Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  The Siege of Carlisle

  While his younger brother harassed the royalist garrisons of the Midlands, King William chose to launch his second attack on Cumberland, probably in early June.44 Mowbray’s presence with the Scots king may well explain the choice of their first target, the powerful earthwork and timber castle of Liddel for this was held by Nicholas, Robert de Stuteville’s elder brother.45 The castle fell to the Scots, who then marched on Carlisle, where King William issued its castellan, Robert de Vaux, with an ultimatum: he could surrender on terms, but if he did not and the castle fell by storm, he would be put to death as a traitor who had withheld William’s rightful inheritance from him.46 De Vaux refused, though he promised he would surrender if King Henry instructed him to do so.47 The prospect of a direct assault on Carlisle was a daunting one, so leaving part of his army to blockade the town and castle William moved down the Eden valley and attacked Appleby.48 His aim was to capture the series of more minor royal castles – Appleby, Brough and Bowes – which served as staging posts across the Pennine route to Richmond, in order to isolate Carlisle from the prospects of relief and resupply from other royalist bases, especially Richmond and Barnard Castle, held by Ranulf de Glanville and Bernard de Balliol respectively.49 Despite its strong stone keep, Appleby was poorly garrisoned and supplied, and its castellan, Gospatric FitzHorm, quickly surrendered, an act for which he was later heavily amerced by Henry II.50 That Gospatric’s sympathies may well have been with William the Lion reflected the competing claims of loyalties in the contested northern counties, and Appleby’s capture caused the defection of others previously loyal to Henry II.51

  With their own constables and a garrison installed in Appleby, the allied army struck east to Brough, where the Flemings and Mowbray’s ‘marchers’ succeeded in taking the bailey by storm. Its small garrison put up a valiant resistance, but when the keep was set on fire they were finally forced to capitulate.52 Yet Bowes, which served as the western defence for Richmond, successfully held out: Henry II had spent considerable sums on the castle between 1170 and 1172, which probably included the building of the small but strong keep.53 As the Scots continued to ravage Cumbria, however, victuals began to run low enough within Carlisle for Robert de Vaux to reopen negotiations with King William, who had returned to press the siege. The upgrading of Carlisle’s fortifications in the 1160s had made the town an integral element of the castle’s defences, but a doubtless unforeseen consequence was that it became harder for its garrison to operate independently of the townsmen, which added to the problems of logistics. It may have been pressure from the burgesses that caused de Vaux to agree to surrender to the Scots if the castle was not relieved by Henry II. Howden, who was particularly well informed about northern affairs in 1174, believed that de Vaux had negotiated a respite until Michaelmas, for which he gave oaths and hostages.54

  ‘My Other Sons are the Real Bastards’: Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Royalist Revanche

  Henry II’s commanders in England, however, had already begun a counter-attack. Realizing that it was imperative to prevent William from joining forces with the Midland rebels, they focused their efforts first on Mowbray’s castles. Henry II’s natural son Geoffrey, the bishop elect of Lincoln, gathered a large force of knights and stipendiaries, as well as summoning the county levy of Lincolnshire.55 Collecting boats, they crossed to the Isle of Axholme and laid siege to Kinnard castle. Its castellan, Mowbray’s son Robert, was captured by a peasant at Clay while trying to make for Leicester to seek aid. The inadequately provisioned garrison quickly surrendered on 5 May through lack of water, and the castle was destroyed.56 Only a little older than the Young King, Geoffrey was fast emerging as a talented military leader. Loyalty to Henry II in this time of crisis was a marked feature of his illegitimate kinsmen: his natural brother Hamelin de Warenne and his uncle, Reginald of Cornwall, illegitimate son of Henry I, stood by him, but above all it was young Geoffrey who saw in his legitimate brothers’ rebellion a major opportunity for his own advancement. According to Gerald of Wales’ later encomium on Geoffrey, when in July 1174 the elect of Lincoln came to King Henry at Huntingdon to witness the formal surrender of the rebel castellans, the king greeted him delightedly and publicly proclaimed, ‘My other sons are the real bastards. He alone has proved himself legitimate and true!’57

