HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS.
1149–1154.
No loving hands have done for the early life of Henry Fitz-Empress what
they did for that of his contemporary, his friend, his opponent Thomas
of London; we have no stories of his boyhood, no picture of his home.
Home indeed, in the full sense of the word, he never had and never
could have. That instinctive attachment to one particular spot, or at
the least to one particular country, which is innate in most men, was
to a child of Geoffrey and Matilda simply impossible. Geoffrey was the
son of an Angevin count and a Cenomannian countess; Matilda was the
daughter of a king born in England of a Norman father and a Flemish
mother, and of a queen whose parents were the one a Scottish Celt, the
other a West-Saxon with a touch of High-German blood. In the temper
of the Empress the Norman element was undoubtedly the strongest; no
trace can be seen in her of the gentle spirit of her mother; and it
is clear that no lingering regrets for the land of her birth[1083]
haunted the girl-bride of the Emperor in her palace at Aachen as they
haunted the monk Orderic, from boyhood to old age, in his cell at
Saint-Evroul. Yet when she came to Normandy in her twenty-third year,
she came there unwillingly and as a complete stranger. If Henry was
to inherit any national or patriotic feeling at all, it could not be
from his mother; what she transmitted to him instead was a sort of
cosmopolitanism which saved the future duke of Normandy and king of
England from the too exclusive influence of the demon-blood of Anjou,
not by making him a Norman, still less an Englishman, but by rendering
his nationality a yet more insoluble problem than her own. Even in
his father, too, there are signs of a divided national sentiment.
The son of Aremburg of Maine, the grandson and heir of Elias, could
not cling to the black rock of Angers with the exclusive attachment
of its earlier counts; a share of his patriotic affection and pride
must have been given to that other, red rock above the Sarthe which
had held out so long and so bravely against both Normandy and Anjou,
to that Cenomannian land of heroes which Norman and Angevin alike had
counted it their highest glory to overcome and win. It may have been by
chance, or it may have been of set purpose, that Geoffrey and Matilda
were at Le Mans when their first child was born; no other spot could
have been half so appropriate. The land which Normans and Angevins and
even Englishmen[1084] had done their utmost to wipe out of the list of
states, the land whose claim to a separate existence, ignored or denied
by them all, had yet proved the insurmountable stumbling-block which
forced them into union:--that land was the most fitting birth-place
for the child who was to be neither Norman, nor Angevin, nor English,
and yet was to be all three at once. The vengeance of Maine upon her
conquerors formed a characteristic close to her national career. They
had swallowed her up at last; but they had no sooner done it than she
gave a master to them all.
[1083] She was born in London: Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
_Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 13.
[1084] Eng. Chron. a. 1073.
If, then, Normandy, England and Anjou had each a part in Henry, Le Mans
had two parts, as being at once the home of his father’s mother and
the scene of his own birth. His earliest recollections, however, must
rather have been associated with Normandy. His first journey thither
was made when he was about twelve months old, when he accompanied
his mother on a visit to King Henry in the spring 1134. His brother
Geoffrey was born at Argentan on June 1, and the two children narrowly
escaped being left motherless under their grandfather’s care.[1085]
Possibly this made them all the dearer to him; he certainly found in
them his last earthly pleasure, of which he was finally deprived by a
quarrel with their mother, who seems to have sent them back to Angers
shortly before her own return thither in the autumn of 1135.[1086] For
the next seven years little Henry can have seen nothing of his future
duchy; and we have no means of knowing whether its stately capital,
its people, its dialect, had left any impression upon him, or whether
any dim personal remembrance was associated in his mind with that name
of “my grandfather King Henry” to which he appealed so constantly in
later life. His training, after his return to Angers as before, must
have devolved chiefly upon Matilda; for Geoffrey during the next three
years was too busy with unsuccessful fighting abroad in the interest
of his wife and son to have much leisure for devoting himself to their
society at home. It was not till the close of 1138 that his influence
can have been seriously brought to bear upon his children, of whom
there were now three, another son, named William, having been born in
August 1136.[1087] After the disaster of Toucques the count appears
to have spent his time until the beginning of 1141 for the most part
quietly at home, where his wife’s departure over sea left him in his
turn sole guardian of his boys. In one respect at least he did not
neglect his paternal duty. “Unlettered king, crowned ass,” was a
reproach which would have fallen with double disgrace upon the son of
Geoffrey Plantagenet and the grandson of Henry I.; and Geoffrey took
care that his firstborn should never be exposed to it. It may even
be that in those two years when war and politics left him at leisure
for the quieter enjoyments of his books, his hunting and his home,
the young father himself took up the task, of which he was certainly
quite capable, of instilling into his child the first rudiments of
that book-learning which he loved so well. At any rate, it was he who
chose the first teacher to whom Henry’s education was intrusted. As if
on purpose to add one more to the varied influences already working
in that young mind, the teacher was neither Angevin, nor Cenomannian,
nor Norman. He was one Master Peter of Saintes, “learned above all his
contemporaries in the science of verse.”[1088]
[1085] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1134 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 33);
Rob. Torigni, a. 1134. Cf. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. cc.
27, 28 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, pp. 305, 306).
[1086] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (as above, p.
310).
[1087] Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._
[1088] “Hic [sc. Gaufridus] filium suum Enricum natu majorem ad
erudiendum tradidit cuidam magistro Petro scilicet Xantonensi,
qui in metris instructus est super omnes coætaneos suos.” Anon.
Chron., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 120.
Under Peter’s care the boy remained till the close of 1142, when, as
we have seen, he was sent to England in company with his uncle Robert
of Gloucester. Henry now entered upon a third phase of education.
For the next four years his uncle took charge of him and kept him in
his own household at Bristol under the care of one Master Matthew,
by whom he was to be “imbued with letters and instructed in good
manners, as beseemed a youth of his rank.”[1089] This arrangement
may have been due to the Empress, or it may have originated with
Geoffrey when he sent the boy over sea in the earl’s company; for
much as they differed in other matters, on the subject of a boy’s
training the two brothers-in-law could hardly fail to be of the same
mind. A well-balanced compound of soldier, statesman and scholar
was Earl Robert’s ideal no less than Count Geoffrey’s; an ideal so
realized in his own person that he might safely be trusted to watch
over its developement in the person of his little nephew. As far as
the military element was concerned, the earl of Gloucester, with his
matured experience and oft-proved valour, was no less capable than
the count of Anjou of furnishing a model of all knightly prowess,
skill and courtesy; and if Henry’s chivalry was to be tempered with
discretion--if it was to be regulated by a wise and wary policy--if he
was to acquire any insight into the principles of sound and prudent
state-craft--Robert was certainly, among the group of adventurers
who surrounded the Empress, the only man from whom he could learn
anything of the kind. The boy was indeed scarce ten years old, and
even for the heir of Anjou and England it was perhaps somewhat too
early to begin such studies as these. For the literary side of his
education, later years proved that Robert’s choice of a teacher was as
good as Geoffrey’s had been; the seed sowed by Peter of Saintes was
well watered by Matthew, and it seems to have brought forth in his
young pupil’s mind a harvest of gratitude as well as of learning, for
among the chancellors of King Henry II. there appears a certain “Master
Matthew” who can hardly be any other than his old teacher.[1090]
[1089] “Puer autem Henricus sub tutelâ Comitis Roberti apud
Bristoviam degens, per quatuor annos traditus est magisterio
cujusdam Mathæi, litteris imbuendus et moribus honestis ut
talem decebat puerum instituendus.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs.), vol.
i. p. 125.
[1090] “The person meant was no doubt that Matthew who is
called Henry’s chancellor in Foliot’s letters.” Stubbs,
_Gerv. Cant._, vol. i. p. 125, note 2. (“Master Matthew, the
chancellor,” is named in Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cli., Giles, vol.
i. pp. 201, 202). In his _Lect. on Med. and Mod. Hist._, p.
120, Bishop Stubbs speaks of Matthew as the king’s “tutor, who
was some time his chancellor, and who probably was identical
with the Bishop of Angers, Matthew of London.” Bishop Matthew
of Angers is described by the editors of _Gall. Christ._ (vol.
xiv. col. 570) as a native of _Loudun_--“Losduni natus.” He was
consecrated in 1155, which seems hardly to leave time for his
chancellorship.
To teach the boy “good manners”--in the true sense of those words--must
have been a somewhat difficult task amid his present surroundings.
