The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

by Dan Jones

  Edward, whose childless reign had ended in 1066, immediately resulting in the succession wars between Harold Godwinsson and William the Conqueror, was not a king much venerated in Plantagenet England. He had been canonized in 1161, thanks to the offices of Henry III, but there was no great cult around him, and John’s request to be buried alongside St Wulfstan at Gloucester, rather than St Edward at Westminster, showed that there was little special sentiment attached to the latter. Yet to Henry, delving into his realm’s past and seeking a new father figure to prop him up once both de Burgh and des Roches had been forced from office, the Confessor seemed to be an alluring role model.

  The history of the Confessor’s reign looked to Henry rather like his own. Like the Confessor, he had come to power amid a time of civil war and popular oppression. He, like the Confessor, had been to some extent betrayed by his ministers (just as de Burgh and des Roches had manipulated Henry for their own ends, so the Confessor had been undone by the treacherous Earl Godwin). The Confessor, promisingly, had endured the tribulations of kingship and ascended to Heaven accompanied by St John the Evangelist. Pertinently for the practical aspects of governance, it was the Confessor’s laws that were held up as the ancient models for good kingship that were cited in Henry I’s Charter of Liberties. King John himself had sworn to adhere to the laws of King Edward when he was released from his excommunication by Stephen Langton in 1213. All the signs were encouraging.

  From 1234 onwards, Henry began to devote himself to the cult of the Confessor with ever-growing zeal. He studied the Confessor’s life and legend, began to paint images of his famous scenes in Westminster and his other palaces, observed his feast day – 13 October – with ever more fanatical zeal, and referred in charters to ‘the glorious king Edward’ whom he regarded as his ‘special patron’. It would be the Confessor’s model that Henry sought in some form to follow for the rest of his life.

  Although devotion to saints and the archetype of the pious king was well established in the medieval mind, there was still something rather extreme about Henry’s growing adoration of the Confessor. Nevertheless, no one could complain of the effect that it had had on him. From 1234 Henry III was at last an adult king governing in his own right, who professed his commitment to the spirit of Magna Carta. This was what the realm had been demanding for years.

  Marriage and Family

  In May 1234, England finally had a king willing to meet the requirements of his office. The man that had emerged from the long road out of childhood was a peculiar specimen. Henry was about 5' 6" in height. He was said to have a drooping eyelid, which would have given his face a crooked solemnity to match his somewhat ponderous character. He was noticeably pious, even in an age where the rising fashion among kings was for asceticism and ostentatious religiosity. (Henry’s contemporary and counterpart Louis IX of France was growing up to be fanatically devout, planning magnificent church-building projects such as the sublime Sainte-Chapelle, and thrusting himself into a burgeoning market for holy relics: in 1239 he would pay the astonishing sum of 135,000 livres to Baldwin II of Constantinople for the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the True Cross.) The holy competition between Western kings was a game of spiritual trumps, and Henry was determined to be among the holiest kings in Christendom.

  Henry was not as physically or personally arresting as his Plantagenet forebears, nor indeed as many of his descendants, but he was self-consciously given to greater displays of kingly magnificence than any of them. Perhaps the greatest artistic patron of all of England’s medieval kings, he transformed the great centres of courtly life with his commissions of paintings and buildings that celebrated the virtuous antiquity of kingship. Walls and windows burst with his favourite religious and historical scenes and figures: St Edward the Confessor was everywhere, but so too were Lazarus and Dives, the Four Evangelists, the keepers of King Solomon’s bed and military saints like St Eustace, who was painted to stand guard over the king’s bed at Westminster. Henry also commissioned paintings of Alexander the Great, the siege of Antioch and images of his uncle Richard the Lionheart’s legendary deeds in the Holy Land. The adult Henry might not thus far have been an exemplary king, but with his instinct for broadcasting the divine magnificence of kingship he was becoming a masterly propagandist, with a deft grasp of history and imagery. He spent an average of £3,000 a year – a tenth of his revenue – on building. His right-hand man in constructing the image of kingship was a goldsmith called Odo and, from 1240, Odo’s son and successor Edward of Westminster, whose role as melter of the exchequer and keeper of the king’s works encompassed making all the fine gold cups, crowns, dazzling vestments, beautiful candles and fine jewels with which Henry loved to surround himself.

