Henry II had intended to return to England in December 1162, having set his affairs in order and ensured that his castles in Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine and ‘even Gascony’ were in a state of readiness.140 But contrary winds had kept him in the duchy, and he and Eleanor accordingly held their Christmas court at Cherbourg.141 On 25 January 1163, the king and queen, crossing from Barfleur, landed at Southampton.142 Herbert of Bosham made much of the joyful reunion of the king with his son, and still more with Archbishop Thomas:
The archbishop who, in the company of that distinguished boy Henry, the king’s son and heir, had awaited his arrival for many days, immediately came to meet him. And when the archbishop was admitted to the king’s lodgings with the king’s son, Henry, the king and all his men came running to him and there was great joy and celebration throughout the whole court. The king and the archbishop threw themselves into mutual kisses and embraces, each trying to outdo the other in giving honour. So much so that it seemed that the king was not effusive enough, being entirely effusive towards the archbishop, and spread himself out into joy, now for the first time seeing his Thomas, once of the court, as archbishop.143
Others, however, had observed a noticeable cooling in King Henry’s attitude to Becket: Thomas, according to Dean Ralph, ‘was received with the kiss, but not into full favour, as was evident to all who were present by the king’s turning his face away’.144 To those who could read the early signs of royal ira, it was an ominous gesture. Further evidence of Henry’s displeasure subsequently came when Becket was forced to resign the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which Henry proceeded to bestow on his trusted clerk, Geoffrey Ridel.145
The council of Woodstock in July witnessed a rapid deterioration in the relations between Henry II and the archbishop of Canterbury.146 Becket successfully opposed the king’s plans to pay a customary levy of two shillings on the hide (the principal unit of land assessment), known as the ‘sheriff’s aid’, straight into the Exchequer, thereby transforming what had by custom been an increment given to the sheriff in recognition of his administrative labours into a direct royal tax.147 More serious was the archbishop’s prohibition, on the grounds of consanguinity, of Henry’s plan to marry his younger brother, William FitzEmpress, to the countess Warenne, the widow of King Stephen’s son William of Blois. Prior to this, the king had made generous provision for William, but the great Warenne inheritance and a comital rank would have been a fitting endowment for Henry’s loyal sibling.148 Stephen of Rouen believed that the disappointment of being denied this rich prize caused William’s death in January 1164 from a broken heart, and that Henry II held Becket responsible.149 Whatever its real cause, William’s death was a source of grief to young Henry, for there seems to have been a particular bond of affection between uncle and nephew. Some of the earl’s household subsequently took service with the prince and may well have been familiar to him before 1164, while in 1183 young Henry specified his wish to be buried in Rouen cathedral beside his uncle William.150
Responsibility for the growing tensions throughout 1163 between Archbishop Thomas and King Henry has been variously ascribed to Thomas’ studied intransigence, as he sought to assert his new role as archbishop of Canterbury by mounting increasingly serious challenges to the king’s authority, or, by those more sympathetic to Becket, to Henry, who reacted to the archbishop’s quite proper, even courageous, stance with a vindictive desire to be revenged on his former friend.151 What is certain is that Henry II regarded Becket’s opposition to his policies as a deep betrayal of his trust and former favour, and the conflict resulted in an indefinite postponement of young Henry’s coronation. For by now Henry was determined that Thomas should be denied the privilege of anointing his son. It was in the council at Westminster in October 1163 that the first major clash between king and archbishop occurred.152 Concerned to address the problem of ‘criminous clerks’ – clerics who, through benefit of clergy, were escaping adequate punishment for serious crimes such as rape or murder – Henry II proposed that any cleric guilty of a serious offence should be first judged by an ecclesiastical court; once stripped of his holy orders, he should then be handed over to the secular authorities for condign punishment. Becket, however, argued that such an action punished a man twice for the same offence, and, still worse, represented an attack on the liberties of the Church.153 In response to these objections, Henry demanded that Becket and the bishops acknowledge the royal customs that the king enjoyed in respect of the Church. Becket consented, but his insistence on a saving clause provoked the king’s fury at what he deemed treacherous casuistry. Storming out of the council, Henry left London.154 The next day, he removed his son from Becket’s charge as a public demonstration of his anger and displeasure towards Thomas.155
As future king, nowhere was young Henry’s involvement more significant than in matters directly touching royal authority and prerogative. As the conflict between Henry II and Becket intensified, young Henry could not but be drawn inexorably into the wider struggle it engendered between the crown and the Church. In late January 1164, the prince jointly presided with his father at the fateful council of Clarendon, held at the favoured royal palace close to Salisbury.156 Following the confrontation at Westminster, Thomas had been pressured by a number of his episcopal colleagues, members of the nobility and a papal delegation to accept the royal customs without any qualification, being assured that Henry had no harmful intent towards the Church. Henry II, however, had insisted that because of the damage done to his honour by Thomas’ initial refusal, the archbishop must make this acknowledgement publicly before the assembled clergy and magnates. Yet once the magnates had assembled at Clarendon, Thomas initially refused to acknowledge the royal customs. It was only after he and the bishops had been shut away for two days and had been repeatedly warned of the terrible consequences, both to the clergy and himself, if he did not do so, that Becket