He was equally instructed in his illustrious royal pedigree. While the image of Edward shaped by Ailred of Rievaulx and the hagiographers of Westminster abbey as a wise, chaste and holy ruler blessed with thaumaturgical powers bore scant relation to the historical figure of the penultimate Anglo-Saxon king, the Confessor’s canonization and translation gave the Plantagenet dynasty the lustre of a sainted royal ancestor, as well as stressing their descent from the great pre-Conquest kings of England.24 In his Vita Edwardi, commissioned for the translation ceremony at Westminster, Ailred looked to Henry II as the cornerstone that bonded the Norman and English races in harmony, in whose reign ecclesiastics, nobles and knights of English stock could once more flourish.25 Earlier, in his Genealogia regum Anglorum, written between Stephen’s acceptance of Henry as his heir in 1153 and his coronation, Ailred had already made a strong connection between Henry II and the Old English monarchy. He traced Henry’s distinguished genealogy via his grandmother Matilda, who was the daughter of St Margaret and had become Henry I’s queen, back to the great Anglo-Saxon kings Edgar and Alfred and the early kings of Wessex, and their legendary ancestors – including Woden – and hence back to Noah himself.26 In 1158, Bishop Henry of Winchester had given tangible expression to this link when, probably in Henry II’s presence, he had the bodies of the Anglo-Saxon kings, as well as Winchester’s saints, translated into a magnificent new setting in his cathedral church.27 As the prince was no doubt reminded, in comparison with such an ancient and exalted pedigree, the Capetian kings of France were mere parvenus.28
As future overlord of Britain, moreover, young Henry could claim affinity with a ruler more illustrious and mighty than even Charlemagne. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, completed c.1139, had transformed King Arthur from a magical figure of Welsh and Breton ballads to a supposedly historical ruler of all Britain who had conquered Gaul and defeated the Romans.29 This hugely popular work was disseminated still more widely following its translation into Anglo-Norman verse around 1155 by the Jersey poet Wace, who is said to have presented a copy of his Roman de Brut to Queen Eleanor.30 Although the extent of Henry II’s patronage of subsequent Arthurian writers such as Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France remains disputed, prince Henry undoubtedly grew up in court culture familiar with the ‘material of Brittany’.31 Geoffrey of Monmouth had modelled Arthur’s court at Caerleon, with its magnificent crown-wearing ceremonies, on that of King Henry I, and both Henry II and his sons recognized the political kudos of associating their kingship with that of King Arthur.32 Even in Normandy, the stories of Arthur could be used to attack the French, undermine the growing legend of Charlemagne, and vaunt the conquests of the king ‘and his English’ over them.33
Young Henry had, however, been made no less conscious of his great Norman forebears. An Anglo-French version of Ailred’s Life of St Edward, written by an anonymous nun of Barking some time between 1163 and 1169, not only repeats Ailred’s assertion that Henry II was, through ‘la bone Mahalt’, sprung from the English line of Edward himself and had thus united the English and Norman peoples, but also praises the Norman stock of Edward’s mother, Emma, sister of Duke Richard II. The Life prays that the sons of ‘the glorious King Henry’ may be blessed with the wisdom and valour of their ducal ancestors, Count Robert, Richard the Good, and William the noble Bastard’.34 In early 1162, before being sent to England in Becket’s charge, prince Henry may well have been present at the solemn celebration at the great ducal abbey of Fécamp on 11 March, when in the presence of King Henry II, Cardinal Henry of Pisa and a great assembly of Norman clergy, the bodies of Dukes Richard I and Richard II had been removed from their tombs and reburied in a more fitting site in front of the altar of the Holy Trinity.35 Certainly in attendance was the poet and historian Wace, whom Henry II had commissioned to compose a history of his Norman ancestors, the Roman de Rou, which incorporated the legendary history of these early dukes, cast in both a heroic and a hagiographic mould. Its blend of fabliau, chanson and romance reflected a body of oral tales which must have been familiar to Henry II and his sons, while, significantly, both Wace and his successor Benoît of St Maure recast the image of the early Norman dukes, depicting them as paragons of contemporary courtly and chivalric virtues.36
