separation from her parents at such an early age, and her de facto position as a hostage were an accepted part of aristocratic life.98 Henry II entrusted her to the safekeeping of Robert de Neufmarché, the seneschal of Normandy and one of Henry’s most trusted fideles, ‘to guard and rear her (ad custodiendum et nutriendum)’. On Robert’s death, however, she was probably transferred to Queen Eleanor’s household, where she certainly was by 1164.99

  In November 1158, Henry reciprocated Louis’ hospitality and accompanied his lord on a tour of some of Normandy’s most important churches, including Mont Saint-Michel and Bec.100 The two kings’ amicable relations, however, were not to last long. The seeds of conflict lay in Henry II’s attempt in 1159 to make good Eleanor of Aquitaine’s claims on the great principality of Toulouse.101 Henry embarked on the fiscal and military preparations for probably the largest army he was ever to lead, while to lay his ground he forged an alliance with Ramón Berenguer, count of Barcelona. The count’s daughter was to be betrothed to Henry II’s second son Richard, who already had been assigned Aquitaine as his inheritance.102 Louis was greatly alarmed by Henry’s actions. If Henry succeeded in annexing Toulouse he would control the trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and from central France down to the Pyrenees; both his wealth and his political influence would be enormously increased. Count Raymond of Toulouse, moreover, was married to Louis’ sister Constance. Despite a series of parleys, Louis was unable to deter Henry from leading his great host, mustered at Poitiers for Midsummer’s Day, 24 June, into Raymond’s territories. Initially, all went well. Cahors was taken, and much of the count’s lands were overrun. The great city of Toulouse itself resolutely held out, but after three months’ blockade Raymond’s position was beginning to look desperate. Yet in a bold move, which Henry had completely failed to anticipate, King Louis suddenly entered Toulouse itself to aid his brother-in-law and defend his sister Constance.103 Thomas Becket urged Henry to press home the siege despite Louis’ presence, yet Henry baulked ‘out of foolish superstition and regard for the counsel of others’; he would not attack the city if his lord, the king of France, remained inside.104 It was a critical moment, and one that sharply revealed both the reality of Henry’s scruples about injuring Louis’ person and the potential disadvantages he might thus face as a vassal of the Capetian king.105 With his army now succumbing to disease, Henry II withdrew from Toulouse and returned north, leaving Becket to secure the occupation of Cahors and the Quercy.106 The failure of the Toulouse expedition was a major reverse for Henry, breaking a remarkable run of political and military successes, and it could not but sour relations with Louis: ‘On account of this,’ noted Ralph of Diss, ‘the two kings were made enemies.’107 Henry’s earlier attempts to draw Louis from Toulouse by diversionary attacks on the Île-de-France had not only been unsuccessful, but had resulted in counter-attacks against Normandy. After continuing hostilities in the Vexin, the two kings resumed negotiations, and in December 1159 a truce was arranged to last until 22 May 1160.108

  Henry and his family kept Christmas of 1159 at Falaise, but the festivities were doubtless overshadowed by the outcome of the Toulouse expedition, and in late December Eleanor returned to England to act as regent, taking her children, while Henry remained in Normandy.109 On expiry of the truce, Henry and Louis met again in May 1160 to reaffirm peace. The king of France recognized Henry’s gains in the Quercy, including the town of Cahors, and the terms of the prospective marriage were finalized.110 This was to take place after three years, and until then Louis was to retain control of the lands of the Vexin, but its castles were to be held by the Templars as a neutral party.111 Should Margaret die in the interim, the Vexin would be restored to Louis’ possession. If, however, the Church consented to an earlier marriage, Henry would take control of Margaret’s dowry with immediate effect, and in such circumstances the Templars pledged to hand over the castles to Henry. Louis had good reason for believing this would not in fact occur; the marriage of infants was, after all, in clear contravention of canon law. Yet Henry II, impatient to regai
n control of the Vexin, had no intention of letting the potential advantages of the treaty slip away.

  His opportunity soon came. In July 1160, Henry responded to the pressing issue of the papal schism by summoning his lay and ecclesiastical magnates to a great council at Neufmarché, while Louis likewise convened his nobles at Beauvais.112 On the death of Hadrian IV in September 1159, the majority of the college of cardinals had elected as pope the distinguished canonist Cardinal Orlando Bandinelli, who took the name Alexander III. Three cardinals, however, championed Emperor Frederick Barbarossa’s candidate Cardinal Octavian as Pope Victor IV, and imperial agents succeeded in forcing Alexander to flee Rome. In February 1160, moreover, Barbarossa had presided over a council composed primarily of German and Italian bishops at Pavia, which officially recognized Victor IV. Though both Henry and Louis were inclined to support Alexander, in line with the sympathies of their respective Churches, the uncertainties caused by the schism gave Henry a political advantage he was swift to exploit. Alexander had sent a papal legation to France, and Henry met with them at Beauvais in the course of his own discussions with Louis. As the price of his recognition of Alexander III, Henry succeeded in extracting from the legates a dispensation for the marriage of young Henry to his infant bride.113 Almost certainly obtained without Louis’ knowledge, this papal licence has been aptly described as ‘a masterpiece of tortured logic and hypocritical self justification’ on the part of the legates.114 Such casuistry, however, was well worth Henry’s support. Armed with the dispensation, Henry bided his time, but summoned Eleanor to bring their eldest son from England to Normandy so that young Henry would be on hand should there be occasion for the nuptials to take place.