Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  ‘I really think it’s about time you came back, Marshal,’ he said. ‘Any man who leaves his lord in such a situation behaves very badly. You saw fit to do that just now, and I am not the one to teach you in such matters, but this much I do wish to tax you with, that you did not behave in a rightful manner when you left me at such a time. It was not right, indeed, it was wrong.’84

  Ever the accomplished courtier as well as warrior, the Marshal sought to defuse this rebuke by flattery, replying ‘in a gentle joking manner’: ‘Sire’, he said, ‘so God help me, it is true that I left you here. But I can tell you this, that when I left, I still had no idea that your wish was to surpass your ancestors in feats of arms. Since your wish is to excel in this field, and that is where your aspirations lie, I shall henceforth devote myself to the matter.’85 Henry secured a pledge that in future William would direct all his efforts to assisting the king in gaining victory in the tournament.86 ‘Never since the day the King rebuked the Marshal,’ noted the History, ‘was the latter to be found in any place, in any camp, without standing close by the King, whatever the outcome might be for him.’87 Yet the History protests too much: its repeated insistence that William was constantly rescuing the Young King at subsequent tournaments strongly suggests that the incident at Ressons did not stand in isolation and that the Marshal had attracted much criticism for his self-interested pursuit of individual glory and ransoms.88 The incident reveals serious tension between the king and his tutor, and highlights the strains that the highly competitive nature of the tournament and the quest for honour and gain might create between team and individual, and between a lord and a highly talented household knight.

  With the handsome revenues he was granted by his father, the Young King had no pressing need for the spoils of the tournament. Nevertheless, for his landless household knights such booty was an important source of revenue. It was for this reason that even if he himself was unable to participate because of other business, young Henry was quite willing to allow members of his mesnie such as William Marshal to go off tourneying when he did not immediately require their services.89 The operation of ransom in the later twelfth-century tournament is obscure, but it would seem that, unlike in real warfare, in tourneys ransoms took the more limited form of the captor taking only the horses and equipment of a vanquished knight: the payment of heavy and often arbitrarily set sums of money to regain personal liberty would have made the tournament prohibitively costly and too great a risk.90 The History of William Marshal mentions warhorses from Spain, Sicily and Lombardy,91 regions held to produce the best chargers, and such destriers could be extremely valuable.92 It was for good reason that the rules of the tournament strictly forbade the killing of an opponent’s mount, and that these costly warhorses were increasingly protected by barding of mail as well as of leather.93 Horses could be seized as prizes during the mêlée itself, while a knight taking part in a capture might claim half the value of the vanquished knight’s horse.94 So integral an aspect had the seizure of horses become that Henry de Laon would later complain that ‘tournaments were not originally held as way of capturing horses, but so as to learn who was manly in his conduct’.95

  The History of William Marshal focuses almost exclusively on the winnings of the Marshal, but these are revealing. At the tournament at Eu, for example, William took ten knights prisoner, and seized twelve horses and their equipment. At another between Sainte-Jamme and Valennes in 1166, the Marshal’s two prisoners brought him four warhorses and a half-share in a third, but also ‘hacks and palfreys, fine pack horses and harnessess’.96 He subsequently teamed up with another member of the Young King’s tourneying mesnie, Roger de Jouy, and in one tournament season they reputedly took 103 knights prisoner, ‘not to mention the horses and equipment which were never taken into account’.97 These winnings were recorded by Wigain, the Young King’s clerk of the kitchen, and by other clerks, and it is possible that, as the Marshal’s lord, Young Henry was entitled to a share of the booty taken by his household knights, as he would have been in real warfare.98