finally gave way, commanding that the bishops must likewise promise to uphold the royal customs ‘in the word of truth’. There the dispute might have ended, but Henry II was determined to press home his advantage.157 He had ordered a written record to be made of these customs, drawn up by the royal clerks with the advice of the ‘older and wiser’ nobles, which in sixteen clauses formed a ‘record and declaration of a certain part of the customs, liberties and privileges of his ancestors, that is, of King Henry his grandfather, and of other things which ought to be observed and maintained in the realm’. This, the document was careful to note, was drawn up ‘in the presence of the lord Henry, and of his father the lord king’, for these were the inviolable rights of the crown, to be held by Henry II’s heirs in perpetuity.158 The text was then presented to the archbishop and his colleagues to confirm. It was a serious miscalculation on Henry’s part, for it allowed Thomas and the bishops no room for manoeuvre. Faced with such an uncompromising statement of regalian rights, Becket equivocated, accepting the chirograph presented to him as a record, but refusing to set his seal to it. His ambiguous action, which was tantamount to accepting the king’s demands, split the episcopate, who might well have been united behind him against so forthright an expression of royal authority, and led to a groundswell of resentment and anger against the archbishop.159
One of Thomas’ last acts as archbishop before the final rupture with Henry II was to preside at a great ceremony, which young Henry probably attended, held in April 1164 to dedicate the royal abbey at Reading, ‘in which Henry of divine memory . . . rests in a glorious mausoleum’.160 Yet in the wake of the council of Clarendon, Henry II showed himself relentless in seeking Becket’s downfall. After two failed attempts to escape from the kingdom to France to seek Pope Alexander III at Sens, Thomas was summoned to a council at Northampton in October, where he was arraigned on a number of charges. Accused of having failed to answer an earlier royal summons to court, he was condemned to forfeit all his moveable possessions. Even then, however, he faced royal demands to repay monies acquired when he was chancellor. When Bishop Henry of Winchester remind
ed the king that the young Henry and the chief justiciar had quitclaimed Thomas of all secular obligations at the time of his consecration, Henry II responded that they had exceeded their authority in so doing and that any such quittance was invalid.161 The proceedings were conducted with increasing acrimony. The bishops were far from universal in their support for Thomas, and it was becoming all too clear that Henry II was implacable, at best aiming for the archbishop’s resignation, and at worst his complete downfall. Realizing that all was lost, Becket left the council secretly and fled into exile, to be branded a traitor in his absence.162
The hagiographers of Becket afford only a glimpse of his relations with the prince before 1164, and knowledge of the archbishop’s subsequent martyrdom strongly colour their depictions. Nevertheless, there seems to have been genuine affection between young Henry and his mentor. For young Henry, the increasingly bitter clash between his father and his former guardian cannot but have been a bewildering, even traumatic experience. Never before could he have seen the court in such turmoil. The council of Clarendon had been the scene of bitter discord, while at Northampton members of the lay nobility had uttered violent threats against Thomas in the king’s name and the archbishop had left the court with cries of traitor ringing in his ears. The boy had witnessed at first hand a terrifying display of Henry II’s royal ira et malevolentia, and his father’s relentless destruction of his opponent.163 The king would show himself equally ruthless towards Becket’s relatives and clerks, several of whom must have been known to young Henry from his period under Thomas’ guardianship but who now suffered exile and forfeiture.164 From the height of power and influence, Thomas had utterly fallen from grace, a chilling example of the mutability of Fortune’s wheel.
CHAPTER 4
Training for Kingship, 1163–1169
Who is able to count up the virtues with which the Lord enriched him? For the Lord made him to excel almost all men in this life in all decency of conduct and to have greater worth in the military arts. He was handsome of face, charming of speech, winsome and loveable.
– Roger of Howden, Gesta Henrici Secundi1
THOUGH THE DEEPENING quarrel with Thomas Becket had postponed plans for young Henry’s coronation, Henry II had already taken pains clearly to associate his eldest son with his rule of the kingdom. After the celebration of his eighth birthday, the prince had probably attended the council at London in early March 1163, at which Gilbert Foliot was elected as bishop of London.2 He was certainly with the royal entourage that travelled south to Canterbury, where the king and the archbishop celebrated Palm Sunday on 17 March, before moving on to Dover to meet Count Thierry of Flanders and his son Philip.3 Here young Henry joined with his father in renewing the long-standing treaty between the kings of England and the counts of Flanders, who played a pivotal role in the power balance of northern France.4 Though a vassal of the French king, Thierry had married Henry II’s aunt Sibylla, and when in 1157 he had once again left for Jerusalem, he had associated Philip with his rule as count and placed his son and his lands under Henry’s protection.5 The new conventio closely followed the texts of the earlier agreements established between Henry I and the count of Flanders in 1101 and 1110,6 but as Philip was now co-ruler with his father and prince Henry was associated with Henry II’s rule, it differed in setting out its provisions in the joint names of both rulers and their eldest sons.7 In return for a large annual payment, the counts pledged to bring 1,000 knights, each with three horses, ‘to defend the kingdom of England against all men’, saving the service they owed to King Louis, while, strikingly, the treaty envisaged that the younger Henry might summon the count of Flanders to his aid in his own right.8 This was probably the prince’s first meeting with Philip, twelve years his senior, who would come to have a strong influence on him as a patron in chivalry and as a future ally.
