The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  In addition, Marshal had to learn how to ride and fight while using the distinctive range of armour employed by twelfth-century knights. In the 1160s, most warriors wore a mail hauberk (or coat), formed of around 30,000 tightly packed, interlocking iron rings. This typically weighed in the region of thirty-five pounds, covered the upper body and arms, reached down to the knees, but was split-skirted both back and front, to enable use on horseback. William would have worn a padded jerkin (‘aketon’) underneath his hauberk – crucial for absorbing the blunt trauma of blows – and probably used mail leggings (‘chausses’). Hauberks with sleeves that ended in mail mittens (or mufflers) were also becoming popular. As Marshal aged, military technology advanced, such that by the early thirteenth century, fitted plates of metal were beginning to be worn alongside or atop mail, but it would be another two hundred years before full plate (the classic ‘knight in shining armour’) became the norm.

  In battle, William’s head was protected by three layers of armour: a quilted, padded cap; a mail hood (that might be an integral part of his hauberk, or a separate ‘coif’), often including a section of mail that could be raised and tied in place to cover the face (the ‘ventail’); and an iron helm. While at Tancarville, Marshal likely used the basic conical helmets with central nosepieces that were still popular in the mid-twelfth century. But over time, these gave way to larger, more enclosing cylindrical great helms – flat topped, with a full face plate and perforated visor – that offered a high level of protection, but restricted vision and were intensely uncomfortable to wear over long periods of time. William’s last piece of defensive equipment was a curved, triangular wooden shield, usually strengthened with either hardened leather or metal plating. This could be hung from the neck or shoulder using a leash, to free the arms and shelter the back.

  Trying to move and fight while decked out in this bewildering array of gear – clad head-to-toe in mail, bearing shield, helmet, sword and lance – was no simple matter. Much of the weight of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century armour was distributed across the body, so Marshal would not have been desperately encumbered. He was able to walk, mount his horse unaided and certainly was capable of getting back to his feet if knocked over; but adapting to the load and feel of all of this equipment required years of training and physical development. William acquired the necessary strength and endurance, yet like any knight in this period, he only wore full armour when necessary, and generally travelled in much lighter gear.

  Burdensome though mail, helm and shield may have been, they rendered William and his peers virtually invulnerable. Most sword and arrow strikes could not penetrate through these layers of defence, though lethal blows to the face and eyes were possible, and broken bones (especially from crushing lance attacks) were more common. Only crossbow bolts had the puncturing force to pierce mail and the padding beneath to reach flesh, and this helps to explain why the papacy sought to ban their use against Christians from 1139 onwards. In the majority of settings, however, knights could wage war with relative impunity, and for fully equipped members of this warrior class death in battle was a relatively rare, even shocking, occurrence.

  The ritual of knighting

  In 1166, when William Marshal was around twenty years old, he reached the end of his training and apprenticeship. The time had come for him to undergo the ritual of knighting. By the mid-twelfth century this ceremony was becoming increasingly formalised and elaborate – at least for those in the upper echelons of the aristocracy – and its conventions had been imbued with symbolism and meaning. In William’s day, publically witnessed rituals were an essential part of the fabric of medieval society, and their power and efficacy were implicitly accepted. It was understood that the human soul might be purified through rites of Mass or penance, that a king or emperor could be created by coronation; and likewise, the ceremony of knightly ‘dubbing’ was believed to transform a young man into a different breed of warrior. Most rituals in the Middle Ages had a devotional or sacred dimension, and thus required the involvement of the Church. But despite the persistent attempts of the medieval clergy to intrude into the process of knighting by encouraging the likes of sword blessing, as yet the actual role of churchmen remained inconsistent and muted. For now, at least, knights were made, or invested, only by other knights.

