In October, the two kings met once more to confirm a pact of peace, and young Henry performed homage to Louis for the duchy of Normandy.115 In doing so, he was following an established pattern: Henry I had always refused to perform homage for the duchy, regarding it as an infringement of his royal dignity, but he had allowed his son William Aetheling to do so in 1120. Similarly, King Stephen withheld his homage to Louis VI for Normandy, but this was performed by his son Eustace in 1137.116 Henry Plantagenet had performed homage to Louis VII for Normandy in 1151 when only a duke, but he did not do so again, once king of England, in Louis’ lifetime.117 He was, however, content for his eldest son to do so, as by accepting his homage Louis was publicly recognizing young Henry’s right of succession to the duchy.
The catalyst for Henry II’s implementation of his papal dispensation was to be of Louis’ making. In September 1160, Louis’ queen, Constance, died in childbirth, though her baby daughter Alice survived. Barely two weeks later Louis, desperate for a male heir, announced his plans to remarry.118 Angevin observers regarded such haste as indecent, but it was Louis’ choice of bride that incensed Henry II. His new wife was to be Adela, daughter of Theobald IV of Blois-Champagne and thus the sister of his own sons-in-law Count Henry of Champagne and Theobald V of Blois.119 This not only strengthened Louis’ alliance with the house of Blois but meant that the children produced by the union of Louis and Adela would fuse this bond still more strongly. The renewed prospect of such heirs for Louis, moreover, threatened to nullify Henry’s more ambitious hopes for the long-term impact of young Henry’s marriage to Margaret. With hindsight, it is easy to underestimate the threat still posed to Henry by the house of Blois, with whom first his father Count Geoffrey, then he himself, had struggled since 1135. It was true that both Stephen’s sons were now dead; Eustace had died in 1153, while the younger, William, earl of Warenne and count of Boulogne, had died of sickness contracted on the Toulouse expedition in 1159. But Henry of Champagne and Theobald V of Blois were Stephen’s nephews, who might yet press a claim to the throne of England, while their uncle Henry of Blois, the great prince-bishop of Winchester, still exercised considerable influence in the English Church. ‘The English king,’ noted the chronicler Lambert of Waterlos, ‘having got wind of this marriage, and moved by anger, attempted to counter it by every means.’120 Faced with such a coalition, Angevin recovery of the Vexin became a pressing strategic concern. With Louis’ marriage set for 13 November 1160, Henry II struck back by having the two children married at Le Neubourg on 2 November, by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen in the presence of the papal legates Henry of Pisa and William of Pavia, even though bride and groom were, in Roger of Howden’s words, but ‘babes squalling in the cradle’.121 In accordance with the letter of the treaty, the Templars thereupon surrendered to Henry II the great fortress of Gisors ‘which he had long desired’ and the other castles of the Vexin, which the king of England quickly had fortified and strongly garrisoned.122 Thenceforth, Gisors was transformed by Henry II into one of the mightiest of castles on the Norman border, and the linchpin of the Vexin’s defences.123
Louis’ outrage was matched only by his impotence to prevent Henry’s coup.124 In theory, young Henry and Margaret were related within the fourth and fifth degrees of consanguinity, but Louis could not use this as an argument to seek annulment, as his own marriage to Adela would be in similar contravention.125 He vented his rage by banishing the three Templar sureties from France, and joined with Theobald of Blois in fortifying the important castle of Chaumont, between Blois and Amboise.126 But even in this show of force he was to be thwarted. By a lightning march so characteristic of his generalship, Henry II surprised Louis and Theobald, put them to flight, and after a brief siege, took Chaumont and a haul of prisoners.127 Having strengthened Amboise and other fortresses on the frontier with Blois, a triumphant Henry kept Christmas of 1160 with Eleanor and his children at Le Mans. After further hostilities, peace was eventually restored between Louis and Henry, and ratified at Fréteval in October 1161.128
Young Henry now found himself married at the age of only five. Royal children were commonly betrothed at a tender age, but to be actually wed so young was highly unusual for a king’s son and the heir apparent.129 Of his younger brothers, Richard married at thirty-three, Geoffrey at twenty-two, and John at twenty-two or twenty-three.130 Within aristocratic society of the twelfth century, moreover, marriage usually marked a crucial change in a man’s status, heralding the transition from a iuvenis, a ‘youth’ in the technical sense of one not having his own lands or family, to a vir, who had his own household and lands.131 Young Henry was denied such a rite of passage, a factor which undoubtedly contributed to the ambiguity of his status that was to dog his life from his coronation in 1170 onwards. Child brides were customarily kept separate from their husbands until an age deemed suitable for the marriage to be consummated, but it is probable that, as they were so young, the children were together in the queen’s household until 1162, when young Henry was removed from it. Thereafter, it is unknown how often young Henry and Margaret met as children, nor when as adolescents they began to cohabit, though it is likely that they did so from 1170, when the prince was crowned aged fifteen, or at the latest in 1172, when Margaret was finally anointed and crowned queen. Ironically, though their lives coincided with a great flowering of both troubadour love lyric and courtly romance literature, epitomized in the works of Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, scant evidence survives of the emotional relationship between young Henry and his half-Castilian bride. The little that does nevertheless suggests that love developed within their marriage, for, following his death, Margaret seems to have remembered Henry with great affection.132 Young Henry and Margaret are known to have had only one child, who died soon after being born prematurely in 1177.133 Yet whereas his father’s extramarital affairs were as numerous as they were notorious, young Henry is not known to have had any mistresses, or to have fathered any illegitimate children. This may simply reflect the dearth of sources, but if young Henry’s continence was real, then it was unusual among men of his rank and power.