Young Henry was heir not only to such English and Norman identities but also to those of the counts of Anjou and dukes of Aquitaine. Queen Eleanor doubtless ensured that her children were familiarized with the great deeds of her ducal ancestors, including those of her grandfather William IX, celebrated as much as an accomplished poet as a warrior and crusader, and the prince may well have listened to the performance of some of his witty, sometimes autobiographical and often scurrilous songs in praise of the delights of love, as well as of ‘chivalry and pride’.37 In Anjou, figures such as Fulk Nerra had already passed into legend by the time that writers in the orbit of the Angevin comital court, such as Thomas of Loches, chaplain and notary to both Fulk V and Geoffrey le Bel, had begun to compile histories of the dynasty, while John of Marmoutier’s Historia Gaufridi ducis, composed in the 1170s, likewise drew on a rich vein of oral anecdotes concerning the more recent deeds of young Henry’s grandfather. The Historia was very much a princely mirror for good rulership, portraying Geoffrey both as an excellent knight and as a devout, learned, just and merciful ruler.38 The inscription surrounding the fine enamel plaque associated with the tomb of Geoffrey himself in the cathedral of St Julian in Le Mans closely echoes just such an image: the count is depicted not as a mounted warrior but as a prince and defender of the Church, armed with the sword of justice.39 The cathedral and its saint held a special resonance for the Angevins. As a young child, Geoffrey le Bel had been placed on the altar of St Julian by his father Count Fulk when the latter was about to depart for Jerusalem, and entrusted, along with the count’s lands, to the saint’s special protection.40 He and the Empress Matilda were married in the cathedral in 1128, and, in turn, Geoffrey V had his eldest son Henry Plantagenet baptized in the cathedral and then presented him to St Julian, who became his ‘advocate and patron’.41 Whether or not Henry II had similarly presented the young Henry to St Julian is unknown, but the prince almost certainly visited Le Mans, said to have been the city Henry II held most dear, and seen the tomb of his illustrious grandfather.42 It was powerful testimony to this bond and to the affection felt towards young Henry that when in 1183 the funeral cortège of the Young King rested for the night in the cathedral of St Julian, on its intended journey north to Rouen, the men of Le Mans seized his body and immediately buried it alongside the tomb of Geoffrey Le Bel.43
Lessons for Rule
Young Henry seems to have remained with his father until Henry II’s departure for Normandy in the spring of 1165, when he was placed in the charge of a new magister, William FitzJohn.44 William was a trusted royal administrator, who had served, among other functions, as an itinerant justice in Yorkshire and the West Country in 1159 and 1160, hearing pleas and investigating local officials.45 He is named as a royal justice along with other ‘wise men’ of Henry II’s court, and it is very likely that the young prince received instruction from him in the workings of government.46 His tutelage in the 1160s occurred during a period of intensive effort on the part of the king and his agents in pursuing the consolidation of royal rights, the establishment of law and order and the enforcement of justice.47 Together with the workings of royal justice and finance, the prince would also have been instructed in the ideology of the kingship he was to inherit, and few expounded this more zealously than the king’s own ministers.48 As the treasurer Richard FitzNeal later noted in his Dialogue of the Exchequer, the king’s mission was ‘to crush the rebels against peace and malcontents with all sorts of destruction, and to seal up in men’s hearts every treasure of peace and loyalty’.49 In times of peace, ‘devout princes build churches, they feed and clothe Christ by giving alms to the poor, and they distribute money by practising other works of mercy’. And, he added, while rulers may gain gl
ory in war, ‘their greatest glory lies in those deeds whereby they gain a heavenly reward for a temporal price – a good bargain indeed’.50
During this time, young Henry came into more regular contact with some of Henry’s most important administrators, including FitzNeal and Master Thomas Brown, the king’s almoner and a key Exchequer official, Robert de Beaumont, earl of Leicester and the king’s chief justiciar, and Richard of Ilchester, the archdeacon of Poitiers, another itinerant justice and leading figure at the Exchequer, who was said in the mid 1160s to have ‘exercised the greatest power throughout England’.51 William FitzAldelin, who had already been one of the prince’s guardians in 1159–60, and who served as a marshal and royal justice, was also closely associated with young Henry.52 Some of the prince’s own household officers, such as Ailward, who appears variously as butler (pincerna) or chamberlain (camerarius), are glimpsed in the records, while the Pipe Rolls indicate that for much of 1165–66 the young Henry’s itinerary was focused on southern England and major royal centres such as Winchester, the royal hunting lodge at Clarendon, and Sherborne, the magnificent palace-castle built by Bishop Roger of Salisbury.53