  For members of the wealthiest noble or royal families, the ritual of knighting could involve a high degree of pomp, pageantry and display. King Henry II’s father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, reportedly underwent just such a lavish and elaborate rite in 1128. He was knighted at the age of fifteen, along with a small group of his peers, ‘amid regal festivities’. The ceremony was held at Rouen – the capital of Normandy – as part of the preparations for Geoffrey’s imminent marriage to King Henry I’s daughter Empress Matilda. On the appointed day, Geoffrey began with a ‘solemn bath’ – an act of physical and spiritual cleansing – and his body was then clothed in the most opulent apparel. A ‘crisp linen undershirt’ was followed by ‘a ceremonial robe interwoven with gold’ and rich red in colour. Geoffrey then donned a ‘cloak, dyed purple in the blood of oyster and murex’ and pulled on a pair of luxurious silken shoes decorated with ‘lion cubs’. His fellow aspirants were ‘likewise dressed in linen and purple’. Decked out in their finery, the young men now emerged ‘from a secret chamber into public view’. An awestruck crowd looked on as Geoffrey received a magnificent Spanish horse ‘reputed to outpace many birds when it ran’, as well as gifts of arms and armour, including a sword drawn from the royal treasury that was said to have been ‘crafted by that master Wayland’. The ritual was followed by seven days of feasting, celebration and military games.

  Of course, the vast majority of knighting ceremonies were neither so extravagant, nor so glamorous, though many did follow this pattern of group participation, and most involved an element of public witness. It was common for a gift (or gifts) to be given to a new knight, but often this was limited to a single new cloak – a piece of clothing that seemed to indicate an elevation in status. The only core element of the ritual that was virtually universal in the twelfth century was dubbing. Derived from the French word ‘adouber’ (to arm), this meant literally to invest someone with a weapon, in most cases by belting (or girding) a sword to his body. For men like William, it seems to have been the receipt of these two objects, the knightly belt and sword, which signified their transformation into knights. The dubbing might be followed by one final act – the ‘collée’ – a form of ritualised blow to the body that could vary from a light, almost genteel, tap on the shoulder, to a forceful cuff to the head. Its origins and meaning remain obscure, one theory suggesting that the strike was supposed to remind a warrior of his duties, another arguing that this symbolised the last blow a knight would receive without retaliation. It would be a century before the ‘collée’ was typically delivered to the shoulder with the flat of a sword blade – the classic image of ‘dubbing’, now immortalised in modern imagination and still enacted by the English monarchy when conferring a knighthood.

  Marshal’s own elevation seems to have been a rough-and-ready affair. In what amounted to a battlefield commission, William ‘was dubbed a knight’ by his patron, the lord of Tancarville, in a simple ceremony held at Neufchâtel in north-eastern Normandy. The chamberlain gifted William a fine new cloak and then ‘girded on his sword, with which he was to deal many a blow’. With this short, unadorned ritual, Marshal joined the ranks of Europe’s martial elite. The speed and suddenness of his knighting seem to have been a direct result of events on the ground. For in 1166 Normandy was under threat and war was on the horizon. Thus, William of Tancarville called his young trainee to arms for a first taste of real battle.

  ‘MIGHTY BLOWS AND FINE DEEDS’

  In 1166 a heated border dispute broke out between the duchy and its eastern neighbours in the counties of Flanders, Ponthieu and Boulogne. The precise background to this conflict is disputable, but it led Upper Normandy to be placed on a war footing. The lord of T
ancarville led Marshal and the rest of his troops fifty-five miles east to Neufchâtel-en-Bray, to join up with a number of other nobles, including the constable of Normandy. This may have been William’s first visit to this border zone, but in the course of his career he would fight numerous campaigns in this area. The fortress of Neufchâtel was surrounded by a small town, and lay beside the River Béthune, some fifteen miles back from the duchy’s main frontier at the River Bresle. The original intention seems to have been to assemble a war-band there, before moving forward en masse to counter an attempted invasion. In the event, enemy troops led a sudden, piercing raid into Norman territory and almost caught the lord of Tancarville and his allies off-guard. They were still billeted in Neufchâtel when news arrived that a direct attack on their position was imminent.