In the early 1160s, Henry II’s coup de main appeared as a master stroke, emblematic of the political guile for which he was renowned. The vital territory of the Vexin had been regained, and Louis had been outwitted and humiliated in both diplomacy and war. The French view of the affair was graphically captured by John of Salisbury, who recounted to Thomas Becket a conversation he had had with King Louis on a visit to Paris in 1164. Earlier that year, John had gone to Salisbury to seek Queen Eleanor’s permission to leave the kingdom, and had found little Margaret in Eleanor’s household. John took greetings from Margaret to her father Louis, but when he gave the French king news of his daughter, Louis had sorrowfully replied
that he would be very thankful if she had already been received by the angels in Paradise. ‘By God’s mercy’, I rejoined, ‘this will someday happen, but before that she will bring gladness to many peoples’. ‘With God the thing is indeed possible’, the king replied, ‘but it is far more likely that she will be the cause of much mischief (causa malorum) in time to come’. In his mind’s eye, her father is full of foreboding. God forbid it turns out for her as he fears. ‘I scarce hope’, he said, ‘that any good can come of her’. The French fear our King, and hate him, but so far as they are concerned, he can sleep safe at night.134
Louis’ fears doubtless focused on what might befall should young Henry and Margaret eventually have a male heir, and on the possibility that the Capetians might be subsumed by the seemingly unstoppable rise of the Plantagenets. But in August 1165, Louis finally gained a son when his third wife, Adela, gave birth to Philip; Gerald of Wales, then studying in Paris, later recalled the joyous celebrations with the ringing of bells and the lighting of innumerable tapers so that the city seemed on fire.135 Nevertheless, the long-term consequences of the marriage of young Henry to Margaret were indeed to be profound, but very different from those envisioned by either Henry
II or Louis. For although the manner and context of the union had severely damaged relations between Louis and Henry II, already badly strained by the Toulouse campaign, young Henry’s marriage served to create a closer dynastic relationship between the Angevins and Capetians. This was to be reflected in a marked intensification of face-to-face meetings between the king of England and the king of France, but it would also increasingly draw the young Henry into the orbit of his father-in-law, whom he frequently visited in the Île-de-France.136 In time, Louis’ influence over him was to become one of the most powerful weapons in the French king’s arsenal against Henry II. The recovery of the Vexin, moreover, had come at a price: Henry had recognized it as the dowry of a Capetian princess, and hence ultimately as the de jure possession of the kings of France.137 During the Young King’s lifetime, this was of little practical consequence, but the seeds had been sown of a lasting strife injurious to the Angevins, whose significance was to become apparent within months of young Henry’s death in 1183.
CHAPTER 3
Rex Puer
CORONATION PLANS AND ASSOCIATIVE KINGSHIP, 1161–1163
A man who wants to be generous should never look to possessions or to the value of his land. A knight, God protect me, will not rise to great heights if he enquires of the value of corn; nor is he full of prowess, honour, or bravery who does not, in folly or in wisdom, give and spend more than his land may be worth.
– Raoul de Hodenc, The Romance of the Wings, ll. 161–721
In the Household of Thomas Becket
At their Easter court at Falaise in 1162, Henry II and Queen Eleanor entrusted young Henry to the charge of the chancellor, Thomas Becket, ‘to bring up and instruct in good conduct and courtly ways’.2 Thomas, moreover, was required to take the prince to England, where he was to receive the homage and fealty of the magnates.3 Henry may perhaps have been in Becket’s care for some time before this, but seven was the customary age for noble boys to be removed from the household of their mothers and sent for their upbringing to the masculine world of a great royal or aristocratic court.4 Henry II himself had left his mother Matilda’s household at this age in 1139 to enter that of his father Count Geoffrey until 1142, when he was taken by his uncle Earl Robert of Gloucester to Bristol to be educated with the children of other nobles, including the earl’s youngest son Roger. When in an angry interview in 1170 King Henry upbraided Roger, by then bishop of Worcester, for failing to attend the Young King’s coronation, he reminded his cousin of how Earl Robert ‘brought us up together in his castle, and had us instructed in the first elements of good behaviour and learning’.5
Such fosterage had long been an integral element of aristocratic life.6 Boys might be sent away to the households of great ecclesiastics as well as lay magnates, and honorial lords often brought up and trained the sons of their own vassals, kinsmen or those in their affinity.7 The young William Marshal, for example, who in 1170 would become young Henry’s tutor in arms and thenceforth one of his closest companions, was placed in the household of William de Tancarville, the chamberlain of Normandy, where it was hoped he would win ‘reputation and honour’.8 Those of higher birth might sometimes seek the patronage of one of the great territorial princes.9 It was not uncommon, however, for fathers to rear their own sons in their courts, entrusting their day-to-day instruction to tutors, nutricii or other non-parental male guardians.10 For the eldest sons of kings, considerations both of rank and of security often dictated that they were similarly educated in their royal father’s own household rather than being sent away to the court of a foreign prince.11 During Anglo-French negotiations in 1169, it was proposed that prince Henry’s younger brother, the eleven-year-old Richard, should be sent to the household of King Louis of France for his education and training. This was, however, no more than a diplomatic ruse by Henry II to gain custody of Louis’ daughter Alice, and he had never seriously contemplated placing Richard in Louis’ charge.12