The issue of the younger Henry’s own coronation was still very much alive. Writing in early 1164 to Thomas in exile in France, John of Salisbury reported the rumour that a papal visit to England was hoped for, and ‘that the coronation of the king’s son has been postponed that he may be blessed by the pope himself’ in order to circumvent the archbishop’s authority.54 Nothing had come of such unrealistic plans, which can hardly have been condoned by Alexander III. Nevertheless, in a letter to Becket in early 1166, John, bishop of Poitiers, in referring to the costly failure of Henry II’s major expedition against the Welsh in the previous summer, noted that ‘they say that he [Henry II] often complains that he has been deprived of sound and reliable advice, and that he was more than usually disturbed by what happened to him in Wales, and is already thinking of the succession of his son (iam de substitutione filii sui cogitet). When I recently came to Tours, Hugh of Sainte Maure told me much about this matter very confidentially, which I have entrusted to the present messenger to repeat in your hearing only.’55 Becket’s supporters evidently already feared the possibility that Henry would seek a prelate other than Thomas to perform such a coronation. John’s use of the term substitutio is striking, for it implied replacement rather than co-rule, a possibility that had been reflected in Thomas’ oath as chancellor to the young Henry in 1162. The prominence in this matter of the Tourangeau noble Hugh of St Maure is particularly notable, for he was to be one of the leading figures in fomenting the rebellion against Henry II in 1173.56 Becket was sufficiently alarmed by these rumours to persuade Alexander III to send a mandate, Illius dignitatis, to Archbishop Roger of York and all the English bishops, reaffirming Canterbury’s prerogatives in the coronation and forbidding any other prelate to presume to crown the novus rex.57
Despite such concerns, Henry II himself appears to have made no active moves in regard to his son’s coronation, though the great inquest into fiefs ordered by the king in early 1166, prior to his planned departure for the continent to quell a rebellion in Brittany, revealed his concern to reaffirm the nobility’s loyalty. As the return of Roger, archbishop of York, stated, the king had required to know not only how many knights had been enfeoffed on his tenants-in-chief’s estates before and also after 1135, but also the names of all those so enfeoffed, ‘because you wish to know if there are any who have not yet done allegiance and whose names are not written in your roll, so that they may do you allegiance before the first Sunday in Lent’.58 Though the majority of the extant returns, known collectively as the Cartae Baronum, do not include such information concerning homage, which presumably was returned separately, a small number refer to the performing of homage to both the younger Henry and the king. Thus a Northumbrian knight, Godfrey Baard, informed the king: ‘Know that I hold of you three parts of a knight’s fee, from which I am become your man and that of your son Henry’.59 Similarly, the Norfolk knight, William of Colkirk, who owed but half a knight’s service from his fee, noted that: ‘I do not wish that my service is increased, for I do what I should do. I do homage to you, lord, and to my lord Henry your son, and I do service to your sheriffs.’60 Terse though such comments are, they provide a revealing glimpse into the social range of those tenants-in-chief of the crown who, along with the great magnates of the realm, had performed the act of homage in 1162 by placing their hands within those of the young prince.61
Young Henry sailed to Normandy to join his father at Poitiers for Christmas 1166.62 For the next two years, the prince’s movements are unknown. The Norman Exchequer accounts have not survived for this period, but the English Pipe Rolls make no mention of him, suggesting that he spent much or all of his time on the continent.63 These formative years of his early adolescence coincided with a period of turbulence and mounting resistance to Henry II not only in Aquitaine but in Brittany, where in 1166 Henry had deposed Count Conan and betrothed his third son Geoffrey to the count’s infant daughter Constance. It is not impossible that the prince accompanied his father’s armies in the campaigns of devastation which the king undertook in 1167 and 1168 against coalitions of rebel Breton and Aquitanian lords; Henry II himself had been only nine when he accompanied the relief force his uncle Robert of Gloucester brought from Normandy in November 1142 to aid the Empress then besieged in Oxford.64 Yet the death in 1168 of the king’s deputy Patrick of Salisbury in an ambush at the hands of the Lusignans, and the narrow escape of Queen Eleanor herself from capture, showed how perilous the situation was in Poitou:65 Henry II may have thought it wiser to keep his eldest son in the comparative safety of Normandy.