  From Kinnard, Geoffrey marched to York where he was greeted, or so Gerald claimed, by Archbishop Roger with a great ecclesiastical procession and hailed by the citizens as their saviour from the Scots.58 Together, Geoffrey and Archbishop Roger raised the levies of Yorkshire to augment the knights of their own military households and those they had been able to raise from their sees’ military tenants, and besieged Mowbray’s castle at Kirkby Malzeard, just twenty miles from York.59 The garrison fired some of the outer defences before withdrawing into the main fortifications, but Geoffrey pressed home the attack with siege engines while attempts were made to sap the walls. After only a few days the castle fell, with thirty knights and sixty archers being taken prisoner.60 Entrusting the castle to the archbishop of York, Geoffrey then moved to contain Mowbray’s last stronghold at Thirsk by strengthening the castle at Topcliffe and giving it into the charge of Robert de Stuteville’s son William.61 The royalists also built a siege castle to contain the garrison of Hugh de Puiset’s castle at Northallerton.62 With these immediate threats to York dealt with, Geoffrey’s army struck north to secure the crucial stronghold of Richmond, which was being menaced by the Scottish attack on Bowes. News of Geoffrey’s approach forced King William to raise the siege and withdraw north-east into Northumberland.63 The allies’ campaign was faltering, and the Midlands rebellion, though still vigorous, remained isolated. All now rested on the Young King and his planned invasion.

  Invasion Preparations and Overtures to London

  Young Henry and Count Philip had not been idle. An armada was gathering in the Flemish ports in readiness for the planned assault after 24 June, and on 14 May a powerful advance guard sailed from Wissant under the command of Ralph of La Haye, one of the Young King’s leading supporters in Anjou.64 Several thousand strong, it was headed by an elite group of 318 knights hand-picked by Count Philip.65 They made landfall in the Orwell estuary and joined forces with Earl Hugh Bigod, who had been ordered by the Young King to receive them into his castles.66 The arrival of this new field army once again allowed Earl Hugh to go on the offensive, and he marched into Norfolk, plundering as he went.67 On 18 June, the allies scored a notable success when they took the city of Norwich by storm, killing some of the burgesses and taking a rich haul of booty and prisoners, from whom they extracted heavy ransoms.68 These were important developments for the allied cause, for if the coast of East Anglia was largely under rebel control it might serve as a safe landing base for Count Philip and the Young King’s invasion force. More immediately, Earl Hugh and his Flemings might attempt to break out of East Anglia and threaten London itself.

  The Young King had already attempted to win over the Londoners to his cause. As Jordan Fantosme later reminded Henry II, the citizens had remained loyal to the Old King, despite the fact that they did not

  lack envoys from Flanders across the sea who promised to give them great honours and rewards. Your own son … urged them by letter and by envoy to aid him in making war on his father in such terms as you shall hear me state: that he would esteem them all the days of his life, would love them and cherish them, and much he wanted to give them.69

  London, after all, had claimed a voice in the election of the king of England, and this supposedly ‘ancient privilege’ had been confirmed by King Stephen in 1135.70 The city had subsequently played a major role in the political struggles between Stephen and the Empress, and Matilda’s catastrophic mishandling of the citizens in 1141 had robbed her of a coronation, of control of the capital’s military and financial resources, and ultimately of her own chance of victory over King Stephen. It is unknown if young Henry went so far as to offer the Londoners the grant of a commune, as
his younger brother John would do in 1191 to buy the city’s support during his own bid for power in Richard’s absence on crusade, but he must have promised them liberties exceeding those his father had granted the city soon after his own accession.71