  Henry’s greatest love was the holy finery of kingship, and what could provide a grander occasion for pageantry and propaganda than the marriage of a king? In January 1236, having carefully sought the permission of a great council to marry, the 28-year-old Henry finally took as his queen the twelve-year-old Eleanor of Provence.

  On the face of things, Henry’s choice of bride seemed somewhat eccentric. He had previously been engaged to Joan, the heiress to the county of Ponthieu; but there had been fierce objection from the French court at the prospect of an English king marrying into a county on the northern French coast, and the marriage alliance had fallen apart. Thus Henry had turned to Eleanor, the second of four daughters born to Ramon-Berengar IV, count of Provence, whose eldest daughter, Margaret, was already married to Louis IX. Eleanor of Provence was a southerner, and like Eleanor of Aquitaine before her, she brought with her the influence and interests of a warm, culturally vibrant southern French culture. Controversially, she did not bring any promise of landed territory in France, but what Eleanor lacked in land she made up for in connections: not just to the French court through Margaret, but to the spheres of the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy through her mother’s family, the counts of Savoy. Eleanor’s mother, Beatrice of Savoy, had five brothers, all of whom were extremely skilful diplomats with alliances and contacts throughout Europe. Territorially, the Savoyards controlled the northern passages into Italy, and as such the county was in the thick of the violent diplomatic struggles between Frederick and the papacy. Henry’s keen interest in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire had been shown when he married his younger sister Isabella to Emperor Frederick II in 1235, and his own marriage to Eleanor now reinforced his links to the imperial court. Even if Plantagenet kingship was to be restricted to England and Gascony, Henry was determined that he should stay firmly involved in the complex power politics of Europe.

  Henry knew, therefore, that the eyes of Europe would be upon his wedding ceremony in Canterbury on 20 January 1236, and in particular on the new queen’s coronation, which took place six days later. ‘Whatever the world could afford to create pleasure and magnificence were there brought together from every quarter,’ wrote Matthew Paris. London was filled to bursting with the great men and women of England, servants, hangers-on and crowds desperate to glimpse the first king’s wedding for nearly fifty years. ‘The whole city was ornamented with flags and banners, chaplets and hangings, candles and lamps, and with wonderful devices and extraordinary representations, and all the roads were cleansed from mud and dirt, sticks and everything offensive,’ wrote Paris. ‘The citizens … went out to meet the king and queen, dressed in their ornaments, and vied with each other in trying the speed of their horses.’

  If anyone doubted the willingness of the English nobility to celebrate Plantagenet kingship, then they were not to be found at the wedding. Rather, there was a highly competitive air as archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and the citizens of England’s ancient cities laid claim to their rightful ceremonial duties. From roles as prestigious as crowning the queen and bearing the ceremonial sword of St Edward the Confessor, to waving a stick at onlookers who pressed too close and arranging the cups on the dinner table, every act within the pageant dignified its actor, and bound all together in a commun
ion of kingship. At the end of it all, Henry had a bride who provided him with a connection with European geopolitics, a confirmation of his manhood and a grand occasion on which he could direct England’s political community in enthusiastic demonstrations of their ancient cohesion and loyalty. He was in his element and celebrated by taking his new queen on a summer trip to Glastonbury, to see King Arthur’s burial site.

  This was enough on its own to excite the realm, but Henry and Eleanor’s marriage was followed by another that would prove equally important to the history of the reign, when in January 1238 the rising star of the court, Simon de Montfort, was sensationally married to Henry’s 23-year-old sister, Eleanor of Leicester. The Plantagenet princess was not merely the youngest child of John and Isabella of Angoulême; she was also the widow of William Marshal the younger, late earl of Pembroke and eldest son of the king’s one-time regent. On her first husband’s death, the sixteen-year-old Eleanor had sworn a holy oath of chastity before Edmund Rich, archbishop of Canterbury. Now, wooed by de Montfort, she was willing to break it.