The summer of 1163 brought a more dramatic assertion of young Henry’s position, this time as heir to the overlordship of Britain. On 1 July, he jointly presided over a great council at Woodstock, where Rhys of Deheubarth, Owain ap Gruffyd of Gwynedd and many of the other leading Welsh princes, as well as Malcolm IV, the young but sickly king of Scots, performed homage first to King Henry, then to his eldest son.9 Their submission, however, had only been gained by Henry II’s overawing power, and the council appears to have been a fraught one. The Welsh leaders were compelled to give hostages, as was Malcolm, including his brother David and some sons of his barons, ‘in respect of keeping peace and for his castles which the king wished to have’.10 As Malcolm had already yielded Carlisle and other key castles in Northumberland back in 1157, these fortresses were seemingly in lowland Scotland, and the demand for their custody was thus an unprecedented assertion of Angevin power.11 Whether or not at Woodstock Henry II sought fundamentally to redefine the status of these rulers in order to emphasize their subordinate position and obligations as vassals is uncertain, but his high-handed conduct was soon to drive Malcolm into the arms of Louis VII, and to prompt a massive Welsh uprising in 1164, when ‘all the Welsh of Gwynedd, Deheubarth and Powys with one accord cast off the Norman yoke’.12
More mundane business was also transacted at Woodstock, for it was probably on this occasion that young Henry attested, as ‘Henricus filius Regis’, a confirmation by his father of the grant by Robert, bishop of Bath, of the church of Banwell, Somerset, to the prior and convent of Bruton – a chance glimpse of what was undoubtedly becoming a commonplace activity of royal business for the prince.13 Royal or comital children might attest charters at a very early age.14 Evidence from Angevin comital charters indicates that when the count’s son appeared at public ceremonies his guardian or nutricius would be present and might assist his ward in the verbal or ritual process of assent to charters, guiding his hand as he made his autograph cross or standing in as his representative in symbolic acts, such as the making of grants by placing a knife on the altar.15 An eldest son’s position as successor and thus future guarantor of charters of donation or confirmation made his attestation particularly important to the beneficiary.16
An Illustrious Inheritance
Few ceremonies, however, were as significant for his own perceptions of his kingly role as that attended by young Henry on 13 October 1163 at the ‘famous and royal abbey of Westminster’, when in the presence of King Henry and a great assembly, Archbishop Thomas – in one of his last acts before the final rift with Henry II – had solemnly translated the body of Edward the Confessor to a magnificent new shrine.17 If Henry II had been contemplating the coronation of his son by at least 1162, the early 1160s had equally seen him striving to enhance the sacral nature and prestige of English kingship. In 1161, he had obtained the canonization of Edward the Confessor from Pope Alexander III, again succeeding where King Stephen had failed.18 St Edward’s crown, ring, sceptre and sandals, recovered when his tomb had been opened in 1102, were carefully preserved by the monks of Westminster as elements of the royal regalia.19 Gaining added significance as the quarrel between Becket and Henry over royal and sacerdotal authority deepened, such a re-emphasis on holy and charismatic kingship was part of a wider reaction by European monarchies to the pretensions of the Gregorian reformers.20 Only three years before the translation of Edward the Confessor, the bodies of the Three Kings had been appropriated by Frederick Barbarossa following his destruction of Milan and later, in 1164, they were brought with great ceremony to Cologne, where their relics became the focus of a burgeoning cult.21 Henry II himself had been consulted by Frederick on the matter, and had also supported the efforts of the archbishop of Cologne, Rainald of Dassel, to secure the canonization of Charlemagne in December 1165.22 Similarly, Ailred of Rievaulx could eulogize David I of Scotland (d. 1153), the Empress Matilda’s uncle, as a ‘sanctus rex’, a pre-eminent exemplar of Christian kingship, while his grandson Malcolm IV, who in 1165 was laid to rest with him at the royal mausoleum of Dunfermline abbey, was likewise remembered as ‘Christianissimus rex Scotorum’, a ‘piisimus rex’, and ‘an angel
on earth’.23 Young Henry can have been left in no doubt as to the sacred and solemn nature of the kingship to which he would be raised.
Henry the Young King, 1155-1183 Page 10