  Profits, however, depended on the fortunes of combat, and for young or poorer knights – the bacheliers – the loss of their horse or equipment could be a crippling financial blow. It seems not to have been uncommon to ask for the return of a warhorse as an act of largesse on the captor’s part. The History tells a revealing story of how at a tournament at Eu in 1178 or 1179, the Marshal had unhorsed the Hainaulter knight Matthew de Walincourt in the commençailles or preliminary jousts and taken his horse. Matthew went directly to the Young King, whom he found arming for the main tournament, and asked him for the return of his horse. Young Henry in turn requested the Marshal to restore the horse to Matthew, which he did. In the ensuing mêlée, however, William once again defeated Matthew, and took back his horse. But when Matthew returned to the Young King at the tournament’s close and asked again for the restoration of his mount, the Marshal refused. Instead, he reminded Matthew of how, at a tournament earlier in the Marshal’s career, the leading men had requested Matthew to return a horse he had taken from the Marshal, but he had absolutely refused.99 The ability of the Young King to resupply his knights with horses and arms lost as ransoms was an important factor in making service with him particularly attractive.100 At one tournament held between Maintenon and Nogent, the Young King told his knights to try and capture Sir Reginald de Nevers, who on the previous day had captured two of the king’s knights, so that he could redeem their ransoms in exchange.101

  The History of William Marshal vividly captures the hubbub of the throng of people more ‘than at a fairground’ in the immediate aftermath of a tournament at Pleurs in 1178, when the serious business of counting profit and loss, and negotiating ransoms and sureties took place:

  Some were looking for their friends, captured during the combat, whilst others were searching for their equipment. Others were making persistent enquiries of many who had taken part in the tournament as to whether they had heard any news of their kinsmen, of their friends, and as to whether they knew who had taken them. And, for their part, those who were in pledge (cil qui erent fiancié) wanted a ransom or surety to be forthcoming, through the offices of a friend or acquaintance. The reason why the throng was so enormous was that everyone asks in this way after a tournament for some indication of the losses he has sustained.102

  Beyond the Tournament: Court and Culture

  The opportunity to display prowess in arms and to gain prisoners and booty was but one aspect of the tournament. For there was an important social dimension to these great gatherings, which brought together magnates and knights from all parts of France and beyond. After the exertions of the mêlée came the post-match analysis of the performance of teams and of individuals’ prowess. After the combat at Eu in 1178 or 1179, for example, ‘all the high-ranking men there that day gathered around the King, and they spoke of many a matter as people are bound to do on such occasions’.103 As significantly, there was feasting and entertainment on the nights preceding and following the main tournament. The History of William Marshal, focused as it was on feats of arms and the business of fighting, says regrettably little about the Young King or the Marshal’s participation in such gatherings, though it speaks of warm hospitality offered to the Marshal by great magnates on his visits to claim ransom or seek redress. Yet it is likely that the Young King’s celebrity led him frequently to be an honoured guest at the table of his fellow princes, and that in turn his own largesse extended to hosting splendid festivities. These served as an important forum for the discussion and dissemination of chivalric and courtly values, while a significant dimension was added by the increasing presence of noblewomen, both as spectators of the tournament itself and as participants in the post-tournament celebrations.

  At gatherings such as the great seasonal courts held by the Young King and Henry II a variety of entertainments were provided by minstrels, jesters, mummers and other performers, which might range from the edifying to the earthy.104 The former pr
obably included recitations and discussion of the new genre of Arthurian romances that were to have such an extraordinarily profound influence on chivalric culture. The extent to which Henry II, Eleanor and the Plantagenet court actively patronized Chrétien de Troyes and other exponents of Arthurian literature or adopted it for their own propaganda purposes has been much debated, and direct evidence of young Henry’s own sponsorship of such writing remains elusive.105 When Marie de France noted in the prologue to her Lais – intriguingly complex short stories set in an Arthurian milieu – that she wrote ‘in your honour, noble king, so worthy and courtly (pruz et curteis), before whom all joy bows its head, and whose heart is the root of all virtue’, she could have been referring to the Young King as much as to Henry II, but as with his links to Chrétien de Troyes, there is no certainty.106 Nevertheless, Chrétien was writing many of his Arthurian romances at the very time the Young King was playing so central a role in the tournament circuits of northern France, and he certainly had close contact with those known to be among Chrétien’s chief patrons. Chrétien wrote Lancelot or Le Chevalier de la Charrette for the wife of Count Henry the Liberal, Marie de Champagne, who was the Young King’s half-sister, and it was one of Count Henry’s clerks, Godfrey de Lagny, who completed this romance.107 Chrétien’s last work, Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, was dedicated to Count Philip of Flanders.108 Both Henry of Champagne and Philip were also great patrons of the tournament, and it is no coincidence that in Chrétien’s stories the tourney itself finds an increasingly important place in the tales of romance that surround his heroes. Written as they were as much for the ladies of the great courts of France as for the magnates and their knights, his romances achieved their enormous popularity through the winning fusion of erotically charged tales of love, both licit and illicit, with the magical world of ‘the matter of Brittany’ and the questing exploits of Arthur’s paladins.