  De Montfort had arrived in England in 1230, pursuing a claim through his grandmother Amicia de Beaumont to the earldom of Leicester. He was a charismatic high-born Frenchman, thirty years old in 1238; just two years younger than the king whom he impressed and eventually scared with his intelligent political and literary mind, military brilliance, formidable social connections and extreme religious fanaticism. De Montfort was a difficult man: obstinate and consumed by ambition. He wore a hair shirt, ate and drank extremely frugally, and stayed up late in saintly devotions. In many ways, although they were roughly the same age, de Montfort would become yet another paternal character to whom Henry could look up with childish admiration. During the eight years that they had known each other, de Montfort had become the king’s close friend and one of his closest counsellors.

  Nevertheless, the sudden marriage between de Montfort and Eleanor shocked the realm. Eleanor was by some measure the most valuable bride in England. She came with royal access, landed power and high status. Although Henry had consulted great councils of his barons and prelates before marrying both himself and his sister Isabella, Eleanor was given suddenly to de Montfort and the couple were married in secret. This seemed to run contrary to all the principles of consensual government under the spirit of Magna Carta that Henry had promised on his assumption of full kingship, and it caused outrage among the rest of the English nobility, both lay and ecclesiastical.

  The barons objected to not being consulted in a matter of state and regional power balance – since Montfort’s marriage now brought him a vast income and lands throughout southern England to add to his inherited lands pertaining to the earldom of Leicester. The bishops were perplexed that Eleanor was allowed to remarry after having taken a vow of chastity. General outrage was so severe that there erupted a political crisis in which Henry’s brother Richard earl of Cornwall allied himself with Gilbert Marshal (the third Marshal son to be earl of Pembroke) and the earl of Winchester, and led yet another armed rebellion against the king, which took six months to defuse.

  Fortunately for Henry, he tended to make peace with his troublesome brother rather quickly, and the crisis passed. De Montfort was secured in his position as royal favourite and brother-in-law, and travelled to Rome to seek approval from Pope Innocent IV for his marriage. Shortly after he returned, in November 1238, Eleanor de Montfort gave birth to the couple’s first child at Kenilworth castle.

  In the meantime, around the court Henry began the process of creating an extended royal family. His new young queen was joined in England by a crowd of Savoyards, including three of her diplomat uncles, Peter, Thomas and Boniface of Savoy. Peter and Thomas of Savoy had arrived at court by 1240 and would do much to influence public policy during their time in England. Impressed by the elegance, experience and well-connected worldliness of the Savoyards, Henry was generous with patronage towards them. Thomas, who had inherited the county of Flanders, was in little need of royal generosity, but Peter was knighted in 1241 and granted the lordship of Richmond in Yorkshire, and in 1244 Boniface was finally invested as archbishop of Canterbury, having been elected after the death of Edmund Rich in 1240. As Henry dispensed landed titles, Eleanor was active in tying together English and Savoyard families in marriage, adding a new flavour to certain quarters of the English aristocracy. Not everyone liked it, but on the whole the Savoyards brought more to England than they extracted.

  Most important of all for the Plantagenet dynasty, meanwhile, was its extension to another generation when, in mid-June 1239, the sixteen-year-old Queen Eleanor gave birth to the first royal child. The king had been sleeping with her since their marriage (indeed, Henry’s life had been saved in 1237 when a knife-wielding maniac had broken into the royal bedroom, only to find the king absent, in bed with his fifteen-year-old wife), and it was a source of great joy that she finally bore him a boy to continue the family line.

  When the news broke that the queen had given birth there was wild celebration throughout the palace of Westminster. The clerks of the royal chapel sang Christus vincit, christus regnat, christus imperat (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ rules), and when news reached London there was a city-wide street festival. Amid it all, Henry was exacting about the joy he expected to be shown by his subjects. This was the first Plantagenet heir to be born for three decades. When messengers returned bearing gifts of congratulation from the great nobles and bishops of England, Henry inspected his haul. Presents not deemed worthy of the great occasion were returned to the sender with a demand for something better.

