by Ed West
As for his rival, the head of Henry, first Earl of Northumberland, now greeted visitors passing over London bridge, his arms and legs thrown into sacks and sent to the four corners of the North. The family was defeated.
*The title marquess comes from “march,” or border.
*In 1972, Langholm in the Scottish borders, ancestral home of the Armstrong clan, invited a certain Neil to visit. He accepted, much to their surprise, and upon visiting told them “I consider this, now, my home town.” Safe to say he had traveled further than any border man.
26
“I HAVE OTHER SONS”
A bastard had to learn to notice things, to read the truth that people hid behind their eyes.
—JON SNOW
In the year 1152, a five-year-old boy was taken up to a wooden construction outside Newbury Castle in Berkshire. In the distance his father looked on as a noose was placed around the child’s neck, emotionless as he awaited the coming execution.
The infant’s name was William and his father John Fitzgilbert was a major baron in the region, once the heartland of the kingdom of Wessex. Thirteen years earlier the realm had descended into war between two claimants to the throne, the Empress Matilda and her cousin Stephen of Blois, both grandchildren of William the Conqueror. The Anarchy, as the civil war became known, was an exceptionally unpleasant conflict that produced a number of cartoon villains who make Ramsay Bolton look like Gandhi.
Fitzgilbert, who held the title of Marshal of the Horses, was a Norman nobleman ruthless and violent even by the standards of the day. His father Gilbert had been marshal to Henry I, the same role Henry Percy would briefly hold centuries later, and the son had inherited that honor upon Gilbert’s death in 1129. When King Henry I died in 1135 and war erupted Fitzgilbert sided with Henry’s daughter Matilda, but her rival Stephen’s forces captured Fitzgilbert’s castle and King Stephen had tried to win the baron’s loyalty by making him hand over his fourth and youngest son William as hostage. In return, Fitzgilbert was allowed back to Newbury castle on the condition that he did not rearm. Yet John Fitzgilbert “had no time for the idea of peace” and so put his “child’s life in danger, because the king [soon] realized that he had been tricked.”1
John Fitzgilbert, or “le Marechal” (marshal) as he was also known, was mentioned in chronicles as “a scion of hell and the root of all evil.” He bore a horrific scar on his face dating back to 1141 when he had barricaded himself in Wherwell Abbey and Stephen’s men had set fire to it; le Marechal climbed the bell tower to escape but in the engulfing inferno some burning metal fell on his face, “with horrible consequences.”2
But now le Marechal watched impassively as the conquerer’s grandson mulled over his options over how to respond to this slight. The reality was that King Stephen had no choice, and one of his knights now stepped forward and advised him “to hang the child.” The war had been burning for over thirteen years by now and many such atrocities had taken place, and one more innocent death would make no difference; and yet, as subsequent history was to show, this one would.
Le Marechal refused to hand over the castle, and a chronicle recalled, Il dist ken e li chaleit de l’enfant, quer encore aveit les enclumes e les marteals dunt forgereit de plus beals: “He said that he did not care about the child, since he still had the anvils and hammers to produce even finer ones.”3 The line is of course borrowed by Walder Frey when Catelyn Stark threatens to kill one of his children: “I’ll sire another.” Enraged, Stephen ordered that young William be taken to the gallows to be hanged in front of his father.
In Westeros, women have not been allowed to rule since the Dance of the Dragons, a civil war in which many of the Targaryens died. The conflict started when the king passed away and his eldest daughter by his first wife and his son by his second both claimed the crown. Instead it was agreed that a woman’s son must rule in her place and so the second Rhaenys Targaryen becomes known as the “queen who never was.” (Later she dies fighting a battle on dragonback—which is where fantasy diverges from reality, obviously…and unfortunately.)