  Showing a cool head, the chamberlain calmly gathered his men – said to number twenty-eight knights including William Marshal – and moved to intercept the enemy near a bridge on the town’s outskirts. Marshal’s blood was racing at the prospect of the coming fight and, as the Tancarville retinue rode through the streets, he tried to push to the front. The chamberlain was having none of it. Scolding William’s youthful impetuosity, he apparently shouted ‘get back . . . let these knights pass’. Marshal ‘withdrew a few paces, downcast and ashamed, his face the picture of gloom,’ according to the History, ‘since he thought he was indeed a knight’, though he soon started edging forward again nonetheless.

  Thoughts of rank were put to one side when a group of enemy knights were sighted up ahead, advancing along a street lined with houses and farmsteads. Both sides charged immediately and as ‘they struck one another with great force’ a frenzied mêlée began. Most medieval warfare was like a maelstrom – barely contained or ordered – with a hectic scrum of mounted knights wrestling their horses, each trying to plant a telling blow. In the first shock of contact ‘lances were broken and shattered, shields were holed and crushed’ and as a result, ‘all they had to strike each other with were the stumps’ of their lances, or their swords. A deafening wave of sound erupted, as the ‘din and uproar created by the blows of combat’ assaulted the senses, and the noise was such ‘that you would not have heard God’s thunder resounding’. As William’s biographer remarked, ‘the idle threats and boasts made back home’ were forgotten in these moments, as the real fighting began.

  Marshal proved his mettle that day. He was not thrown into hysterical panic by the first onslaught, nor paralysed by fear. Instead, ‘having broken his lance’, he was said to have drawn his sword and rushed ‘right into the fray to lay about him’. Not surprisingly, the History’s author used this first military encounter to highlight his hero’s martial prowess, and so William was depicted in grand terms, cutting ‘a swathe through the throng’ and ‘dealing violent blows [that] were greatly feared’. When the dust settled, everyone on both sides of the fray supposedly agreed that he had shown himself to be the finest warrior present. But this was Marshal unashamedly painted as the ‘valiant knight’ – the man he would become – not William, the twenty-year-old, untested warrior, tasting war for the first time. Even so, it is possible to piece together some sense of how the fighting played out in Neufchâtel.

  For much of this extended skirmish, Norman fortunes ebbed and flowed. On four separate occasions the enemy was driven back, only for them to regroup or be reinforced. At one point William became separated from the main party of Tancarville knights, having ridden into a small enclosure attached to a roadside farmhouse just as the Norman forces fell back. Seconds ticked by, yet no one seemed to notice the lone knight, isolated from his comrades. This dangerous moment could easily have ended in William’s capture. As it was, he snatched up a discarded lance and charged back out into the street, unhorsing an unsuspecting foe while bellowing ‘Tancarville! Tancarville!’ for all he was worth. The Normans swept forward once again to answer this rallying cry and the fracas continued. Marshal had learnt the value of a surprise flank attack.

  Later on, as the engagement drew to a close, he attempted to play the same trick again, but this time it had disastrous consequences. William charged back into the same enclosure only to find it filled with thirteen Flemish foot soldiers. Under normal circumstances this might have posed little problem. Even outnumbered and surrounded, Marshal was still in full armour and astride his warhorse. But things quickly took a turn for the worse when an enterprising Fleming grabbed a long, hook-tipped pole (normally used for pulling burning thatch from roofs) and began trying to rip William from his saddle. Caught on his shoulder, the iron hook began to bite and, clinging on as best he could, Marshal spurred his mount to make a hasty escape. The force of this sudden movement caused the hook to shred a section of William’s mail hauberk, leaving a nasty gash below, but he managed to pull free. It was only as he retreated down the street that he realised his horse had been gravely wounded. With blood streaming from its body, ‘its death was inevitable’. Not long after, the forces of Flanders, Ponthieu and Boulogne withdrew, leaving the Normans in control of Neufchâtel. William had survived his first day of fighting, but it had cost him his prized warhorse.