Bristol, during the years of Henry’s residence there, fully kept up
its character as the “stepmother of all England”; he must have been
continually seeing or hearing of bands of soldiers issuing from the
castle to ravage and plunder, burn and slay, or troops of captives
dragged in to linger in its dungeons till they had given up their
uttermost farthing or were set free by a miserable death. It seems
likely, however, that the worst of these horrors occurred during
Robert’s absence and without his sanction, for even the special
panegyrist of Stephen gives the earl credit for doing his utmost to
maintain order and justice in the shires over which he ruled.[1091] It
was not his fault if matters had drifted into such a state that his
efforts were worse than useless; and his good intentions were at any
rate not more ineffectual than those of the king. Within the domestic
circle itself it is not unlikely that the child was better placed under
the influence of Robert and Mabel than either in the household of his
violent-tempered mother or in that of his refined but selfish father,
whom he rejoined in the spring of 1147, a year before the return of the
Empress. He was in his sixteenth year when Geoffrey ceded to him the
duchy of Normandy. A boy of that age, especially in the house of Anjou,
was counted a man, and expected to act as such. The cession was in fact
intended and understood as a solemn proclamation both to friends and
foes that henceforth they would have to deal with King Henry’s chosen
heir no longer indirectly, but in his own person; that his rights were
to be vindicated in future not by his parents but by himself.
[1091] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 94.
He lost no time in beginning his work. In the middle of May 1149
Stephen, while endeavouring to put down a fresh revolt of the earls of
Chester and Pembroke,[1092] was startled by news of Henry’s arrival in
England. The young duke of the Normans landed we know not where, and
made his way northward, recruiting a few of his mother’s old adherents
as he went: his great-uncle King David welcomed him at Carlisle, and
there knighted him on Whit-Sunday.[1093] Stephen evidently took this
act as a challenge, for he immediately retorted by knighting his eldest
son Eustace, thus pointedly setting up his own heir as a rival to his
young kinsman.[1094] He then hastened with all his forces to York,
but no hostilities took place.[1095] The intended campaign of David
and Henry was frustrated by Ralf of Chester’s failure to keep his
engagement with them;[1096] the two kings sat awhile, one at York and
the other at Carlisle, each waiting for the other to strike, till David
grew weary and retired to his own kingdom,[1097] taking his nephew with
him; and in January Henry again withdrew beyond the sea.[1098] He saw
that the political scales were as yet too evenly balanced to be turned
by the mere weight of his maiden sword; and his work was being done for
him, better than he could do it himself, by clerk and primate, abbot
and Pope--most surely of all, by the blundering king himself.
[1092] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 124–127, gives the details
of this rising.
[1093] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 140, 141. Cf. Hen.
Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282). Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p.
159. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. The writer of _Gesta Steph._ (pp.
128, 129) has a most romantic account of Henry’s adventures.
Henry, he says, came over with a very small force, and nothing
to pay them with except promises. He made an attempt upon
Bourton and Cricklade, and was repulsed; whereupon his troops
all fell away and left him so helpless that he was obliged to
ask his mother for some money. She had none to give him; he
then asked his uncle Gloucester, but the latter, “suis sacculis
avide incumbens,” refused. Then Henry in desperation appealed
to the king, beseeching his compassion for the sake of their
kindred blood; and Stephen at once sent him the needful sum.
The trait is just what might be expected in Stephen; but it is
hard to conceive Henry ever getting into such a plight; and the
mention of Robert of Gloucester as still alive shews there must
be something wrong in the story.
[1094] Hen. Hunt. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. _Gesta
Steph._ (Sewell), p. 130.
[1095] Hen. Hunt. as above.
[1096] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 159, 160. Ralf had agreed to
give up his claims on Carlisle and accept instead the honour
of Lancaster for himself and the hand of one of David’s
granddaughters for his son; he promised on these conditions to
join David and Henry in an attack upon Lancaster, but was, as
usual, false to the tryst.
[1097] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282).
[1098] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 142.
A double chain connected English politics with those of the Roman
court. The links of the one chain were S. Bernard and Henry Murdac;
those of the other were Theobald of Canterbury and Thomas of London.
What was the exact nature of those communications between the primate
and the Pope of which Thomas was the medium--how much of the credit of
Theobald’s policy is due to himself and how much to his confidential
instrument and adviser--we have no means of determining precisely.
The aim of that policy was to consolidate the forces of the English
Church by deepening her intercourse and strengthening her connexion
with the sister-Churches of the West, and thus bring the highest
religious and political influences of Latin Christendom to bear upon
the troubles of the English state. The way had been paved by Henry of
Winchester in his legatine days. He and the councils which he convened
had first suggested the possibility of finding a remedy for the lack
of secular administration in an appeal to the authority of the canon
law, now formulated as a definite code by the labours of a Bolognese
lawyer, Gratian. The very strifes and jealousies which arose from
Henry’s over-vigorous assertion of his authority tended to a like
result; they led to more frequent appeals to Rome, to elaborate legal
pleadings, to the drawing of subtle legal distinctions unknown to the
old customary procedure of the land; as a contemporary writer expresses
it, “Then were laws and lawyers first brought into England.”[1099] On
the Continent the study of the civil jurisprudence of the Roman Empire
had been revived together with that of the canon law; some members of
Archbishop Theobald’s household resolved to introduce it into England,
hoping thereby, as it seems, to sow amid the general confusion some
seeds of a more orderly and law-abiding spirit. During the time of
comparative quiet which intervened between his first journey to Rome in
1143 and his expedition with Theobald to the council of Reims in 1148,
Thomas of London had spent a year at Bologna and Auxerre to perfect
himself in the literary culture which he had somewhat neglected in
his youth.[1100] The university of Bologna was the chief seat of the
new legal learning; it may therefore have been through Thomas that a
Lombard teacher, Vacarius, was induced to visit England in 1149 and
open lectures at Oxford on the Roman law.[1101] Rich and poor flocked
to hear him, and at the request of his poorer scholars he made an
abridgement of the Code and Digests, sufficient for practical use,
and more within reach of their scanty means than the heavy folios of
Justinian.[1102] His lectures however were summarily brought to an end
by order of the king; Stephen, scared by young Duke Henry’s presence
in the north, jealous of the primate, jealous of the Church, jealous
of everything in which he saw or thought he saw the least token of an
influence which might be used against himself, at once silenced the
teacher and ordered the students to give up their books. He gained
as little as is usually gained by such a mode of proceeding in such
cases. The study of the civil law only spread and prospered the more
for his efforts to hinder it;[1103] and the law-school of the future
university of Oxford may have sprung from a germ left in the cloisters
of Oseney or S. Frideswide’s by the brief visit of the Lombard master,
just as the divinity-school may have sprung from a germ left there
sixteen years before by the lectures of Robert Pulein.
[1099] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.
[1100] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
17.
[1101] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. Joh.
Salisb., _Polycraticus_, l. viii. c. 22 (Giles, vol. iv. p.
357), says that “domus venerabilis patris Theobaldi” brought
the Roman law into England.
[1102] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149.
[1103] Joh. Salisb. as above.
Stephen had struck at the southern primate indirectly this time; with
the northern one he was still at open feud. One use which he made of
his stay in Yorkshire was to exact a heavy fine from the inhabitants
of Beverley, as a punishment for having given shelter to Henry Murdac.
After the king’s departure the archbishop at last succeeded in
enforcing his interdict at York; Eustace hurried thither, insisted upon
the restoration of the services, and drove out all who refused to take
part in them; there was a great tumult, in which the senior archdeacon
was killed by the followers of the king’s son.[1104] About the same
time a cardinal-legate, John Paparo, on his way to Ireland, asked for a
safe-conduct through the dominions of the English king; Stephen refused
to give it unless he would promise to do nothing on his journey to the
prejudice of the English realm. John went home highly indignant at such
an insinuation against his honour and that of the Apostolic See.[1105]
Meanwhile Archbishop Murdac was writing bitter complaints both to S.
Bernard and to the Pope. They apparently determined to give Stephen a
warning which even he could not fail to understand; and they did it by
sending a commission as resident legate _a latere_ for all Britain to
the archbishop of Canterbury.[1106]
[1104] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17
(Howlett, vol. i. pp. 56, 57).
[1105] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 164. In the _Hist. Pontif._
(Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. pp. 518, 519) this first
legation of John Paparo seems to be dated some years earlier.
But the _Hist. Pontif._ is very erratic in its chronology; and
John of Hexham seems quite clear and consistent in his account
of the matter.
[1106] The date of Theobald’s legatine commission seems to be
nowhere stated. He had certainly received it before Lent 1151;
it was therefore in all probability granted some time in 1150,
under the circumstances related above.