Something like this really happened in England, which for twenty years was crippled by feuding warlords as William the Conqueror’s heirs fought over the country. The conflict allowed local strong men in castles to take total control of surrounding land and to rule like kings, often extremely cruelly, and during the Anarchy the dungeons of barons’ castles were filled with “both men and women put in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured with pains unspeakable.”4 The casual brutality inflicted on the small folk in Westeros is far more true to life to England’s twelfth century civil war than its fifteenth century equivalent, where the poor largely escaped the horror. This earlier dynastic conflict also inspired the backstory for King Joffrey and his unfortunate demise (unfortunate for him at least).
The Conqueror had three surviving sons from his marriage to Matilda of Flanders, all of them stocky and barrel-chested like their father. He hated his eldest, Robert, whom he tormented about his height, calling him Curthose, “Stubby Legs” or “Short Arse”; so bad was their relationship that in 1079 Short Arse almost killed his father in battle. Yet when he died on campaign in Maine the king had left him Normandy, bound by an older oath, while middle son William Rufus inherited England; his youngest Henry received just five thousand pounds in coins.
It was Rufus who built Westminster Hall, the grand building which, along with the White Tower of the Tower of London, serves as the inspiration for the Red Keep.5 Westminster Hall, which at 240ft was the longest in medieval Europe for some time, is still part of the Houses of Parliament today, having survived various fights and fires, and has seen the trials of Thomas More, Guy Fawkes, and Charles I, among others; it is still used to host foreign dignitaries such as Pope Benedict XVI in the twenty-first century.
William II was not a successful ruler; a drunk who had little respect for clergy, he was accused by his clerical enemies of holding homosexual orgies and presiding over an effeminate court. From the start of his reign he was almost immediately in conflict with his brother Robert, until the war was postponed when Robert was drawn into the crusades; William could not attack his brother’s lands while he was fighting a holy war without being excommunicated by the pope. With Robert away, he had more time to indulge in his passions, among them hunting—until August 2, 1100 when disaster struck.
Rufus was out in the New Forest in Hampshire with Walter Tirel, a Norman lord considered one of the best shots in the realm. On the eve of their hunt, William had been presented with six arrows and, taking four for himself, he handed the remaining two to Tirel, telling him, “Bon archer, bonnes fleches” (“To the good archer, the good arrows”). On the day of the hunt, king and lord became separated and Tirel took aim at a passing stag; it missed and instead hit the monarch in the chest, puncturing his lung. William tried to pull out the arrow shaft, but this only worsened the injury. Tirel, in a panic, fled to France.
Hunting is a dangerous sport, and one that has been killing aristocrats for centuries. The Conqueror’s second son Richard also died hunting in the New Forest, while Robert Curthose’s bastard, another Richard, was likewise killed in a chase just months before Rufus, accidentally shot by a companion. The Norman lifestyle was not risk-averse, and young men were encouraged to take part in dangerous—to our minds idiotically dangerous—activities, and numerous other aristocrats died in similar fashion. Indeed, this fondness for risky sports involving horses and weapons is something the English aristocracy has inherited from their French-speaking ancestors. In total, thirteen British MPs have been killed in hunting accidents down the years, the most recent being in 1935, and another two have died from shooting, including Sir William Payne-Gallwey who accidentally shot himself in 1881 after tripping on a turnip.6
And yet of course there was also the distinct possibility that Rufus’s death was not an accident. William’s younger brother Henry was at the time not far from Winchester, home of the Treasury until it was moved to We
stminster the following century, and he claimed the throne immediately. He then had the killer quietly sent to France and let off. It was extremely fortunate timing for Henry; in 1099 the crusaders had conquered Jerusalem after three gruesome years fighting in the desert and his eldest brother Robert was on his way back, now a hero of Christendom.
Among those who had joined the crusade was Edmund Ironside’s grandson Edgar the Atheling, by the laws of succession the rightful king of England. Edgar’s sister Margaret had joined a number of Anglo-Saxon aristocrats in moving north across the border, where she had married King Malcolm III. Their daughter Edith was later proposed to by William Rufus, but after nothing came of this Henry married her instead, changing her name to the Norman-sounding Matilda. They had two surviving children, on top of his estimated twenty-two to twenty-five illegitimate children, by “six or eight” different mistresses, a royal record to date (and probably unlikely to be bettered any time soon).