  The Young King’s alliance with Philip of Flanders, moreover, had profound economic implications for the city, as a good deal of its commerce flowed via the Flemish ports, which were also the principal entrepôts for English wool exports: an embargo imposed by the count might prove crippling.72 Henry II seems to be have been politic in his dealings with the Londoners before the conflict, but the county farm of the city and of Middlesex had risen from £300 under Henry I to a heavy £500 per annum, while in 1173, doubtless as a result of the pressures of war, the king had levied a ‘gift’ of 1,000 marks on the city.73 Jordan’s statement that the Young King’s missives and messengers came from Flanders, rather than from Paris, strongly implies that they were co-ordinated with the invasion plans as the allied fleet and army made ready at Gravelines. These overtures, moreover, seem to have gained some support. Jordan believed that Gilbert de Montfitchet had fortified his castle, which lay within the walls of the city just to the west of St Paul’s, and that he proclaimed that he had ‘the support of the earls of Clare’.74 How far Richard de Clare, earl of Hertford, was actually a partisan of the Young King is hard to determine, but his control of the two castles of Clare in Suffolk and Tonbridge in Kent made suspicion as to his loyalty a worrying prospect for Henry II.75 The fear of crumbling loyalties is reflected in Howden’s belief that young Henry and Philip were preparing to invade ‘at the summons of the earls and barons of England’.76

  The gravity of the situation prompted the justiciar and his colleagues to send a number of messengers to Henry II in France, but they had ‘received no certain news’ that the king intended to return to England.77 Henry, indeed, was preoccupied with the war in France. Though Louis VII had gathered his forces and was threatening once more to invade Normandy, Henry II had been concentrating his efforts on the Angevin heartlands, where despite his campaign the previous November the Young King’s partisans again appear to have been active.78 In late April Henry II had entered Maine with a powerful army, before rallying his supporters in Anjou. The Angevins, noted Dean Ralph, ‘came to meet the king more readily and swiftly than the men of Maine, for they were more devoted to him, and more ready and willing to submit to all his wishes.’79 He then marched south and celebrated Whitsun in Poitiers.80 Eleanor’s capture in November 1173 had been a major blow to the rebels in Poitou, but as a direct riposte Louis VII had bestowed arms on Richard, an act representing not only his dubbing to knighthood and coming of age, but his investiture of power in the duchy of Aquitaine.81 Anxious to prove himself, Richard had left the Île-de-France and had rallied opposition in the duchy to his father, whom, admitted the chronicler of the great abbey of St Aubin in Angers, many of the Poitevins hated.82 In Poitou itself, Henry II’s power was strongest in the north-west, where ducal castles, estates and a number of consistently loyal ducal castellans or prévôts, such as William Maingot and Fulk de Matha, were concentrated, while the castles of Geoffrey de Rancon and of the count of Angoulême formed a rebel bloc in the Charentais.83 Though Richard’s attempt to take the key port of La Rochelle was repulsed by its citizens, the rival burgesses of Saintes went over to him, and he began to strengthen the town’s fortifications, even converting the cathedral into a makeshift castle.84 When in early June, however, Henry II advanced into the Saintonge against him, Richard dared not face his father and fled to Geoffrey de Rancon’s great castle of Taillebourg on the Charente.85 Despite the fall of Saintes, he would continue his resistance until September, while further east the Limousin remained troubled enough for the citizens of Limoges to build a defensive wall, hurrying in their work before Henry II could forbid such measures.86

  Henry II had, however, effectively broken the back of the revolt in Aquitaine. Made anxious to return north by news of the Young King and the count of Flanders’ preparations, Henry entrusted Maine and Anjou to one of his closest familiares, Maurice de Craon.87 He strengthened the western approaches to Angers against a renewed attack from the Breton rebels by taking the town of Ancenis, on the Loire between Nantes and Angers, from its rebel lord Guivinou de Ancenis, and constructed there a great fortress, ‘which displays all the knowledge and skill of the carpenter’ – an important reminder of the continuing importance of timber-built fortifications.88 To make any siege of Ancenis still harder, he devastated the surrounding territory, including the lands of St Florent to the west of Saumur, tearing up the vines and felling fruit trees.89