The warning took effect; Stephen changed his policy at once. He was
weary of all his fruitless labour; his chief anxiety now was to secure
the crown to his son; and he suddenly awoke to the necessity of setting
himself right with the one power which alone could enable him to carry
out his desire. Eustace himself was sent to act as mediator between
his father and Henry Murdac; a reconciliation took place, and the
archbishop was enthroned at York on S. Paul’s day 1151. Thence he went
to keep Easter with the Pope, having undertaken, at Stephen’s request,
to intercede for him with Eugene concerning the state of politics in
England, and especially to obtain, if possible, the papal sanction
to a formal acknowledgement of Eustace as heir to the crown.[1107]
The southern primate meanwhile was beginning his legatine career with
a Mid-Lenten council in London, at which Stephen, Eustace, and the
principal barons of England were present. The main feature of this
council was a crowd of appeals to Rome, whereof three were made by
the bishop of Winchester.[1108] One of these appeals must have been
against the suspension to which he had been sentenced at the council
of Reims, and by which the Pope, less placable than the primate, still
held him bound. Moreover, complaints against him were pouring into
Rome from all quarters; so he carried his appeals in person, and went
to clear himself before the supreme pontiff. He succeeded in obtaining
absolution;[1109] his friends, of whom there were still many at
the papal court, tried hard to win for him something more--either a
renewal of the legation, or the accomplishment of his old scheme of a
primacy over Wessex, or at least the exemption of his own see from the
jurisdiction of Canterbury; but Eugene was inexorable. He believed that
Stephen’s misconduct towards the Church was instigated by his brother;
a very natural view, but somewhat unjust to the bishop.[1110] The
truth seems rather to be that Henry, after vainly trying to rule the
storm, had for awhile been swept away by its violence. Now he had
emerged into the calm once more; and there henceforth he was content
to remain. He consoled himself for the failure of his political hopes
with a choice collection of antique statues purchased in Rome for the
adornment of his palace at Winchester, and sailed quietly home with
these treasures, stopping on his way to pay his devotions at the shrine
of S. James at Compostella.[1111] At his request the Pope ordered
Archbishop Murdac to absolve Hugh of Puiset, who was making himself
useful at Winchester, not on clerical duty, but in taking charge of the
bishop’s castles during his absence.[1112] With Hugh’s absolution the
schism in the northern province came to an end, and the English Church
was once again reunited.
[1107] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 162.
[1108] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 282): “Totum illud
concilium novis appellationibus infrenduit.” It is, however,
rather too hard upon Henry of Winchester when he adds that
appeals to Rome had not been used in England till that prelate
in his legatine days “malo suo crudeliter intrusit.”
[1109] Ann. Winton. a. 1151 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii.
pp. 54, 55).
[1110] As the author of the _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon.
Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p. 542) truly says: “Credebatur
fratrem suum regem contra ecclesiam instigare; sed rex, quod
manifesta declarant opera, nec illius nec sapientis alterius
consilio agebatur.”
[1111] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
p. 542.
[1112] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 158, 162. He places Hugh’s
absolution in 1150, but on his own shewing it cannot have
occurred before 1151.
For England and for Stephen alike the prospect seemed to be
brightening. Stephen however was clearly beginning to feel that for
him as well as for his Angevin rivals it was time to give place to
a younger generation. It must have been chiefly for Eustace’s sake
that he valued his crown; and in Eustace’s case, as in that of Henry
Fitz-Empress, there were many circumstances which might make the
pretensions of the child more generally acceptable than those of the
parent. Eustace seems to have been about the same age as Henry, or
probably a few years older; he was free from the personal obloquy
and suspicion attaching to Stephen from the errors of the past; on
the other hand, as the son of Matilda of Boulogne, he might reap the
benefit of his mother’s well-earned personal popularity, as well as
of her descent from the royal house of Wessex. Henceforth, therefore,
Stephen showed a disposition to treat Henry Fitz-Empress as the rival
less of himself than of his son, and to follow up every movement in
Henry’s public life by a parallel step in the career of Eustace. And
as Henry’s first independent act had been a sort of reconnoitring
expedition to England, so the first retaliation was a visit made by
Eustace to the king of France, with a view to ascertain his chances of
support in an attempt to regain Normandy.
The existing phase of the rivalry between the houses of Anjou and
Blois--their struggle for the dominion of Normandy and England--was
a matter which concerned the interests of the French Crown almost
as deeply as the earlier phase in which Fulk the Black and Odo of
Champagne strove with each other for political mastery over their
common lord paramount. Neither the accumulation of England, Normandy,
Maine, Anjou and Touraine in a single hand, nor the acquisition of
Normandy and England by a branch of the mighty and troublesome house
which already held Blois, Chartres and Champagne, could be viewed by
the French king without grave uneasiness. Either alternative had its
dangers; to Louis VII., however, the danger would appear much less
threatening than to his father. Shortly before the dying Louis VI.
granted the investiture of Normandy to Stephen’s little son in 1137,
the last of the old line of the dukes of Aquitaine--William IX., son
of the gay crusader and troubadour whom the Red King had hoped to
succeed--died on a pilgrimage at Compostella.[1113] His only son was
already dead, and before setting out for his pilgrimage he did what a
greater personage had done ten years before: with the consent of his
barons, he left the whole of his dominions to his daughter. Moreover,
he bequeathed the girl herself as wife to the young King Louis of
France.[1114] This marriage more than doubled the strength of the
French Crown. It gave to Louis absolute possession of all western
Aquitaine, or Guyenne as it was now beginning to be called; that is,
the counties of Poitou and Gascony, with the immediate overlordship
of the whole district lying between the Loire and the Pyrenees, the
Rhône and the ocean:--a territory five or six times as large as his
own royal domain, and over which his predecessors had never been able
to assert more than the merest shadow of a nominal superiority.[1115]
To a man who was at once king of France and duke of Aquitaine it was
comparatively no great matter whether the dominions of Henry I. were to
be annexed to those of Geoffrey of Anjou or allied to those of Theobald
of Blois. The truest interest of France, however, obviously was that
England and Normandy should be divided, one of them being held by each
of the two competitors; and it was doubtless with this view that Louis,
while sanctioning and aiding Geoffrey’s conquest of the Norman duchy,
still kept on peaceful terms with the English king, and held to a
promise of marriage made some years before between his own sister and
Stephen’s son Eustace.[1116]
[1113] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 909.
_Hist. Franc._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.), p. 116.
Anon. Chron. (_ibid._) p. 119. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Maxent.
a. 1137 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 34, 432).
[1114] Suger, _Vita Ludov._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.)
p. 62. Chron. Mauriniac. (_ibid._) p. 83. _Hist. Franc._
(_ibid._), p. 116. Ord. Vit. as above. See also Besly, _Comtes
de Poitou_, p. 137.
[1115] Perhaps the most striking indication of the importance
of the duke of Aquitaine is the ceremony of the ducal crowning,
which Louis, as husband of the duchess, underwent at Poitiers
immediately after his marriage; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
Norm. Scriptt._), p. 911. There was a special “Ordo ad
benedicendum ducem Aquitaniæ” (printed in Besly, _Comtes de
Poitou, preuves_, pp. 183 _et seq._, and _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
vol. xii. pp. 451–453), nearly as solemn as the office for the
crowning of a king.
[1116] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
112. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 125.
At the time of Geoffrey’s final success Louis was at deadly strife
with the count of Blois; a strife in which the king was wholly in the
wrong, and for whose disastrous consequences he afterwards grieved so
deeply that his penitence was the chief motive which induced him to
go on crusade.[1117] Since then, Geoffrey in his turn had incurred
the royal displeasure. There was a certain Gerald, lord of a castle
called Montreuil-Bellay, near the southern border of Anjou--one of
the fortresses raised by the great castle-builder Fulk Nerra in the
earliest days of his warfare with Odo of Blois--whom an Angevin
chronicler describes as an absolute monster of wickedness,[1118] but
who had so won the favour of the king that he made him seneschal of
Poitou. In 1147 this Gerald was the ring-leader of a fresh revolt of
the Angevin barons against their count. The revolt was as usual soon
put down: but it was not so easy to punish Gerald; for Montreuil was
an almost impregnable fortress, with a keep of great strength and
height, “lifting itself up to the stars,” surrounded by a double wall
and rampart, and further protected by an encircling chasm, very deep
and precipitous, which was called the “Valley of Judas,” and prevented
any engines of war from coming within range of the castle.[1119] Some
time in 1148 Geoffrey built three towers of stone in the neighbourhood
of Montreuil, as a base for future operations against it.[1120] In
the summer of 1150 an outrage committed by Gerald upon the abbot and
monks of S. Aubin at Angers brought matters to a crisis;[1121] Geoffrey
made the monks’ quarrel his own and at once set his engineers to level
the ground all around Montreuil, in preparation for bringing up his
machines to the assault. After nearly twelve months’ labour,[1122]
however, the “Judas-Valley” still yawned between himself and his
foes, till he ordered the annual fair usually held at Saumur to be
transferred to Montreuil. In a fortnight the energies of the crowd
who flocked to the fair, joined to those of his own soldiers, filled
up the valley and made it into level ground.[1123] Geoffrey could now
bring his engines within range, and he used them with such effect that
at the first assault the outworks were destroyed and the garrison
driven to take refuge in the keep. A summons to surrender was, however,
scornfully rejected by Gerald, trusting in the strength of his tower
and the expected help of the king.[1124]
[1117] See Arbois de Jubainville, _Comtes de Champagne_, vol.
ii. pp. 344 _et seq._
[1118] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 84.
