England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

CHAPTER V. (continued) — THE AFTERMATH AND THE SHAPE OF THE EMPIRE

The death of the young king transformed the Angevin succession. Henry, the heir to England, Normandy and Anjou, was gone; Richard, designated duke of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey, duke of Britanny, survived him. John, the favourite child, was still a boy. The greatest lordship in Christendom, the kingship of England, was now to fall to a warrior-king without pity or scruple; the duchy of Aquitaine, with all its storied cities and troubadour chivalry, was already in his hands by inheritance. But the policy of Henry Fitz-Empress—the double enterprise of English kingship and Angevin headship—had been proved once more a structure that could only be maintained by the strong hand of one man. It was evident that the lordship of the south, even more than the lordship of the north, would test the mettle of his heir. The first signs of trouble were at hand when, within two years of the young king’s death, news came from the Pyrenees that Sancho of Aragon had been murdered; that Richard’s claim to the county of Toulouse was about to be pressed afresh; and that Philip Augustus, now grown into a tall and subtle youth, was beginning to learn the arts by which he would one day break up the empire his father had never dared to attack.

Henry himself was broken in spirit by the death of his eldest son. He had loved that ungrateful and worthless youth as no other of his children; he had borne with his follies, his treasons, his mockeries, with a patience almost incredible. Within a few months the king who had set the seal upon the conquest of England and the defeat of feudalism in 1174 was to follow the coffin of his boy to Rouen cathedral, and to spend the rest of his troubled years in mourning for one whose penitence had come too late to undo his sins. The great edifice of Angevin power was yet standing; but its foundations had been shaken by the revolt of 1173, and the cracks in the masonry were beginning to widen. The task which had been the work of three generations was to be bequeathed, after all, to a king who would leave it in ruins within ten years of his accession.

Chapter V (Part 4)

When John was 15, Angevin dominions stretched from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees across the Channel. As head of the Angevin house and foremost descendant of Fulk the King and Fulk the Canon, Henry II ruled as king of England, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou; his heir the Young King had been crowned to share the realm, Richard held Aquitaine as duke, and Geoffrey (who married Constance in 1181) governed Brittany. Henry’s eldest surviving sons trained under Angevin justiciars across his French dominions, and the Norman Exchequer, shaped by Bishop of Winchester Richard of Ilchester (appointed 1174), pioneered sworn inquisitions, Pipe Rolls, and feudal incident collection prior to their adoption in England.

Chapter VI: The Last Years of Henry II (1183–1189)

The 1183 death of Henry’s eldest son devastated the Angevins; Bertrand de Born, whose sirventes had fueled the revolt, wrote a lament for him. The Young King’s body was carried through Anjou, but Le Mans bishops buried it beside Geoffrey Plantagenet, denying it to Rouen. The rebellion collapsed immediately: Ademar of Limoges surrendered on Midsummer Day, remaining rebels submitted within a month, Henry razed Limoges and marched to Normandy. Alfonso of Aragon joined Richard in besieging Bertrand’s castle Hautefort, which fell after a week. Richard granted it to Constantine, but Bertrand begged for its return and was brought before Henry; when Henry mocked his past boasts, Bertrand replied he had lost his wits the day Henry lost his son. Henry forgave him, paid his indemnity, restored Hautefort, and Bertrand served loyally thereafter.

Rouen had threatened to seize the Young King’s corpse, so Henry had it disinterred and sent to Rouen before securing Richard and Geoffrey’s submissions at Angers. Philip of France then demanded the widowed Young Queen Margaret’s dowry, centered on Gisors; after failed conferences, Henry did homage to Philip for his French territories, paid compensation for Gisors, and retained the town as dowry for Margaret’s sister Adela, Richard’s betrothed.

The Young King’s death upended the succession: Henry summoned his favourite son John from England via Ralf de Glanville, planning to transfer Aquitaine from Richard to John. Richard rejected the scheme, riding to Poitou to declare he would never cede Aquitaine after eight years of subjugation. After alternating threats and pleas, Henry authorized 15-year-old John to lead an army into Richard’s territories in spring 1184, though no campaign launched before Henry sailed for France in June. John and Geoffrey raided Richard’s lands, and Richard invaded Brittany in response. Henry summoned all three sons, and a staged reconciliation was held at Westminster on St Andrew’s Day, with Eleanor restored to favour. Henry abandoned the Aquitaine transfer, and on Mid-Lent Sunday 1185 knighted John at Windsor before dispatching him as governor of Ireland.

John’s Irish governorship was a disaster: he insulted English lords, mocked Irish leaders’ clothing, pulled their beards at Waterford, led a failed North Munster raid, and withheld troop pay. Henry recalled him in September, replacing him with John de Courcy, but secured Urban III’s approval to crown John king of Ireland using a peacock-feather crown.

Henry mediated a 1184 truce between Philip of France and Philip of Flanders over Amiens and Vermandois; when Philip broke it, Imperial restraint averted wider crisis. In April 1185 he mediated another quarrel between Richard and John, with Richard as the aggressor; Henry demanded Richard surrender Aquitaine to Eleanor rather than John, and Richard—who always treated his mother with profound respect—submitted.

Nine months of peace followed before King Béla of Hungary’s suit for Margaret reopened the dower question. At an early 1186 Gisors conference, Henry resolved both disputes: Philip agreed to leave Gisors on the condition Richard marry Adela, while Richard was sent to Aquitaine as Henry’s representative with fortresses placed under royal officers, and Eleanor returned to England, never to hold real governing authority again.

England was now Henry’s only refuge. In these closing years of his reign, when the story centers almost entirely on the king, the few incidents on English ground stand in stark contrast to the continental chaos threatening the Angevin dominions under his watch. Each of his visits to England marked a new sign of his firm grip on the island realm and its dependencies, or of the lofty position England held among global powers under his rule. We hear almost nothing of England’s internal affairs beyond a few ecclesiastical details, and scarcely more of Wales and Scotland.

In 1184 Henry led an army into South Wales, and Rees submitted at Worcester upon hearing of the advance. William the Lion sought Henry’s granddaughter Matilda of Saxony in marriage, but papal dispensation was refused; in 1186 Henry proposed William marry Hermengard of Beaumont instead. The marriage was celebrated at Woodstock on 5 September after Galloway’s submission at Carlisle, with Henry contributing Edinburgh Castle to the dowry.