  Gathering additional forces of mercenaries as he went, Henry returned to Normandy and held a general assembly of the Norman nobles loyal to him at the ducal castle of Bonneville-sur-Touques on 24 June, at which he urged them to keep their faith to him.90 He strengthened his castle garrisons on the Norman border with France, removing those castellans whose loyalty he suspected – a telling indication of his fear of defection to his son.91 But in some quarters, loyalty could still be bought: according to Robert of Torigni, Henry II matched these efforts by a sustained attempt to suborn leading French nobles by great gifts, and as a result was well informed about the Young King and Louis’ plans.92 The History of William Marshal similarly alleges that the Young King was deserted by some of the most eminent French barons ‘because of their greed for gain from the King who greased their palms. He really knew how to sing the right tunes to them, tunes they found delightful and sweet.’93 It may have been at Bonneville-sur-Touques that Henry II was met by Richard of Ilchester, now bishop elect of Winchester, sent as a last resort by the justiciar. Implicitly trusted by the king, he was, as Dean Ralph noted, the man best placed ‘to point out to the king all the losses, difficulties and risks his people had endured, and to give an accurate picture of the quarrels of the nobles, the unstable situation in the cities, the clamouring of the common people, which would steadily grow worse as they longed for change and would produce movements that would be difficult to suppress.’94 Richard’s presence was a clear sign of the growing panic of Henry’s regents in England: the Normans joked that ‘since the English have sent so many messengers, and now this man, what else could they send to call the king back to England except the Tower of London itself?’95 Henry II, however, needed little urging, for he realized that it was imperative to reach England before his son.

  Informed of Henry II’s planned crossing, the justiciar Richard de Lucy had already begun a major counter-attack in late June, closely investing Huntingdon and building a siege castle in front of the castle gates to deny exit or entry to the defenders, who as a defensive measure had fired the town.96 On the king’s orders, he entrusted this fortification to Simon III de Senlis, who claimed as his own inheritance the great Midlands earldom, which Henry II now granted to him if he could capture Huntingdon.97 It was probably at this time that the Lord Rhys, prince of Deheubarth, sent a substantial force of Welsh to assist in the siege of the earl of Ferrers’ great castle at Tutbury.98 In marked contrast to Stephen’s reign, when Earl Robert of Gloucester had been able to make effective use of Welsh allies in his war against the king, the Young King could attract none of the Welsh princes to his cause. This was in large measure because of Henry II’s successful establishment of détente with the Lord Rhys, who had come to exercise effective hegemony over much of south Wales by the early 1170s.99 The relative peace allowed the marcher lords from south Wales and Ireland to come to the Old King’s assistance in Normandy against his son. It also meant that Henry II was able to continue to draw on a supply of Welsh troops for his campaigns in France.100

  The Race for England

  The invasion fleet of the Young King and Count Philip now lay in readiness at Gravelines, but contrary winds detained them in port.101 With the situation in England now highly volatile, the moment of crisis had come. As so often in such dynastic struggles, the majority of the nobility in England had played a waiting game,
biding their time until it became clear which side was gaining the upper hand. If the Young King landed in person in East Anglia or in Kent and marched on London, a tide of desertion might yet sweep the Old King away. Exactly such a landslide was to occur in 1216, when the invasion of Louis of France massively reinvigorated a rebellion against King John that had been close to extinction, and within months the baronial opposition and its French allies had gained control of much of eastern England.102 Accordingly, as soon as the Old King had sure intelligence that his son had reached the fleet at Gravelines, he ordered the embarkation of his own forces.103 As William of Newburgh noted, Henry ‘preferred to put at risk his territories overseas rather than his kingdom (though he believed that those territories should be carefully fortified), for he foresaw that if he was absent and regarded as non-existent, no-one in England would stand in the way of the person whom they expected to succeed him’.104 Henry’s army was comprised principally of his loyal Brabançons.105 The cost of retaining so large a number of these mercenaries for so long was financially crippling: Geoffrey of Vigeois noted that after nearly two years of war, Henry II’s treasury was so exhausted that he sent his royal coronation sword to his Brabançons as a pledge for his debts to them.106 Yet they were crucial to his chances of success at a time when Henry II could trust few among the magnates. As professional soldiers, moreover, they were the only force that could match the powerful army of stipendiary knights and serjeants mustered by the Young King and Count Philip. If their armies were to clash, it would be a contest between rival bodies of mercenaries that would decide who would hold the kingdom.107