  While there is no evidence that real tournaments of the 1170s and 1180s were influenced by the kind of Arthurian role play and imagery which would become so prominent a feature of ‘Round Tables’ and other forms of hastiludes from the early thirteenth century, Chrétien’s tales undoubtedly served to augment their glamour and prestige, and to give greater emphasis to the role of ladies.109 A noblewoman awarded the prize at the tournament at Pleurs, for example, while at Joigny, William Marshal and his men danced with the countess and her ladies while waiting for the challengers’ team to arrive.110 Writing in the 1220s, the author of the History was doubtless influenced by the romance tropes of Chrétien in which heroes such as Lancelot battle against the odds in tournaments to prove their love. At the tournament at Joigny, the knights ‘were convinced that they had become better men as a result of the ladies’ arrival, and so they had, for all those there felt a doubling of strength in mind and body, and of their boldness and courage … because of the ladies present the least bold among them was emboldened to be the victor at the tournament that day’.111 As early as the 1130s, however, Geoffrey of Monmouth could note that knights might carry their ladies’ tokens into the tournament and be inspired to greater feats of arms by their love.112 Such would have been a familiar concept to young Henry and his knights. Yet though it paints a vivid picture of other aspects of the tournament, the History of William Marshal maintains a discreet silence on the amorous liaisons of the Young King’s mesnie and the sexual pleasures that are likely to have been a common part of the entertainments of the ‘après-tournoi’. Whether courtesans frequented Young Henry’s court is unknown, but the fact that Henry II had a marshal of whores (marscallus custodiendi meretrices de curia domini regis) at his own is suggestive.113

  Though the Arthurian romances of Chrétien were highly fashionable from the 1170s, the diversity of literary entertainment available at courts such as that of the Young King should not be underestimated. The older genre of the chansons de geste remained highly popular, as frequent allusions to their characters in other contemporary texts indicate, but beyond the songs of the jongleurs, talented and ambitious clerks could turn their hand to a number of different literary forms. Devotional literature included edifying stories of saints’ lives, which authors such as Denis Pyramus rendered into French either from Latin or other vernaculars, ‘for both the great and the least can understand it in French’.114 In addition to his great works of the Roman de Rou and the Roman de Brut, Wace composed sirventes and religious works, of which three saints’ lives are known, while Gervase of Tilbury also composed works on the life of the Virgin.115 Much of the literature composed for the court, however, was of a decidedly secular bent. For among the highly educated clerical elite, many of whom were of noble birth, distinctions between clerical and secular, the sacred and the profane, were often blurred. Several of Thomas Becket’s eruditi could share his love of worldly magnificence, and Henry II himself had joked about the proud and haughty bearing of Herbert of Bosham.116 Jordan Fantosme may have been educated in schools of Chartres and Poitiers, but his verse account of the war of 1173–74 reveals his familiarity, and that of his courtly audience, with many chansons de geste, while his own estoire itself has an epic flavour.117