[1119] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 282–284.
See also Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 147).
[1120] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. As he himself, as well as the
chronicles, makes the siege last altogether three years and end
in 1151, he must mean 1148.
[1121] See the whole curious story in _Cartæ et Chronn. de
Obedientiâ Mairomni_ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), pp. 65 _et seq._
[1122] Chron. Mairom. (as above), p. 87. Chron. S. Serg. a.
1151 (_ib._ p. 147).
[1123] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 284.
[1124] _Ib._ p. 285.
For Louis had now returned from Palestine;[1125] and so great was his
wrath at Geoffrey’s treatment of his favourite that he consented to
join Eustace in an attack upon the Norman duchy. Its defence was left
to its young duke, then busy with the siege of Torigni on the Vire,
held against him by his cousin Richard Fitz-Count--a son of Earl Robert
of Gloucester.[1126] Louis and Eustace marched upon Arques; Henry led
a force of Normans, Angevins and Bretons to meet them; but his “older
and wiser” barons averted a battle,[1127] and nothing more came of the
expedition. Geoffrey had never stirred from his camp before Montreuil.
Despite a formidable array of engines,[1128] he made little progress;
every breach made in the walls by day was mended by night with oaken
beams, of which the besieged seemed to have a never-ending supply.
Geoffrey was characteristically taking counsel with his books as to the
best method of overcoming this difficulty when some monks of Marmoutier
came to him on an errand for their convent. One of them took up the
book which the count laid down--the treatise of Vegetius Renatus _De
Re Militari_, then, and long after, the standard work on military
engineering. It may have been some memory of bygone days when he, too,
had worn helm and hauberk instead of cowl and scapulary that brought
into the monk’s eyes a gleam which made Geoffrey exclaim, “Stay with
me till to-morrow, good brother, and what you are now reading shall be
put in action before you.” Next day a large red-hot iron vessel filled
with boiling oil was launched from the beam of a mangonel against one
of the timber insertions in the wall, and its bursting set the whole
place on fire.[1129] Gerald, his spirit broken at last, came forth with
his family and his garrison “like serpents crawling out of a cave,” as
a hostile chronicler says,[1130] and surrendered to the mercy of the
count, who sent him to prison at Angers. The keep was razed at once,
save one fragment of wall, left by Geoffrey, and still standing at this
hour, as a memorial of his victory and of the skill and perseverance by
which it had been won.[1131]
[1125] He returned in the autumn of 1149. See Rob. Torigni, _ad
ann._, and M. Delisle’s note thereon, vol. i. p. 252, note 1.
[1126] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 and 1154.
[1127] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151. See also Chronn. S. Albin. a.
1150 and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 36, 148).
[1128] “Petroritas, fundibularias, mangonellos et arietes,”
_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 285, and “sex
tormenta quæ vulgo perreriæ vocantur.” Chron. S. Serg. (as
above), p. 147.
[1129] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 286, 287. The monk
is called “frater G.” M. Marchegay suggests that he may have
been the “Gauterius Compendiensis,” monk of Marmoutier, whom
the writer names among his authorities in the Proœmium to his
_Hist. Abbrev._ (_ib._ p. 353). If so, this detailed account
of the last scene at the siege of Montreuil is due to an
eye-witness.
[1130] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 87.
[1131] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 287.
The count of Anjou now moved northward to help his son against the
king. By the help of a brother of his old ally William Talvas he gained
possession of La Nue, a castle belonging to the king’s brother Count
Robert of Dreux.[1132] Louis and Robert avenged themselves by burning
the town of Séez. Presently after, in August, Louis gathered together
all his forces and brought them down the Seine to a spot between
Meulan and Mantes. Geoffrey and Henry collected an opposing army on
their side of the Norman border; but an attack of fever detained the
king in Paris, and a truce was made until he should recover.[1133] The
ostensible ground of the dispute was Geoffrey’s treatment of Gerald
of Montreuil, which certainly seems to have been unjustly cruel. Not
content with receiving his unconditional surrender, razing his castle,
and forcing him to make full atonement to the injured monks of S.
Aubin, Geoffrey still persisted in keeping in prison not only Gerald
himself but also his whole family. The Pope anathematized him for his
unchristianlike severity;[1134] but anathemas usually fell powerless
upon an Angevin count. Geoffrey was in truth visiting upon Gerald his
wrath at the double-dealing of Gerald’s royal master; for he was well
aware that King Louis’s interference was prompted by far other motives
than disinterested sympathy for his seneschal. Louis was, according to
his wont, playing fast and loose with the rival claimants of Normandy,
in such shameless fashion that his own chief minister, Suger, had
been the first to reprove him in strong terms for his unwarrantable
attack upon the Angevins, had stood firmly by Geoffrey all through the
struggle, and was now endeavouring, through the mediation of the count
of Vermandois and the bishop of Lisieux, to baffle the schemes of
Eustace and his party and bring the king back to his old alliance with
Anjou.[1135]
[1132] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 (Delisle, vol. i. p. 254; see the
editor’s note 3, _ib._)
[1133] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.
[1134] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).
[1135] Suger, Epp. cl., cliii., clxvii., clxviii., clxxv.
(Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 186, cols. 1418, 1419–1420,
1427–1429, 1432).
As soon as Louis was sufficiently recovered a meeting was held in Paris
to discuss the possibility of a settlement, and the cause of peace
was pleaded by no less an advocate than S. Bernard in person. But,
almost for the first time, Bernard pleaded in vain; Geoffrey started
up in the midst of the colloquy, and without a word of salutation to
any one, sprang upon his horse and rode away. The assembly broke up in
despair, and Gerald, who had been brought to hear its result, threw
himself at the feet of S. Bernard to implore a last benediction before
returning, as he thought, to lifelong captivity. “Fear not,” replied
the saint, “deliverance is nearer than you think.” Scarcely had the
prisoner turned away when his jailer reappeared.[1136] Geoffrey during
his solitary ride had revolved the political situation in his mind and
perceived that for his son’s sake he must make peace with the king.
Matters in England had reached such a crisis that it was absolutely
necessary to secure Henry’s tenure of Normandy, as he might at any
moment be required to go beyond sea. To that end Geoffrey did more than
give up his personal vengeance upon Gerald of Montreuil; he persuaded
Henry to give up the Norman Vexin--the land between the Epte and the
Andelle, so long the battle-ground of France and Normandy--to the king
of France, in exchange for the investiture of the rest of the duchy.
If we may believe the French chroniclers, the young duke made a yet
further sacrifice and became the “liegeman” of the king--a form of
homage to which none of his predecessors had ever stooped.[1137] Of
the homage in some shape or other there is however no doubt;[1138]
and it appears that the same opportunity was taken to secure for
Henry, without waiting for his father’s death, the investiture of his
father’s own dominions.[1139]
[1136] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
Opp._, Mabillon, vol. i. col. 1135).
[1137] _Hist. Ludov._, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 127;
_Chron. Reg. Franc._ (_ibid._), p. 213. Both these writers,
however, tell an apocryphal story of Louis, at Geoffrey’s and
Henry’s request, reconquering the duchy for them and receiving
these concessions in return for his help.
[1138] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.
[1139] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 291 (Marchegay, _Comtes_,
p. 336).
