Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  102.Howden, I, 216. Ralph of Diss similarly noted that Henry ‘coronam super alter posuit, nec ulterius coronatus est’ (Diceto, I, 302).

  103.This was an imperial crown, used by Emperor Henry V, and brought back from Germany by Matilda (Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 189). For votive crowns, P. Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 4 vols (Stuttgart, 1954–1978), III, 910–12. William the Conqueror had granted the English royal regalia to his foundation of St-Etienne, Caen, though they seem to have been brought back by William Rufus (The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. E. M.C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford, 1992–1995), I, lxiii–lxiv; F. Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), 50, 58).

  104.Some days before his formal crown-wearing at Gloucester at Pentecost 1138, King Stephen had offered his royal ring on the altar of the cathedral, ‘which the royal chaplains brought back to him the same day, it having been redeemed for 500 shillings’ (JW, III, 242–3).

  105.Norgate, Angevin Kings, I, 439. Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, 326, by contrast, suggests that the decision to cease formal crown-wearings may have ‘been motivated by a desire to replace the expensive and dispute-ridden ceremony of coronation at the hands of the archbishop of Canterbury with a no less lavish display of alms-giving to the poor’.

  106.Howden, I, 216; Diceto, I, 302, n. 1. By the 1240s Matthew Paris believed Henry’s gesture to have been informed by the example of King Cnut, who, as a lesson to his courtiers on the vanity of earthly power, had famously had his throne placed on the seashore, and in vain ordered the waves not to encroach further on his domains. Then, noted Paris, as a continuing gesture of humility, he had removed his crown, carried it to the nearest church and placed it on the head of a statue of Christ (Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, I, 308–9).

  107.Haskins, Norman Institutions, 131; Warren, Henry II, 32–3.

  108.M. Chibnall, ‘Charters of the Empress’, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, ed. J. Hudson and G. Garnett (Cambridge, 1994), 276–98, at 288–9.

  109.Barlow, Becket, 68.

  110.This was already clear from the division of time the king had spent between England and his lands in France. From December 1154 to early January 1156 Henry had been in England, then stayed in France between January 1156 to March 1157. He was in the kingdom again between April 1157 and mid August 1158, but from mid August 1158 to January 1163, he remained on the continent.

  111.Barlow, Becket, 68.

  112.Diceto, I, 308.

  113.B. Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools (Totowa, NJ, 1973), 118, noting that ‘we are still in the early summer of the reform movement’, so that by holding both posts ‘Becket would have caused more scandal in 1162 than Hubert Walter did thirty years later’.

  114.Guernes, ll. 745–7.

  115.Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools, 118, 145–6; Barlow, Becket, 67.

  116.Grim, MTB, II, 366, trans. Staunton, Lives, 62.

  117.‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 16.

  118.Eyton, 56.

  119.Gervase, I, 169; ‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 14–16. For Becket’s election and its context, Knowles, Becket, 50–76; Barlow, Becket, 64–73; A. Duggan, Thomas Becket (London, 2004), 22–32, and Barlow, Becket, 72, on Henry II’s absence.

  120.Bosham, 82; Anonymous II, MTB, IV, 85.

  121.‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 16; Diceto, I, 307, gives the date.

  122.Diceto, I, 306. Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, I, 315 adds, most improbably, that when Becket swore fealty, the prince, ‘so it was said’, refused to accept the saving clause guaranteeing ultimate loyalty to Henry II (‘quam adjectionem dicitur filius non acceptasse’). Becket had probably performed the customary homage required of a bishop elect before consecration to Henry II before leaving Normandy (Barlow, Becket, 71).

  123.Diceto, I, 306.

  124.Thómas Saga Erkibyskups, I, 66–7: cf. ‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 16.

  125.‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 17; Diceto, I, 306–7.

  126.‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 17–18; Grim, MTB, II, p. 367, Bosham, p. 185. In describing this election, ‘Roger’ anachronistically refers to young Henry as ‘rex junior’ and ‘rex puer’ (MTB, IV, 16, 17).

  127.Gervase, I, 150; Radford, Thomas of London, 45; MTB, VI (250), 58; Knowles, Becket, 26, 127.

  128.Bosham, 188–19, 187–8; LJS, no. 261; FitzStephen, MTB, III, 36; ‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 18–19; Lansdowne Anonymous, MTB, IV, 154–6; Gervase, I, 170–1.

  129.Bosham,188–9; Staunton, Lives, 66.

  130.Barlow, Becket, 72. On the unpopularity of the choice of Becket, Duggan, Thomas Becket, 23–5.