  Interest in the heroic deeds of antiquity was reflected in the rendering of classical works into the vernacular, such as Benoît of Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie (composed c.1155–60), or the series of romances telling the story of Alexander, such those by Thomas of Kent (c.1175–85) and Alexandre de Paris (c.1180–85).118 ‘Our books have taught us’, wrote Chrétien in his Cligès, in which Alexander also plays a role, ‘that chivalry and learning first flourished in Greece; then to Rome came chivalry and the sum of knowledge, which now has come to France.’119 The Young King undoubtedly had heard such romances, and he in turn was to be likened to Hector in the Latin Iliad of Joseph of Exeter, composed in the mid 1180s. After mourning the death of Hector, Joseph added:

  Even so great and so valiant a man was our king, Henry III, who had grown to a lordly rage like Hector’s. He who was our king and Normandy’s duke, had spent his youth in France. The warlike French, vanquished by him in battle, did not so much begrudge him his superiority in fighting as they begrudged us our superiority in wisdom.120

  If Joseph’s sophisticated Latin verse was accessible only to the highly educated and primarily clerical elite, the range of courtly genres composed by just such clerks in the service of secular lords is suggested by Chrétien de Troyes’ reminder, in the preface to his Cligès, that it was he ‘who translated Ovid’s Commandments and the Art of Love into French, who wrote the Shoulder Bite, and about King Mark and Isolde the Blonde, and of the metamorphosis of the hoopoe, swallow and nightingale’.121 The composition of love lyrics was by no means the preserve of the troubadours: Peter of Blois admitted that ‘at one time I devoted myself to frivolities and songs of love (nugis et cantibus veneris)’, some of a most lascivious nature, while Denis Pyramus related how at court in ‘the merry days of my youth (mes jurs jolifs de ma joefnesce)’ and before he became a monk at the abbey of St Edmunds, he had likewise composed love songs and poems on current matters.122 Such poetry, often written by and for the young, would have been of particular appeal to young Henry and his equally youthful companions. Nor were such amorous interests of his clerical courtiers confined to verse. Gervase of Tilbury, who was in the Young King’s service, was said to have made advances to a pretty girl walking in a vineyard, though she rebuffed him with tragic consequences.123

  More edifyingly, Gervase wrote a Liber facetiarum, or ‘Book of Entertainments’, at the command of the Young King.124 Though now lost, it appears to have contained a wide-ranging compendium of subjects – probably akin to his subsequent Otia imperialia, which he had also intended for the Young King.125 This second book was composed ‘in recognition of his kindness’, and, as Gervase explained,

  was to be divided into three sections, and was to contain a description, at least in brief, of the whole world, and its division into provinces, naming the greater and lesser sees. Then I intended to add the various
marvels of each province. Their very existence is remarkable, and to hear of them should afford pleasure to a listener who is not already informed of them and is able to appreciate such things. No longer need great men learn of God’s power, as happens all too often, from the lying tongues of players or actors: now they will have a reliable account which we have either culled from books of ancient authors or established from eye witness testimonies …126

  Gervase’s work, which also includes a digest of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain as well as histories of the kings of France and of England, allows a precious glimpse of the wider cultural tastes and intellectual life of the Young King and his courtiers. He and his knights may have excelled in the tournament, but they were no mere boorish prizefighters, addicted solely to fighting and feasting.

  The knights themselves, moreover, might entertain and edify. Wace noted that it was the duty of clerks to read stories at feasts so that they were not forgotten, but it was not only the clerical elite who were the repository of such material.127 The Young King’s contemporary, Arnold of Ardres, loved hearing stories told by one of his household knights ‘on the subject of the Roman emperors and on Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, and King Arthur of Britain’. Another spoke ‘to his ears’ delight of the land of Jerusalem and the siege of Antioch and of the Arabs and Babylonians and deeds done overseas’, while Walter of le Clud ‘diligently informed him of the deeds and fables of the English, of Gormond and Isembard, of Tristan and Isolde, of Merlin and Morolf’ and the deeds of his ancestors the lords of Ardres.128 In such a world, the prince’s intimates were as much entertainers and instructors of past history, whether of family or of great kings, as companions-in-arms. It may be that some of young Henry’s household knights had won their place in his mesnie less by their skill in arms than by just such talents.