Unlike his boorish brothers Henry had learned to read, reflected in his nickname, beauclerc, “good scholar,” but he was also a brutal and ruthless leader and those who upset him soon knew about it. Over the twelve days of Christmas in 1124, he had the men who minted coins across the kingdom rounded up and their rights hands and testicles all removed, for debasing the currency by mixing it with inferior metal. He once blinded a Norman minstrel who sang a song critical of him.
Henry defeated his brother in battle and late in 1120 also finally defeated Robert’s son William Clito, confirming his supremacy over Normandy and England. And so, in November the royal party was on its way back across the Channel and had gathered at Barfleur on the Norman coast waiting to sail. On board the White Ship was King Henry’s only legitimate son William, along with 200 leading young aristocrats, including two of Henry’s illegitimate children, 140 knights, eighteen noble women, and “virtually all the aristocracy of the county of Mortain” in western Normandy. And yet in the immediate thrill of victory their cups had overflown with wine, even the crew piloting the ship. In fact a small number of passengers were so concerned by the amount drunk that they disembarked, among them Henry’s nephew Stephen.
The revellers dared the captain to catch up with the royal ship ahead, this despite it already being dark, and at the very tail end of the sailing season, a dangerous period for crossing this stretch of water. Before it even left the harbor the boat hit some rocks, and the laughter turned to screams as the damaged ship rapidly filled with water. Most were drowned below decks, and even those who escaped this coffin were dragged down by their fine silk clothing, but young William was pulled onto a lifeboat, only to go back for his half-sister Matilda; they both died. Only one man—a butcher who was on board collecting money—managed to hang on to a raft until morning and survived.
Drowning at sea was sadly common, especially in the English Channel, one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world. In March 1170, for example, four hundred courtiers, including the king’s doctor, died on their way from Normandy to England.7 If the Norman barons were once scared to cross the water, the deaths of so many of their progeny showed the wisdom of that fear.
King Henry ruled for another fifteen unhappy years, remarrying after his wife passed away although unable to produce any more children. He had only one legitimate heir, Matilda, and asked his barons to swear an oath promising to support her when he died, and despite Matilda’s sex there was a crush before him as the leading men battled to be first to give their fealty; at the very front was his sister’s son Stephen of Blois.
A monarch was expected to lead in battle and it was not until the mid-fifteenth century that one failed to carry out this duty, the mad king Henry VI. And a woman could not do so. Although most people had different views about women’s abilities than we do today, a major reason for opposition was physiognomy, in that military leaders had to wield heavy swords and female body strength is on average just over half that of men’s. From the mid-sixteenth century, and the use of gunpowder and regiments, such ideas about a royal military leader become obsolete, while monarchs were expected to be more than axe-wielding killers, but instead to be civilized, and cunning too.
A handful of women found themselves rulers during this period, but they were rarely happy events. Alfonso VI’s daughter Urraca tried governing Leon and Castile for seventeen years from 1109, a hugely difficult reign. Her nickname was “the Reckless”; unfortunately, her abusive marriage led to open civil war in the country, and she faced numerous rebellions. She also had an affair with a courtier, leading to an illegitimate child, which helped confirm the idea that she was unfit as a ruler. That her contemporary Henry of England had twenty-two bastards would not have stood as an excuse.
Neither the Franks nor the Vikings, the two dominant cultures of northern France, had any history of queens regnant; besides which, under Anglo-Saxon custom the previous king’s child did not automatically inherit the throne, but rather the new monarch was chosen by the leading men out of a pool of people considered throne-worthy—atheling. Of the five kings before William the Conqueror, none was the rightful successor by blood.