Geoffrey was but just entering his thirty-ninth year, and one can
hardly help speculating for a moment as to his plans for his own
future. For him, now that his work in the west was done, there was no
such brilliant opening in the east as there had been for Fulk V. when
he, too, in the prime of manhood, had chosen to make way for a younger
generation. But Geoffrey had begun public life at an earlier age than
either his father or his son; and he seems to have had neither the
moral nor the physical strength which had enabled one Angevin count
to carry on for half a century, without break and without slackening,
the work upon which he had entered before he was fifteen, and to
die in harness at the very crowning-point of his activity and his
success. Geoffrey Plantagenet was no Fulk Nerra; he was not even a
Fulk of Jerusalem; and he may well have been weary of a political
career which must always have been embittered by a feeling that he was
the mere representative of others, labouring not for himself, hardly
even for his country or his race, but only that the one might be
swallowed up in the vast dominions and the other merged in the royal
line of his ancestors’ Norman foe. He may have seriously intended to
pass the rest of his days among his books; or he may have felt an
inner warning that those days were to be very few. With a perversity
which may after all have been partly the effect of secretly failing
health, although he had now set Gerald at liberty he still refused
to acknowledge that he had treated him with unjust severity, or to
seek absolution from the Pope’s censure; and he even answered with
blasphemous words to the gentle remonstrances of S. Bernard. “With
what measure thou hast meted it shall be meted to thee again” said the
saint at last as he turned away; one of his followers, more impetuous,
boldly prophesied that Geoffrey would die within a year. He did die
within a fortnight.[1140] On his way home from the king’s court,[1141]
overcome with the heat, he plunged into a river to cool himself;[1142]
a fever was the consequence; he was borne to Château-du-Loir, and
there on September 7 he passed away.[1143] His last legacy to his son
was a piece of good advice, given almost with his dying breath:--not
to change the old customs of the lands over which he was called to
rule, whether by bringing those of Normandy and England into Anjou,
or by seeking to transfer those of the Angevin dominions into the
territories which he inherited from his mother.[1144] Dying in the
little border-fortress whence his grandfather Elias had gone forth to
liberate Maine, Geoffrey was buried, by his own desire, not among his
Angevin forefathers at Tours or at Angers, but in his mother’s home at
Le Mans.[1145] A splendid tomb, bearing his effigy adorned with gold
and gems, was raised over his remains in the cathedral church,[1146]
whence it has disappeared to become a mere antiquarian curiosity in a
museum. Geoffrey’s sole surviving monument is the one which he made for
himself--the ruined, blackened fragment of his great ancestor’s keep at
Montreuil.
[1140] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).
[1141] At Paris, says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; on the frontier
of Normandy and France, say the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay,
_Comtes_), p. 156. But if it was the assembly at which Henry
received his investiture, that was certainly in Paris; and
there does not seem time enough for another.
[1142] _Gesta Cons._ as above.
[1143] _Ibid._ _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (_ibid._), p. 292. Chronn.
S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 36,
37, 147). Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; etc.
[1144] “Ne Normanniæ vel Angliæ consuetudines in consulatûs
sui terram, vel e converso, variæ vicissitudinis altercatione
permutaret.” _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 292, 293.
[1145] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 147);
_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 292. “Inque solo materno
sibi locum eligens sepulturæ.” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
16 (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 341).
[1146] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 293. “Hic solus
omnium mortalium intra muros civitatis Cinomannicæ sepultus
est,” says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.
Stephen could not do what Geoffrey had done. His kingdom was no mere
fief to be passed from hand to hand by a formal ceremony of surrender
and investiture; the crowned and anointed king of England could not so
easily abdicate in favour of his son. He might however do something to
counterbalance Henry’s advancement by obtaining a public recognition
of Eustace as his heir. In Lent 1152, therefore, he summoned a great
council in London, at which all the earls and barons swore fealty to
Eustace.[1147] Still the king felt that his object was far from being
secured. He himself was a living proof how slight was the worth of
such an oath when the sovereign who had exacted it was gone. There
was, however, one further step possible, a step without precedent in
England, but one which the kings of France had taken with complete
success for several generations past: the solemn coronation and unction
of the heir to the throne during his father’s lifetime. It was at this
that Stephen had aimed when he sent Archbishop Henry of York to Rome.
He took an unusually wise as well as a characteristically generous
measure in intrusting his cause to a reconciled enemy; nevertheless
the attempt failed. Pope Eugene by his letters absolutely forbade
the primate to make Eustace king; therefore, when Stephen called
upon Theobald and the other bishops to anoint and crown the youth,
they one and all refused. Father and son were both equally vexed and
angry. They shut up all the bishops in one house and tried to tease
them into submission. A few, remembering that “King Stephen never
had loved clerks,” and that it was not the first time he had cast
bishops into prison,[1148] were so frightened that they gave way;
the majority stood firm, and the primate himself escaped down the
Thames in a fishing-boat, made his way to Dover, and thence retreated
beyond sea.[1149] Without him there was nothing to be done, and of his
yielding there was no chance whatever; for close at his side stood the
real fount and source of the papal opposition--Thomas of London.[1150]
[1147] Ann. Waverl. a. 1152 (Luard, _Ann. Monast_., vol.
ii. p. 234). Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1152 (Liebermann,
_Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82).
[1148] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284).
[1149] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 151. _Vita Theobald._
(Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i.), p. 338.
[1150] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.
Some of Henry’s partizans in England now thought it time for him to
interfere, and despatched his uncle Reginald earl of Cornwall to urge
him to come over at once.[1151] Soon after Easter a meeting of the
Norman barons--already summoned by Henry in the previous autumn,[1152]
but delayed by the unexpected catastrophe of his father’s death--was
held at Lisieux to consider the matter.[1153] But whatever the result
of their deliberations may have been, Henry found something else to
do before he could cross the sea. King Louis VII. had been meditating
a divorce from his wife, the Aquitanian duchess Eleanor, ever since
their return from the crusade. The great obstacle to his scheme was
his father’s and his own old friend and minister Suger, who saw the
grave political danger of such a measure and opposed it with all the
influence he possessed.[1154] But Suger was dying; and the king had
made up his mind. He took the first step at Christmas 1151 by going
with Eleanor into Aquitaine and withdrawing all his own garrisons
from her territories.[1155] Suger’s death on January 13 recalled him
to Paris,[1156] and at the same time set him free to accomplish his
desire unopposed. A Church council was held under the presidency
of Archbishop Hugh of Sens at Beaugency on the Tuesday before Palm
Sunday;[1157] the king and queen were made out to be akin, and their
union was dissolved.[1158] Eleanor set out for her own dominions;
she had however some trouble in reaching them. She was young and
beautiful; her personal charms were more than equalled by those of
her two great duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony; and more than one
ambitious feudatary was eager to seize the prize which his sovereign
had thrown away. At her first halting-place, Blois, the young count
Theobald--son and successor of Theobald the Great who had died two
months before[1159]--sought to take her by force and make her his wife.
She fled by night to Tours, and there narrowly escaped being captured
with the same intention by a still more youthful admirer, Geoffrey of
Anjou, Henry’s brother. The audacious boy laid a plot to catch her at
Port-de-Piles, on the frontier of Touraine and Poitou; but she was
warned in time and made her escape by another road safe into her own
territory.[1160] Thence she at once wrote to offer herself and her
lands to the husband of her own choice--Henry duke of the Normans. He
set out to join her immediately, and at Whitsuntide they were married
at Poitiers.[1161]
[1151] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.
[1152] _Ibid._ a. 1151.
[1153] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.
[1154] _Vita Suger._, l. i. c. 5 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xii. p. 104).
[1155] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
p. 135). Cf. Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 53 (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 307; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.
p. 437).
[1156] _Vita Suger._, l. iii. cc. 11, 13 (as above, pp. 111,
113).
[1157] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). The _Hist. Ludov._ (_ib._ p. 415)
makes it Friday (March 21) instead of Tuesday.
[1158] _Gesta Ludov._ and _Hist. Ludov._ as above. Chron.
Turon. Magn. as above, etc.
[1159] In January 1152. See Arbois de Jubainville, _Comtes de
Champagne_, vol. ii. p. 398, note 12.
[1160] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
p. 135).
[1161] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149. See also Will.
Newb., l. i. c. 31 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 93); Chron. Turon.
Magn. a. 1152 (as above); _Hist. Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist.
Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 413, and _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
vol. xii. p. 127); _Fragm. Chron. Com. Pictav._ (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 410). This last gives the place; Rob.
Torigni, a. 1152, gives the season. Whit-Sunday was May 18; and
a charter referred to by M. Delisle in a note to Rob. Torigni
_ad ann._ (vol. i. p. 260), proves that they were married
before May 27. Gervase’s story is the fullest; according to
him, they married for love, and Eleanor had herself procured
the divorce for that object--such, at least, was the story
which she wrote to her young lover. As to the question of
consanguinity, that of Louis and Eleanor is not very clear; it
was at any rate more remote than that of Eleanor and Henry,
who certainly were within the forbidden degrees. One would
like to know what S. Bernard, who had put a stop to a proposal
of marriage between Henry and Eleanor’s daughter (S. Bern.
Ep. ccclxxi., _Opp._, Mabillon, vol. i. col. 333), thought of
the matter; a saint of the next generation, Hugh of Lincoln,
thought and said plainly that it was the fatal sin which was
visited upon the children of the guilty couple in the downfall
of the Angevin empire. _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_, l. v. c. 16
(Dimock, p. 332). In his eyes, however, the sin lay in the
fact not of the kindred between the parties, but of Eleanor’s
divorce; and it is noteworthy that William of Newburgh, who
did not live to see the final catastrophe or to know the worst
crimes of Eleanor’s youngest son, took exactly the same view;
l. iii. c. 26 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 281).