The king’s own court held out the best hopes of potential advancement, and here Henry II’s sons would have shared their upbringing with the scions of the greatest aristocratic families from both within and beyond the Angevin lands.13 Some time between 1155 and 1159, for example, the English Pope Hadrian IV sent one of his young Italian protégés to Henry II’s court for his education, which included training in hawking, hunting and arms.14 Such fosterage created important bonds between the king and a younger generation of nobles, and, just as importantly, between the king’s heir and his contemporaries among the aristocracy, who would in time become his vassals and supporters. The act of dubbing to knighthood and the bestowal of arms, which marked the completion of knightly apprenticeship and coming of age, forged powerful ties of loyalty.15
For Henry II to entrust his eldest son and heir to the household of his chancellor was striking testimony to the extraordinary position Thomas Becket had come to enjoy in the king’s favour: indeed, such custody mirrored the role that Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, had played in the upbringing of William the Conqueror’s son William Rufus and thus may even have been an intimation of further greatness for Becket.16 Thomas was already a familiar figure to the young prince, for he had been closely linked to Henry II’s government from the outset of his reign. Rising to prominence in the service of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, Thomas had been made archdeacon of Canterbury in October of 1154, and at Christmas that same year, shortly after Henry II’s coronation, the influence of Archbishop Theobald, Henry, bishop of Winchester and other leading ecclesiastics had secured him the key office of royal chancellor, ‘considered second in rank in the realm only to the king’.17 Astute, hard-working and ruthlessly ambitious, Thomas had quickly become a leading counsellor.18 Though Becket’s biographers no doubt over-stressed Henry II’s reliance on Thomas, his vital role in the royal administration is amply confirmed by the number of royal charters to which he attested.19 Becket’s position as leading minister was closely analogous to that of his counterpart and firm friend Robert of Aire (d. 1174), the chancellor and familiaris of Count Philip of Flanders, and to that of Stephen of Garlande (d. 1150), chancellor and seneschal at the Capetian court; all three were prominent examples of a class of highly able but low-born men, who as clerics rose fast through royal service in the developing royal administrations of the twelfth century.20
Yet what set Becket apart from these contemporaries was his remarkable intimacy with the king. ‘Never in Christian times were there two greater friends, more of one mind,’ noted William FitzStephen.21 Accordingly, those who sought advancement or to gain access to the king needed first to woo the chancellor, and many were eager to exploit the honour and advantages of having their sons also brought up in Becket’s household: ‘Magnates of the kingdom of England and of neighbouring kingdoms placed their children in the chancellor’s service, and he grounded them in honest education and doctrine, and when they had received the belt of knighthood he sent some back with honour to their fathers and family, and retained others.’22 So it was, noted FitzStephen, that ‘the king himself, his lord, commended his son, the heir to the kingdom, to his training, and the chancellor kept him with him among the many nobles’ sons of similar age, and their appropriate attendants, masters and servants according to rank’.23 The guardianship of young Henry was not only a great honour for Becket but also a mark of the mutual affection between the two men, and Thomas is said to have jokingly referred to young Henry as his adopted son.24
As the king fully realized, moreover, it also placed Becket in a position of enormous power should Henry II himself fall prey to disease or war, as had so nearly occurred during the Welsh campaign in 1157. In this eventuality, Becket could hope to play a key role in the regency government until young Henry’s still distant majority.25 Such a position would not be uncontested, but direct control of the king’s heir, together with custody of the Tower of London, gave the chancellor a powerful advantage. Now one of the richest men in the kingdom, Becket had already exploited his high office and wealth to est
ablish himself as the lord of a wide affinity.26 As FitzStephen notes, ‘countless nobles and knights gave homage to the chancellor, and he, saving fidelity to the lord king, received and cherished them with extraordinary patronage as his own men . . .’27 The status of the royal chancellor customarily required an appropriate display of wealth and largesse, but Becket indulged the arriviste’s taste for magnificence to the full.28 ‘Thomas was a magnificent clerk and lived in great splendour,’ noted Guernes of Pont-Sainte-Maxence. ‘Henry the rich king who owns so much of the world did not live in greater – this is no exaggeration’.29 While such a lifestyle attracted the criticism of some of Becket’s clerical contemporaries, his own clerk William FitzStephen makes little attempt to hide his delight in Thomas’ extravagance, providing a precious glimpse of the lifestyle of the great:
Henry the Young King, 1155-1183 Page 7