Certainly it was the archbishop of Rouen, Rotrou, who in a letter composed for him by Peter of Blois c.1167/8 urged King Henry on behalf of his fellow bishops to provide his heir with suitable instruction:
While the nature of other kings may be rude and deformed, yours, because it has been trained in letters, is provident in the administration of great things, subtle in justice, cautious in precepts, and circumspect in counsel. Wherefore, all your bishops unanimously agree that Henry your son should be taught letters, so that he whom we regard as your heir may be the successor to your practical wisdom (prudentia) as well as to your kingdom.66
Young Henry’s education was of such pressing concern to the episcopate as a body because, Rotrou went on to explain, learning was a vital prerequisite for good kingship:
For if the state is to be ruled, people united, castles maintained, machines of war built, ramparts kept repaired, defences maintained, or further, if the quiet of liberty, the cultivation of justice, reverence of laws, and the friendship of neighbours are encouraged, books teach all of these to perfection. A king without letters is a ship without oars or a bird without feathers.67
Writing in the following decade, John of Marmoutier put it more bluntly when he recounted the tale of how the French king Louis IV (936–54) had mocked Count Geoffrey Greygown of Anjou for singing anthems among the choristers at Tours, only to receive the cutting reply, ‘Know, sire, that an unlettered king is a crowned ass.’68 Apocryphal though the story was, a concern with education appears to have been a strong Angevin tradition: Fulk IV ‘le Réchin’, who ruled Anjou from 1068 to 1109, was even the author of a Latin chronicle of his family’s history.69 William of Conches, renowned as both a grammarian and a teacher of natural sciences, dedicated his Dragmaticon philosophiae, an exploration of natural philosophy, to Geoffrey le Bel, and cast it as a dialogue between the duke of Normandy and a philosopher.70 It is unlikely that Henry II needed any prompting from the bishops to have his son suitably instructed, for Henry himself was acknowledged as having been particularly well educated for a layman.71 As Peter of Blois famously wrote to a correspondent at the court of William II of Sicily: ‘Your king is a good scholar, but ours is far better; with him there is school every day, constant conversation of the best scholars and discussions of ques
tions.’72
Ironically, however, given the reputation of Henry II’s court as an intellectual centre, the names of young Henry’s tutors and details of his schooling are unknown. Nevertheless, at court he certainly came into contact with some of the leading intellectuals of the day, including Peter of Blois and Walter Map, products of the great schools of Paris and Tours.73 Map, indeed, noted that young Henry had been ‘educated by us and among us’, and that he was ‘ever “hanging on the lips of a speaker”, seeking the company of his elders, looking for the gatherings of good men, making trial of all high deeds, never lazy, untiring in business, insatiably curious about all honourable arts, so much so that while he was no scholar (cum non esset literatus) – which I regret – he could copy (transcribere) any set of letters’.74 This has sometimes been taken as implying that young Henry neglected study for his love of martial sports, but the term ‘non literatus’ did not imply illiteracy as such, but rather a lack of scholarly erudition and skill – from the point of view of clerks jealous of their learning – in writing Latin. Thus William of Tyre could note of Count Raymond of Antioch (d. 1149) that ‘he cultivated letters, even though he was illiteratus’.75 Basic literacy among the secular nobility was increasingly common during the twelfth century, and in a period in which royal bureaucracies were rapidly developing, a reading knowledge of Latin was a basic prerequisite for a ruler. The Young King would have been expected to understand the language in which records of government were written and in which the ecclesiastical assemblies he presided over were conducted.76 His brother Richard’s Latin grammar was said to be better than that of Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury and royal chancellor, while John, who received an excellent schooling at Fontevraud abbey, ‘was amongst the most highly educated secular men of his age’.77 Unlike for John, however, no records are extant to reveal the books, whether in the vernacular or in Latin, which young Henry or members of his household may have owned, though clerks in his service such as Gervase of Tilbury clearly had access to a considerable variety of sacred and secular texts.78
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