Suger’s worst fears were now realized. Aquitaine was lost to the king
of France; it had gone to swell the forces of the prince who was
already the mightiest feudatary of the realm, and who would probably
be king of England ere long; and as Louis and Eleanor had no son,
there was very little hope that even in the next generation it would
revert to the French Crown. In feudal law, an heiress had no right
to marry without the consent of her overlord. It seems that Louis
accordingly summoned Henry to appear before the royal court and answer
for his conduct in thus hastily accepting Eleanor’s hand. But Henry
Fitz-Empress, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, Touraine and Maine,
and duke of Aquitaine--for, rightly or wrongly, he was married, and in
full possession of his wife’s territories--master of more than half
Gaul, from the Flemish to the Spanish March and from the Rhône to the
ocean--could venture to defy a mere king of the French. He therefore
refused to appear before the court or to acknowledge its jurisdiction
in any way.[1162] Eustace seized the favourable moment to regain the
French alliance; he came over to visit King Louis; his long-standing
betrothal with Constance of France ended at last in marriage;[1163] and
Henry, on the point of sailing from Barfleur, just after midsummer,
was stopped by the discovery that Louis, Eustace, Robert of Dreux,
Henry of Champagne,[1164] and his own brother Geoffrey had made a
league to drive him out of all his possessions and divide them among
themselves.[1165]
[1162] “Qui citatus ad Curiam, venire noluit ad jus faciendum,
vel capiendum in Regis præsentiâ Palatii judicium omnino
respuit et contempsit.” _Gesta Ludov._, c. 28 (Duchesne, _Hist.
Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). “Ante dominum suum Regem
Ludovicum defecit a justitiâ.” _Hist. Ludov._ (_ib._ p. 414).
This is related as a piece of shameful ingratitude for Louis’s
supposed help towards the conquest of Normandy. The story then
proceeds to relate that Louis in wrath besieged and took Vernon
and Neufmarché, whereupon Henry humbly promised to be more
obedient for the future, and Louis, accepting his assurances,
restored the two castles. We are not told on what charge Henry
had been cited to the court, and no hint is given that the
quarrel was in any way connected with his marriage, which
indeed is not mentioned till some time after. Yet I can find
no indication of any ground for such a citation, except the
marriage; and that, indeed, would be a most obvious pretext.
[1163] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.
[1164] Second son of Theobald the Great of Blois, and betrothed
husband of the infant princess Mary, eldest child of Louis and
Eleanor.
[1165] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1152
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 37).
Geoffrey by his father’s will had inherited Chinon, Loudun and
Mirebeau;[1166] with this vantage-ground he began operations against
his brother’s authority in Anjou, while the other four princes crossed
the Norman border and laid siege to Neufmarché. Henry set out from
Barfleur on July 16 to relieve Neufmarché, but arrived too late to
save it from surrender;[1167] Louis handed it over to Eustace,[1168]
and proceeded to muster his forces near Chaumont in the French Vexin.
Henry did the like on the banks of the Andelle, and began ravaging
the country between that river and the Epte--the old Norman Vexin, so
lately ceded to Louis as the price of his alliance. In August Louis
brought his host across the Seine at Meulan; Henry crossed lower
down, by the bridge of Vernon, and thinking that the king intended to
attack Verneuil, was hurrying to reach it before him when a message
from the lord of Pacy told him that this last place was the one really
threatened. He turned and proceeded thither at such a pace that several
of his horses fell dead on the road; Louis, finding himself outwitted,
gave up the expedition and returned to Meulan. Henry next invaded the
county of Dreux, burned Brézolles and Marcouville, took hostages from
Richer de l’Aigle--Thomas Becket’s old friend--whose fidelity was
doubtful, and burned his castle of Bonmoulins, which was said to be
“a den of thieves”; he then planted a line of garrisons all along the
Norman frontier, and at the end of August went down into Anjou. There
he blockaded the rebel leaders congregated in the castle of Montsoreau
on the Loire till most of them fell into his hands, and his brother
gave up the useless struggle.[1169] Louis meanwhile profited by his
absence to burn part of the town of Tillières and a village near
Verneuil, and to make an attempt upon Nonancourt, in which however he
failed.[1170] Immediately afterwards he fell sick of a fever; his army
dissolved, and he was obliged to retire into his own domains[1171] and
make proposals for a truce.[1172] Henry was ready enough to accept
them; for he had just received another urgent summons from England, and
he felt that this time it must be answered in person.
[1166] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
p. 136).
[1167] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.
[1168] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 283).
[1169] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. See also a shorter account in
Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 149, 150, and a general
summing-up of the result in Chron. S. Albin. a. 1152
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 37).
[1170] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.
[1171] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.
[1172] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.
Since the Empress’s departure, Stephen had made but little progress in
reducing the castles of those barons who still, either in her name or
in their own, chose to defy his authority. A revolt of Ralf of Chester
and Gilbert of Pembroke in 1149 and two unsuccessful attempts made
by the king to recover Worcester from Waleran of Meulan, to whom he
had himself intrusted it in the days when Waleran was one of his best
supporters,[1173] make up almost the whole military history of the last
four years. Ralf of Chester’s obstinate claim upon Lincoln was at last
disposed of by a compromise.[1174] There was however one fortress which
throughout the whole course of the war had been, almost more than any
other, a special object of Stephen’s jealousy. This was Wallingford, a
castle of great strength seated on the right bank of the Thames some
twelve miles south of Oxford, and held as a perpetual thorn in the
king’s side by a Breton adventurer, Brian Fitz-Count, one of the most
able and energetic as well as most faithful and persevering members of
the Angevin party in England. Hitherto all Stephen’s attempts against
Wallingford--even the erection of a rival fortress, Crowmarsh, directly
over against it--had produced no effect at all. At last, in the winter
of 1152, he built a strong wooden tower at the foot of the bridge over
the Thames whereby alone the garrison of Wallingford obtained their
supplies. Brian and his men saw their convoys hopelessly shut out;
they knew that none of their friends in England were strong enough to
relieve them; they therefore sent to their lord the young duke of the
Normans, and begged that he would either give them leave to surrender
with honour, or send help to deliver them out of their strait.[1175]
[1173] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 30 (Arnold, p. 282).
[1174] See the terms in Dugdale, _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 39.
[1175] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284). Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 153.
Henry did not send; he came. Landing with a small force on the morning
of the Epiphany,[1176] he entered a church to honour the festival with
such brief devotion as a soldier could spare time for, and the first
words that fell on his ear sounded like an omen of success: “Behold,
the Lord the ruler cometh, and the kingdom is in his hand.”[1177]
Before the week was out he had taken the town of Malmesbury and the
outworks of the castle, and was blockading Bishop Roger’s impregnable
keep. Stephen, warned by its commandant, hastened to its relief.
On a bitter January morning king and duke, each at the head of his
troops, met for the first time face to face, divided only by the river
Avon--here at Malmesbury a mere streamlet in itself, but so swollen
by the winter’s rains that neither party dared venture to cross it. A
torrent of rain, sleet and hail was pouring down, drifting before a
violent west wind, striking the Angevins in their backs, but beating
hard in the faces of the king and his host; drenched, blinded, scarce
able to hold their weapons, they stood shivering with cold and terror,
feeling as if Heaven itself had taken up arms against them, till
Stephen turned away in despair and led his dispirited forces back to
London. Malmesbury surrendered as soon as he was gone.[1178] The young
duke marched straight upon Wallingford, demolished Stephen’s wooden
tower at the first assault, and revictualled the castle. He then laid
siege to Crowmarsh. Stephen advanced to relieve it; again the two
armies fronted each other in battle array, but again no battle took
place. The barons, who were only anxious to maintain both the rival
sovereigns as a check upon each other, and dreaded nothing so much
as the complete triumph of either, took advantage of a supposed bad
omen which befell the king[1179] to insist upon a parley, and proposed
that Stephen and Henry in person should arrange terms with each
other, subject to ratification by their respective followers.[1180]
Yielding to necessity, and both fully aware of their advisers’ disloyal
motives, the two leaders held a colloquy across a narrow reach of the
Thames.[1181] For the moment a truce was arranged, on condition that
Stephen should raze Crowmarsh at the end of five days.[1182] As the
barons doubtless expected, however, no solution was reached on the main
question at issue between the rivals, and with mutual complaints of the
treason of their followers they separated once again.[1183]
[1176] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153, says he came with thirty-six
ships. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 88), gives
the force as one hundred and forty horse and three thousand
foot. From the sequel it seems that he landed on the Hampshire
or Dorset coast.
[1177] “Ecce advenit dominator Dominus, et regnum in manu
ejus:”--first words of the introit for Epiphany. Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 151, 152.
[1178] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 34 (Arnold, pp. 285–287). See
also Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.