  131.Barlow, Becket, 70.

  132.Ibid.

  133.William of Canterbury, 9; FitzStephen, 36; Guernes, ll. 514–30; ‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 17–18; Anonymous II, MTB, IV, 104–5; Bosham, 185; Thómas Saga Erkibyskups, I, 79–81; Barlow, Becket, 71–2.

  134.Thus, for example, the Lansdowne Anonymous believed that just prior to Thomas’ consecration by the bishop of Winchester, prince Henry confirmed his quittance from secular liabilities, and that the exemption was ratified by several of Henry’s officials, including Robert, earl of Leicester, the justiciar (MTB, IV, 154–5).

  135.Diceto, I, 307; Gervase, I, 172; Barlow, Becket, 82–3; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 25–7.

  136.Diceto, I, 307–8, and 268, where Ralph places his signum for ‘de controversiis inter regnum et sacerdotium’ beside the capitulum ‘Thomas archbishop of Canterbury sent the royal seal back to Normandy’.

  137.M. Staunton, ‘Thomas Becket’s Conversion’, ANS, 21 (1998), 193–211.

  138.Bosham, 202, 226–31; Barlow, Becket, 74–7.

  139.Bosham, 227–8, who notes that just as the king had the right to service at his table from the eldest sons of the nobility, so the archbishop claimed the same right from their second-born sons until the age for them to be knighted. Herbert calls Henry ‘egregrius ille … puer … alumnus pontificis’ (ibid., 228).

  140.Torigni, 216.

  141.Torigni, 216.

  142.Diceto, I, 308.

  143.Bosham, 251–2; Staunton, Lives, 72; and Torigni, 216, who also notes that young Henry was at the forefront of the party that welcomed the royal arrival.

  144.Diceto, I, 308, ‘receptus est in osculum, sed non in plenitudem gratiae’.

  145.Diceto, I, 308.

  146.In May 1163, Pope Alexander III summoned a great ecclesiastical council at Tours, and when the archbishop left to attend with the king’s permission, he entrusted young Henry back temporarily into the keeping of his father (Bosham, 253).

  147.Grim, MTB, V, 27–8.

  148.In 1159, on the death of William of Blois, William FitzEmpress had been granted part of his estates, and holding the vicomté of Dieppe and lands in eleven English counties, he enjoyed an estimated annual income of between £1,000 and £1,700 (T. K. Keefe, ‘Place Date Distribution of Royal Charters and the Historical Geography of Patronage Strategies at the Court of Henry II Plantagenet’, Haskins Society Journal, 1 (1990), 179–88, at 185–7).

  149.Draco Normannicus, 676; Barlow, Becket, 103. According to FitzStephen, 142, one of Becket’s murderers, Richard le Bret, struck him with the words, ‘Take that, for the love of my lord William, the king’s brother.’

  150.Torigni, 306, who notes that William was ‘vir per omnia plangendus’. Count Raymond of Toulouse’s disposition to Pope Lucius III concerning the final wishes of the Young King also made clear his desire to be buried beside William (CDF, I, no. 38; Rouen, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime, G 3569 (3)). See below, 312–13. I am most grateful to David Crouch for drawing this to my attention, and for providing me with a transcript of Raymond’s original letter.

  151.See, for example, Warren, Henry II, 453–9; Barlow, Becket, 88–116; while for a robust defence of Becket’s actions, Duggan, Thomas Becket, especially 33–60.

  152.For the council
of Westminster, Councils and Synods, I, 848–52; Warren, Henry II, 464–70; Barlow, Becket, 94–5; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 39–40.

  153.For the issue of criminous clerks, see F. W. Maitland, ‘Henry II and the Criminous Clerks’, EHR, 7 (1892), 224–34; C. Duggan, ‘The Becket Dispute and Criminous Clerks’, Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, 35 (1962), 1–28; Knowles, Thomas Becket, 77–87; Warren, Henry II, 459–70; Barlow, Becket, 90–4; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 39–58.

  154.MTB, IV, 201–5; Bosham, 274; William of Canterbury, 12–15; ‘Roger of Pontigny’, MTB, IV, 25–9.

  155.Bosham, 275; Eyton, 65; Barlow, Becket, 95.

  156.For detailed discussion of the Council and the Constitutions of Clarendon, on which what follows is based, see Councils and Synods, I, 852–93; Warren, Henry II, 97–8, 473–84; Barlow, Becket, 98–106; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 44–60.