  That evening, the lord of Tancarville threw a sumptuous feast to celebrate the Norman victory. No expense was spared, and even knights from other retinues were welcomed. The tables were laden with food and, out of gratitude for their salvation, the townspeople supplied ‘valuable wines and very fine fruit’. On this evening of boisterous merriment William learnt an essential lesson – one that he would heed for the rest of his life. Still smarting at the death of his horse, he was nonetheless proud of his performance in the field. The hall was full of banter as knights traded tales of ‘mighty blows and fine deeds’, and William seems to have been well praised for his exploits. But then a knight apparently called out: ‘Marshal, make me a gift out of friendship; [give me] a harness or failing that an old horse-collar.’ Not realising that he was being set up for a joke, William innocently replied that he had never owned such things. ‘What’s that you say?’ the knight replied. ‘It is a trifling thing you refuse me’, and then went on to recount how he had seen Marshal best numerous warriors that day. How could it be that William had no spoils to share? At this everyone broke into laughter. They understood that feats of arms were all well and good, but a knight making his way in the real world had also to accrue more practical, financial gains. William had fought with some skill and courage at Neufchâtel, but took neither booty, nor valued prisoners who could later be ransomed for cash. All he had to show for his efforts was damaged armour and a dead horse.

  William’s crisis

  The conflict on Normandy’s border soon petered out and, before long, northern France returned to a state of relative peace. The chamberlain duly brought his household knights back to Tancarville, but with no sign of any impending military action, he seems to have taken a decision to reduce the size of his mesnie. Much to William Marshal’s horror, he now discovered that he had fallen out of favour. The cause of this rift remains unclear; the History skirted around the affair, noting only that the chamberlain ‘showed little kindness towards [William], and the latter was very ashamed’, but it must be likely that, as a junior knight of limited experience, Marshal was simply deemed surplus to requirements. He was not cast out of Tancarville exactly – his family connection to the chamberlain probably made such a brusque move unconscionable – but the patronage and shelter he had once enjoyed in the castle were withdrawn. Most critically of all, the chamberlain refused to furnish William with a new warhorse. He was a professional warrior without the most fundamental tool of his trade.

  This was the first crisis of Marshal’s adult life. He may have been a high-born knight, but he was also penniless and, as his biographer remarked, ‘poverty has brought dishonour on many a nobleman and been the ruin of them’. William was left with only a light palfrey for riding and a single servant willing to follow him. He could have considered returning to England. By this stage both of his elder half-brothers had died an
d, in 1165, his father, John Marshal, had also passed away. As a result, William’s elder brother John had inherited the remaining Marshal lands and his father’s office. William might have begged for a permanent position in the Marshal household, but this would have meant a career lived firmly in his brother’s shadow, awaiting John’s grace and favour. That was not the life that William wanted. He chose instead to forge his own path. The precious cloak received at his knighting was sold for the rather paltry sum of twenty-two Angevin shillings (the equivalent of five-and-a-half shillings sterling), and with this money William was able to buy a ‘hack’ to serve as a packhorse. Swallowing his pride, Marshal strapped his arms and armour to his new mount and prepared to seek his fortune.

  Part II

  ADULTHOOD:

  A KNIGHT IN SERVICE

  3

  A WARRIOR’S LIFE

  In 1166, William Marshal was a professional warrior, newly elevated to the status of a knight, in desperate search of work. His first taste of combat at Neufchâtel had left him with an appetite for action, but also cost him his warhorse. Having lost the favour of the lord of Tancarville, William was now staring at a potentially bleak future of poverty and obscurity. Marshal was not the only twelfth-century knight to find himself in this predicament – short of money and gainful employ. This was the era in which knighthood emerged as a distinct class and calling, attracting thousands of young nobles and aspiring, upwardly mobile men to its ranks. The obvious, and increasingly pressing, question was: what were these warriors actually supposed to do? How were they to find an outlet for their military skills and their social ambitions?