[1179] His horse reared and nearly threw him three times while
he was marshalling his troops. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 154.
[1180] _Ibid._ Hen. Hunt. as above (p. 287).
[1181] Gerv. Cant. as above. Cf. Hen. Hunt. as above (p. 288).
[1182] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 34 (Arnold, p. 288). Rob.
Torigni, a. 1153.
[1183] Hen. Hunt. as above.
But there were others who, in all sincerity, were labouring hard for
peace. Archbishop Theobald was in constant communication with the
king in person and with the duke through trusty envoys, endeavouring
to establish a basis for negotiations between them. He found an
ally in Henry of Winchester, now eager to help in putting an end to
troubles which he at last perceived had been partly fostered by his
own errors.[1184] The once rival prelates, thus united in their best
work, saw their chief obstacle in Eustace.[1185] Not only was it the
hope of his son’s succession which made Stephen cling so obstinately to
every jot and tittle of his regal claims; but Eustace’s character was
such that the mere possibility of his rule could not be contemplated
without dread; and to look for any self-renunciation on his part was
far more hopeless than to expect it from Stephen. Eustace was in fact
a most degenerate son, unworthy not only of his high-souled mother but
even of his weak, amiable father. He had one merit--he was an excellent
soldier;[1186] for the rest, his character was that of the house of
Blois in its most vicious phase, unredeemed by a spark of the generous
warmth and winning graciousness for which so much had been forgiven
to Stephen.[1187] Even with his own party and his own father he could
not keep at peace. The issue of the Crowmarsh expedition threw him
into a fury; after loading his father with reproaches, he deserted him
altogether and rode away to Canterbury, vowing to ravage the whole
country from end to end, sparing neither the property of the churches
nor the holy places themselves. He began with S. Edmund’s abbey. He
was hospitably received there, but his demand for money was refused,
and he ordered the crops to be destroyed. A century and a half before,
the heathen Danish conqueror Swein had in like manner insulted East
Anglia’s patron saint, and had been stricken down by a sudden and
mysterious death. So too it was with Eustace. As he sat at table in the
abbey, the first morsel of food choked him, and in the convulsions of
raging madness he expired.[1188]
[1184] _Ib._ c. 37 (p. 289).
[1185] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 90).
[1186] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 35 (Arnold, p. 288).
[1187] _Ibid._ Eng. Chron. a. 1140, and all the contemporary
writers are unanimous in their accounts of him--except the
_Gesta Steph._ (Sewell, p. 130).
[1188] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 155. Rob. Torigni, a.
1153, says the sacrilege was committed on S. Laurence’s day,
and the punishment followed “circa octavas.” Cf. Joh. Salisb.,
_Polycrat._, l. viii. c. 21 (Giles, vol. iv. pp. 354, 355).
Eustace’s death was only one of a striking series. The roll had opened
with Geoffrey of Anjou in September 1151. Suger and Theobald of Blois
both died in January 1152. Politically as well as personally, the
death of the good and wise brother who had stood by him so faithfully
and so unselfishly through all his difficulties in Normandy and at
Rome must have been a heavy blow to Stephen; but heavier still was
the blow that fell upon him three months later, when on May 3 he
lost the wisest, probably, of his counsellors as well as the truest
and bravest of all his partizans in England--his queen, Matilda of
Boulogne.[1189] She was followed in little more than a month by her
cousin Henry of Scotland.[1190] Next year the list of remarkable
deaths was longer still. On this side of the sea it included, besides
Eustace, Ralf earl of Chester,[1191] Walter Lespec,[1192] and David
king of Scots.[1193] Another person who had made some figure in the
history of northern England, William bishop of Durham, had died in
the previous November.[1194] The appointment of Hugh of Puiset to his
vacant chair,[1195] being strongly opposed by Archbishop Murdac,
nearly caused another schism in the province; the southern primate,
however, doubtless feeling that it was no time now for ecclesiastical
squabbles, took the case into his own hands and sent the elect of
Durham to be consecrated at Rome by the Pope.[1196] But the Pope was no
longer Eugene III. Rome lost her Cistercian bishop on July 9, 1153. Six
weeks later Clairvaux itself became a valley of the shadow of death,
as its light passed away with S. Bernard;[1197] and two months later
still the metropolitan chair of York was again vacated, and the three
great Cistercian fellow-workers were reunited in their rest, by the
death of Henry Murdac.[1198] The generation which had been young with
Stephen seemed to be rapidly passing away; the primate, the bishop of
Winchester and the king himself were left almost alone, like survivors
of a past age, in presence of the younger race represented by Henry of
Anjou.
[1189] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. Chron. S. Crucis Edinb. a. 1152.
Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 151.
[1190] Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. a. 1152.
[1191] _Ibid._ a. 1153. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant.
(as above), p. 155.
[1192] Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. v. p. 280.
[1193] Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p.
168.
[1194] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 166.
[1195] On January 22, 1153; _ib._ p. 167.
[1196] See details in Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 167, and Gerv.
Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 157, where the date is wrong.
[1197] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.
[1198] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Walbran, _Memor. of
Fountains_, vol. i. p. 109.
With the life of Eustace ended the resistance of Stephen. He had
other sons, but they were mere boys; it was hopeless to think of
setting up even the eldest of them as a rival to Henry. The young duke
was carrying all before him; Stamford, Nottingham,[1199] Reading,
Barkwell, had yielded to him already, when Countess Gundrada of Warwick
surrendered Warwick castle,[1200] and the adhesion of Earl Robert of
Leicester placed more than thirty fortresses all at once at the young
conqueror’s disposal.[1201] Henry was, however, fully alive to the
wisdom of securing his kingdom by a legal settlement rather than by
the mere power of the sword. At last a treaty was made, on November
6, in the place where it had been first projected--Wallingford.[1202]
It was agreed that Stephen and Henry should adopt each other as
father and son; that Stephen should keep his regal dignity for the
rest of his life, Henry acting as justiciar and practical ruler of
the kingdom under him; and that after his death Henry should be
king.[1203] The details of the settlement have come down to us only
in a poetical shape which expresses not so much what the contracting
parties actually undertook to do as what needed to be done--what was
the ideal at which the peace-makers aimed, and how far removed from
it was the actual condition of the country. The rights of the Crown,
which the nobles had everywhere usurped, were to be resumed; the
“adulterine castles”--castles built during the anarchy and without the
king’s leave, to the number of eleven hundred and fifteen--were to be
destroyed; all property was to be restored to the lawful owners who had
held it in King Henry’s time. The farms were again to be supplied with
husbandmen; the houses which had been burnt down were to be rebuilt and
filled with inhabitants; the woods were to be provided with foresters,
the coverts replenished with game, the hill-sides covered with flocks
of sheep and the meadows with herds of cattle. The clergy were to enjoy
tranquillity and peace, and to be relieved from all extraordinary and
exorbitant demands. The sheriffs were to be regularly appointed in
accustomed places, and held strictly to their duties; they were not to
indulge their greed, nor to prosecute any one out of malice, nor shew
undue favour to their own friends, nor condone crimes, but to render
to every man his due; some they were to influence by the threat of
punishment, others by the promise of reward. Thieves and robbers were
to be punished with death. Soldiers were to beat their swords into
ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; the Flemings were to
quit the camp for the farm, the tent for the workshop, and render to
their own masters the service which they had so long forced upon the
English people; the country-folk were to dwell in undisturbed security,
the merchants to grow rich through the revival of trade. Finally, one
standard of money was to be current throughout the realm.[1204]
[1199] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 36 (Arnold, p. 288).
[1200] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.
[1201] Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 152, 153.
[1202] The date is given by Rob. Torigni and Chron. S. Cruc.
Edinb. a. 1153; the place by Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 255.
[1203] “... Ferden te ærceb. and te wise men betwux heom and
makede th. sahte th. te king sculde ben lauerd and king wile
he liuede, and æfter his dæi ware Henri king; and he helde him
for fader and he him for sune; and sib and sæhte sculde ben
betwyx heom and on al Engleland. This and te othre forwuuardes
thet hi makeden suoren to halden the king and te eorl and te
b. and te eorles and rice men alle.” Eng. Chron., a. 1140. The
accounts of Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 90,
91), R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 296, and Chron. Mailros, a.
1153, are to much the same effect. Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. i.
p. 212) adds: “Rex vero constituit ducem justitiarium Angliæ
sub ipso, et omnia regni negotia per ipsum terminabantur.”