  157.Warren, Henry II, 98, noting that Henry’s ‘high-handed treatment of the bishops at Clarendon had converted a serious but resolvable problem in the relations of Church and State into a major dispute between Crown and Papacy’.

  158.Gervase, I, 178–80; MTB, V, pp. 71–9. It went on to urge that the ‘many other great customs and privileges’ not here recorded should be kept safe ‘for holy Church and for our lord the king and his heirs and the barons of the realm’.

  159.For detailed discussion of the events at Clarendon and the Constitutions, Warren, Henry II, 473–84; Barlow, Becket, 98–106; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 39–60.

  160.Torigni, 221; Bosham, 260–1; Staunton, Lives, 74.

  161.Barlow, Becket, 108–11.

  162.Barlow, Becket, 111–16; and Duggan, Thomas Becket, 61–83, for a close analysis of the proceedings. In a letter to King Louis requesting that he give Becket no refuge, Henry II calls him ‘an outlaw and perjured traitor’ (MTB, V, no. 71).

  163.For such royal ‘anger and ill-will’, see Joliffe, Angevin Kingship, 87–109.

  164.FitzStephen, 75–6.

  Chapter 4: Training for Kingship, 1163–1169

  1.GH, I, 302.

  2.Diceto, I, 309.

  3.Eyton, 60. The Pipe Rolls record expenditure on ‘pigs and sheep and other small items for the feast of the king’s son’ (PR 9 Henry II, 72).

  4.For Thierry, who had become count of Flanders on William Clito’s death in 1128 and married Sybila, Fulk V’s daughter, in 1134, see T. De Hemptinne and A. Verhulst, De oorkunden van de graven van Vlanderen (Juli 1128–17 Januari 1168) (Brussels, 1988); R. Nip, ‘The Political Relations between England and Flanders, 1066–1128’, ANS, 21 (1998), 145–67, at 164–6; and E. Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1216 (Cambridge, 2012), 29–35. His presence at Dover may well have been connected to Henry’s plans for an imminent Welsh campaign, as William Cade was paid £100 for the transport of Flemish troops (PR 9 Henry II, 71).

  5.Torigni, 193, 205; Continuatio Beccensis, 317. He returned in 1159. Although King Henry had ordered the expulsion of all Flemish stipendiary troops from England soon after his accession, he permitted Flemings engaged in commerce to remain, and gradually built up an affinity among the Flemish nobility by a series of money fiefs (E. Varenbergh, Histoire des relations diplomatiques entre le comté de Flandre et l’Angleterre au Moyen ge (Brussels, 1874), 73–9; D. Nichols, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992), 70; Amt, The Accession of Henry II, ch. 5, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Community’, and Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 82ff).

  6.Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1 (1101–1272), ed. P. Chaplais, (London, 1964), 1–4, and 5–8; Hemptinne and Verhulst, De oorkonden der graven van Vlananderen, I, no. 208. The 1101 treaty is translated by E. van Houts, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaty of 1101’, ANS, 21 (1998), 169–74, while the Anglo-Flemish treaties are discussed by Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 54–72, and 68–72 for the particular significance of the 1163 treaty.

  7.In 1164, Thierry left for his third journey to the East, leaving Philip as count. His marriage to the daughter of Ralph of Vermandois brought him the county of Vermandois and Mondidier (Torigni, 220).

  8.Diplomatic Documents, nos 3, 8–12; ibid., nos 4, 12–14, which details the money fees to be received by the Flemish barons and castellans from Henry II.

  9.Torigni, 218: Diceto, I, 311. Malcolm was then convalescing from a severe illness (Torigni, 218). For Henry II’s expedition against Rhys which had preceded the submissions at Woodstock, J. E. Lloyd, A History of Wales, from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, 2 vols (London, 1911), II, 511–13.

  10.Brut y Tywysogion, Peniarth MS 20, ed. and trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1941), 62–4; Brut y Tywysogion, Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955), 147; WN, I, 145; Torigni, 218, ‘de pace tenenda et pro castellis suis’. Howden, I, 219, noted Malcolm’s recovery at Doncaster, presumably on his way to Woodstock, and that ‘a firm peace was made’ between him and Henry. It is possible, however, that as suggested by A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 226–7, Malcolm only performed homage to the younger Henry, and only for the earldom of Huntingdon, as he had already performed homage to Henry II in 1157. David was released on Malcolm’s death, and was back in Scotland by 1165 (Regesta regum Scottorum, II. The Acts of William I, King of Scots, 1165–1214 (RRS, II), ed. G. W. S. Barrow with W. W. L. Scott (Edinburgh, 1971), 30, 79; K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152–1219: a Study in Anglo-Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1985) 12.