  What would the boy be called? Plantagenet family tradition might have suggested Henry, John, Richard, William or even Geoffrey. But Henry III had something more exotic in mind. He decided that his son would be named Edward, after his beloved Confessor. It was a bizarre choice of name for a Plantagenet prince, or indeed for any aristocratic child born in England during the thirteenth century. It would have sounded odd and archaic to well-bred ears. But Henry had a vision of kingship, which wound together historical narratives of Plantagenet conquest and the saintliness of the ancient kings. Like William the Aetheling before him, the Lord Edward, as the child grew up to be known, was to embody both England’s ancient past and her future, and would bring a distinct new identity to Plantagenet kingship. Henry was stamping his own vision of history and kingship upon Crown, country and royal family.

  But it was not long before the extended royal family began to show cracks. At Queen Eleanor’s churching ceremony following Edward’s birth a furious argument blew up between the king and de Montfort, one that would have unforeseen but deadly repercussions for both parties.

  Since his rapid elevation in position, de Montfort had been in some financial difficulty. It had cost him handsomely to buy his brother Amaury out of his half-share in the earldom of Leicester; he had taken the Cross in 1237, which brought with it more expense; his wife had a reputation for high extravagance; all in all he was finding his position as the king’s brother-in-law to be somewhat beyond his means. De Montfort had borrowed £2,000 from Thomas of Savoy in 1239, and pledged Henry’s name as a guarantor without first consulting the king. Henry took exception to his friend’s liberal use of the royal favour, and at the churching ceremony he exploded in anger. There were probably other reasons, including simmering resentment on Henry’s part at the political cost of his mistake in allowing Simon to marry his sister, but, shifting suddenly from a position of lavish generosity to white rage, Henry berated de Montfort and Eleanor – who was pregnant for the second time – and accused Simon of having seduced his sister before their marriage. It may not have been true, but the king was so furious that the de Montforts were forced to flee England.

  Effectively banished, de Montfort decided to make good on his crusader’s oath. Richard earl of Cornwall lived up to his uncle and namesake’s reputation by leading a crusade to Palestine between 1239 and 1241, and de Montfort joined enthusiastically. The Barons’ Crusade, as
it was known, was rather successful, and in alliance with Theobald IV of Champagne, Richard managed to recover Galilee and refortify Ascalon. As her husband fought the infidel in Outremer, Eleanor de Montfort retired to Brindisi in southern Italy to live on the hospitality of her brother-in-law Frederick II.

  It was enough of a cooling-off period to ease the de Montforts back into royal favour. When de Montfort returned from the East in 1242 he found Henry III in confident mood. The English king had taken advantage of a succession dispute in Wales between two sons of Llywelyn the Great, supporting Llywelyn’s son Dafydd as the new ruler of Gwynedd and receiving his homage at Gloucester, establishing the superior authority of Plantagenet kingship. As with his father before him, supremacy at home had encouraged Henry III to think of renewing the Plantagenet claims overseas, and he was planning a military expedition to Poitou. There was little enthusiasm among the magnates, who refused to grant the taxation that would allow for a grand conquest, so Henry required all the money and talent he could gather to launch what amounted to a purely private invasion. De Montfort’s skill as a general was needed in Henry’s service.

  In the end, however, the Poitou expedition was a disaster: the English army was small, underfunded, accompanied by a paltry 200 knights, regularly betrayed by supposed Poitevin allies and completely outwitted by the strategy of Louis IX. De Montfort fought with general distinction, but it was in a hopeless cause. Henry III suffered a string of humiliating losses, during the course of which he was shown up as the worst general his family had ever produced. The campaign caused yet another quarrel with Richard earl of Cornwall, to whom Henry promised Gascony as a reward for his valiant service in a losing cause, before reneging on the queen’s advice. At Saintes, de Montfort was overheard likening Henry to Charles the Simple, the tenth-century Carolingian king of France whose military failings led to him being imprisoned by his own subjects. Even if they were outwardly reconciled, it was clear that de Montfort and Henry were unlikely to remain at peace for very long. Indeed, it seemed an increasingly vain hope that any of Henry’s extended family would be able to see their holy but hapless king through many more untroubled years.