Stephen’s proclamation of the treaty is in Rymer’s _Fœdera_,
vol. i. p. 18. Its date is Westminster, 1153, and it is in form
of a writ addressed to the archbishops, bishops, barons, and
all faithful subjects, proclaiming and notifying to them the
treaty just made. The primary article, concerning the adoption
of Henry as heir, is stated exactly as by the chroniclers. The
remainder of the document relates entirely to details of homage
done by prelates and barons to Henry, stipulations in behalf of
Stephen’s son William, and arrangements for surrender of royal
castles to Henry on Stephen’s death. Finally: “In negotiis
autem regni ego consilio ducis operabor. Ego vero in toto regno
Angliæ, tam in parte ducis quam in meâ, regalem justiciam
exercebo.” By “the duke’s part” and “my part” Stephen probably
meant simply the parts which each held at the moment; the whole
clause seems to mean that the regal justice was to be exercised
in his name and for his profit, but by Henry’s wisdom--which
agrees very well with Rog. Howden’s statement.
[1204] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 297. Concerning the
coinage, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 211, says: “Fecit
[Henricus] monetam novam, quam vocabant monetam ducis; et non
tantum ipse, sed omnes potentes, tam episcopi quam comites et
barones, suam faciebant monetam. Sed ex quo dux ille venit,
plurimorum monetam cassavit.” This however is placed under the
year 1149.
The treaty was ratified in an assembly of bishops, earls and barons,
held at Winchester at the end of the month.[1205] Stephen afterwards
accompanied his adoptive son to London, where he was joyfully welcomed
by the citizens.[1206] King and duke seem to have kept Christmas apart;
Henry indeed set himself to his task of reform in such earnest that he
could have little time to spare for mere festivities. On the octave
of Epiphany another assembly was held at Oxford, where the nobles of
England swore homage and fealty to the duke as to their lord, reserving
only the faith due to Stephen as long as he lived. The next meeting,
at Dunstable, was not quite so satisfactory. Henry, doing his share
of the public work with true Angevin thoroughness, was irritated at
finding that some of the builders of unlicensed castles had gained
the king’s ear and persuaded him to exempt their fortresses from the
sentence of universal destruction. Against this breach of faith the
duke earnestly remonstrated; but he found it impossible to enforce
his wishes without a quarrel which he was too prudent to risk.[1207]
He therefore let the matter rest, and in Lent he accompanied Stephen
to Canterbury and thence to a meeting with the count and countess of
Flanders at Dover.[1208] There it was discovered that some of the
Flemish mercenaries, to whom Henry and his good peace were equally
hateful,[1209] were conspiring to kill him on his return to Canterbury.
The shock of this discovery, added to that of an accident which befell
Stephen’s eldest surviving son William, who is said to have been aware
of the plot,[1210] was too much for the king’s overwrought nerves,
and with a last benediction he hurried his adoptive son out of the
country at once.[1211] Henry passed through Canterbury before the
conspirators were ready for him, made his way to Rochester and London,
and thence safe over sea to Normandy,[1212] where he landed soon after
Easter.[1213]
[1205] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 156. See also Hen.
Hunt., l. viii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 289).
[1206] Hen. Hunt. as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1140.
[1207] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 38 (Arnold, pp. 289, 290).
[1208] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158. The countess was
Henry’s aunt, Sibyl of Anjou, once the bride of William the
Clito, now the wife of his rival Theodoric.
[1209] “Qui duci simul ac paci invidebant.” _Ibid._
[1210] _Ibid._
[1211] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 91, 92).
[1212] Gerv. Cant. as above.
[1213] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.
Only fifteen months had passed since his arrival in England; only five
had passed since the treaty of Wallingford; yet in that short time
Henry had made, as the contemporary English chronicler says, “such
good peace as never was here”[1214]--never, that is, since peace and
order were buried with his grandfather, eighteen years before. So well
was the work begun that even when he was thus obliged to leave it
for a while in the weak hands of Stephen, it did not fall to pieces
again. Stephen indeed, as was remarked by the writers of the day,
seemed now at length for the first time to be really king.[1215] For
eighteen years he had been king only in name; his regal dignity had
never been truly respected, his regal authority had never been fully
obeyed, till the last twelve months of his life, when he was avowedly
only holding them in trust for the future sovereign whom “all folk
loved,” because he did what Stephen had failed to do--“he did good
justice and made peace.”[1216] After Henry was gone Stephen gathered
up his failing strength for a campaign against some of the rebellious
castles in the north. Sick and weary as he was, his youthful valour
and prowess were even yet not altogether departed; castle after castle
fell into his hands, the last and most important being that of Drax in
Yorkshire.[1217] He then went southward again to hold another meeting
with the count of Flanders at Dover.[1218] There his health finally
gave way; and eight days before the feast of All Saints his nineteen
years’ reign, with all its troubles and disappointments, its blunders
and failures, its useless labours and hopeless cares, was ended by a
quiet death.[1219]
[1214] “And hit ward sone suythe god pais, sua th. neure was
here.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.
[1215] Will. Newb. as above (p. 91). Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 39
(Arnold, p. 290). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 297.
[1216] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.
[1217] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 39 (Arnold, p. 291). Will.
Newb., l. i. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 94). Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213.
[1218] Hen. Hunt. as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
159.
[1219] Hen. Hunt. and Gerv. Cant. as above. The Ann. Winton.
Contin. a. 1154 (Liebermann, _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82) dates
it a day later.
The primate and the nobles, while they laid him in Feversham abbey
beside his wife and son,[1220] sent the news to the king-elect,
begging him to come and take his crown without delay.[1221] The
message reached Henry just as he was completing the suppression of a
disturbance in Normandy. A series of desultory attacks made by the
French king upon the duchy during Henry’s absence in 1153 had led to
no direct result, but they probably helped to foster the turbulence
of the Norman barons, who were fast getting into their old condition
of lawless independence when at Easter 1154 the duke re-appeared in
their midst. He began to assert his authority by resuming--not all at
once, but gradually and cautiously--the demesne lands of the duchy,
which his father had been compelled to alienate for a time in order
to purchase the support of the nobles. A hurried visit to Aquitaine
was followed in August by peace with the king of France; for Louis
had at last come to see that his opposition was as vain as Stephen’s.
Immediately afterwards the young duke was struck down by a severe
illness. In October he was sufficiently recovered to join Louis in a
campaign for the settlement of some disturbances in the Vexin; thence
he went once more to besiege his rebellious cousin and vassal Richard
Fitz-Count at Torigni. The place had apparently just surrendered when
the tidings of Stephen’s death arrived. Henry took counsel first of
all with his mother; then he summoned his brothers and the barons
of Normandy to meet him at Barfleur; but when he arrived there with
Eleanor the wind was so unfavourable that a whole month elapsed before
they could venture to cross.[1222] Henry, however, could afford to
wait; and England could wait for him. Three weeks without a king had
been enough to throw the whole country into disorder when Henry I.
had died leaving only a woman and an infant as his heirs; six weeks
passed away without any disturbance now while Archbishop Theobald was
guarding the rights of the Crown[1223] for one who had already proved
himself King Henry’s worthy grandson. “No man durst do other than
good, for the mickle awe of him.”[1224] At last, on December 8,[1225]
he landed in Hampshire;[1226] first at Winchester, then in London, he
received a rapturous welcome;[1227] and on the Sunday before Christmas
Henry Fitz-Empress, duke of the Normans, count of Anjou and duke of
Aquitaine, was crowned king of England in Westminster abbey.[1228]
[1220] Hen. Hunt. as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1154. Will. Newb.,
l. i. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 95).
[1221] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40 (Arnold, p. 291).
[1222] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.
[1223] “Nutu divino et cooperante Theodbaldo Cantuariensi
archiepiscopo.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159.
[1224] Eng. Chron. a. 1154. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40
(Arnold, p. 291).
[1225] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1154, gives the
date as December 7. Most likely the crossing was made, as seems
to have been the usual practice with Henry at least, in the
night.
[1226] “Hostreham,” Gerv. Cant. as above. “Apud Noveforest,”
Hen. Hunt. as above; which Mr. Arnold glosses in the margin
“Lymington.”
[1227] Hen. Hunt. and Gerv. Cant. as above.
[1228] The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1154 (Marchegay, _Eglises_,
p. 38) says: “xiv kalendas januarii apud Wintoniam rex
consecratur, et Natale Domini celebrans Londoniæ, cum uxore
coronatur.” But the English writers mention only one crowning,
at Westminster. The Eng. Chron. a. 1154, says Henry was “to
king blessed in London on the Sunday before Midwinter-day.”
Rob. Torigni _ad ann._, R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 299),
Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 72), Ann. S. Aug.
Cant. _ad ann._ (Liebermann, _Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82), all
give the same date; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 159) makes
it December 17, but as he also calls it the Sunday before
Christmas, he evidently means 19. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40
(Arnold, pp. 291, 292), greets the new king with some hexameter
verses, and then adds: “Et jam regi novo novus liber donandus
est.” But the book, if it was ever written, is lost.