  11.Stringer, Earl David, 11, noting that, if so, this demand predated by over a decade the surrender of the major fortresses of Lothian required by the Treaty of Falaise in 1174. This would also explain why, in listing key rebels and their strongholds in the rising of 1173, Roger of Howden lists Stirling, Edinburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick, as well as Annan and Lochmaben in the west (GH, I, 48).

  12.Warren, Henry II, 96, 162–3, argues that rather than treating them as client rulers acknowledging only his personal overlordship, he may have demanded fuller and more explicit subordination as his feudal vassals, together with the obligations inherent in this status. For a more cautious assessment, P. Latimer, ‘Henry II’s Campaigns against the Welsh, 1165’, Welsh History Review, 14 (1989), 523–35. For the reaction, Lloyd, A History of Wales, II, 514–15; Warren, Henry II, 96. Malcolm was wise enough not to attack Henry II directly, but he was in communication with Louis VII at a time when Henry faced serious rebellions in Poitou and Brittany, whose count, Conan, had married Malcolm’s sister Margaret in 1160 (The Acts of Malcolm IV, King of Scots, 1153–1165 (RRS, I), ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1960), 13).

  13.English Episcopal Acta, II: Canterbury, 1162–1190, ed. C. R. Cheney and B. E. A. Jones (Oxford, 1986), no. 2.

  14.Thus, for instance, in 1138 a charter of Geoffrey Plantagenet in favour of the abbey of St Florent, Saumur, was attested by his sons Henry, Geoffrey and William, then aged five, four and two respectively (Recueil, I, no. 1, while the young Henry FitzEmpress witnessed Matilda’s charter for St Nicholas, Angers (RRAN, III, no. 20). By contrast, Henry I’s son William Aetheling seems to have first attested royal charters at the age of ten, in 1113, the year of his betrothal to Matilda, daughter of Fulk V (J. F. A. Mason, ‘William [William Aetheling, William Adelinus, William Adelingus] (1103–1120)’, ODNB).

  15.As Adam, nutricius of Fulk V when still a small child, is recorded as having done in a grant to Ronceray (Cartularium monasterii beatae Mariae Caritatis Andegavensis, Archives d’Anjou III, ed. P. Marchegay, Angers, 1854, no. 313). He did likewise for Fulk V’s son Geoffrey; Dutton, ‘The Upbringing of Angevin Comital Children’, 27–30.

  16.Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 144–5.

  17.Bosham, 261; Councils and Synods, with other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, AD 871–1204, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols (Oxford, 1981), I, 849–50; Ricardi de Cirencestria speculum historiale de gestis regum angliae, ed. J. A. B. Mayor, 2 vols (London, 1869), II, 325–7; The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx by Walter Daniel
, ed. F. M. Powicke (London, 1950), xlix; E. Bozoky, ‘Le Culte des saints et des reliques dans la politique des premiers rois Plantagenêt’, La Cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204), ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2000), 277–91, at 278–9.

  18.B. W. Scholz, ‘The Canonization of Edward the Confessor’, Speculum, 36 (1961), 38–49; E. Bózoky, ‘The Sanctity and Canonization of Edward the Confessor’, Edward the Confessor. The Man and the Legend, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2009), 173–86; E. Mason, ‘“The Site of King-Making and Consecration”: Westminster Abbey and the Crown in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, The Church and Sovereignty, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1991), 57–76, at 73. Stephen, whose natural son Gervase was abbot of Westminster 1138–c.1157), had been supported by Henry of Blois in his petition to Innocent II for canonization, but hostile papal reaction to Stephen’s outrageous treatment of the bishops in June 1139 probably lay behind its rejection by the Curia in December 1139.

  19.Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, III, 757–8; N. Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture in England, 1089–1135 (New York, 1969), 173–4.

  20.The Life of Edward who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow (revised edn, Oxford, 1992), 155–6.

  21.WN, I, 116–17; Torigni, 220; P. Muntz, Frederick Barbarossa (Ithaca, NY, 1969), 238–9; K. Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa. Eine Biographie (Munich, 2011), 271; B. Hamilton, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne’, Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), 177–91; P. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), 243–56, ‘The Magi and Milan’; R. C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of A Christian Story (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 75, 78; and for a valuable contextual study, J. P. Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy. Anglo-German Relations, 1066–1307 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2000).