And Henry had many nephews, his favorite being Stephen of Blois, his sister Adela’s youngest son. Stephen had two older brothers, Theobald, Count of Champagne, who was also Count of Blois, the family’s ancestral home, and the eldest William the Simple, who may have had mental deficiencies and is never considered by chroniclers to be a candidate. Stephen was by the accounts affable and friendly, and one author likens him to the “charming, popular Renly,”8 who also has an older brother who precedes him.
Indeed, the new king had many admirable qualities which nonetheless made him unsuitable to take the throne. He was “a mild, good humored, easy-going man, who never punished anybody,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was not meant as a compliment, as he allowed his continental mercenaries to plunder the land. After an uprising in the west country was crushed Stephen pardoned its leaders, which to modern eyes seems the moderate, forgiving course, but in the twelfth century was just seen as weakness.
Matilda was considered arrogant, at a time when men found women rulers difficult. As historian Helen Castor wrote, “The risk these queens ran was that their power would be perceived as a perversion of ‘good’ womanhood, a distillation of all that was to be feared in the unstable depths of female nature.”9 The ancients talked of “man-hearted” women like Clytemnestra who murdered her husband Agamemnon, while the medievals called them “viragos,” and women who would today be celebrated as empowered were instead feared and hated.
Matilda was also to some extent a foreigner, having been the child-bride of Emperor Heinrich and so more German than Norman. After Heinrich had died, she further cemented her unpopularity with the Norman elite by marrying Geoffrey of Anjou, scion of a neighboring county whom the Normans viewed as vicious barbarians, and who was barely half her age. Three sons followed in quick succession, the second labor almost killing her.
And so despite his promises, within days of Henry’s death Stephen had seized the throne, having his brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester, anoint him king. The war burned slowly at first but, once ignited, erupted into all-out conflagration in 1139 when Stephen went to arrest three bishops, administrators during Henry’s reign; that year Matilda, calling herself “Lady of the English,” finally landed in Arundel in Sussex. Kidnappings, robberies, and murders rocketed, and local barons took the opportunity to lock people up and demand money from them, so that dungeons across the land were filled. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle later lamented that “Never did a country endure more misery. If the ground was tilled the earth bore no corn, for the land was ruined by such doings; and men said openly that Christ and his saints slept. . . . we suffered nineteen years for our sins.”
NOT ALL BASTARDS NEED BE DWARVES
Matilda was aided by her half-brother Robert of Gloucester, one of the most influential bastards of the era. Robert had been very close to his father and was there at his death. Matilda was also cons
istently supported by another of her father’s illegitimate children, Reginald. Numerous real-life bastards played important roles in history, and at this time the division between legitimacy and illegitimacy was not as stark as it later would be. Royal bastards, in particular, were privileged and even got to have special coats of arms marked with a “baton sinister,” a strip that runs from the bottom left. (Sinister is “left” in Latin. It got its current meaning from a common belief that left-handed people were “touched by the devil.”)
Although Henry I’s total is probably a record, Henry II had up to a dozen bastards, among them Geoffrey Plantagenet, who became Archbishop of York. Another, William Longsword, would lead his half-brother King John’s ill-fated attempt to win back Normandy in 1214. King John had five, but much later Charles II had at least fifteen, and of twenty-six English dukes today, five directly descend from Charles II’s illegitimate children (among Charles’s descendants are Princess Diana, Camilla Parker-Bowles, various prime ministers, and Kit Harington and Rose Leslie, better known as Jon Snow and Ygritte).10 Robert of Gloucester himself had at least four bastards.
Another of Henry I’s illegitimate daughters became the duchess of Brittany and the countess of Perche, and such children could even be included in a marriage alliance. “Bastard,” though an insult, did not always signify contempt. Richard III referred to his “dear bastard” son in an affectionate way, while the greatest jouster of the 1460s was the Grand Bastard of Burgundy, son of the Duke of Burgundy, as with the Bastard of Orléans during the Hundred Years’ War.
