old hunting-seat of his Norman grandfather; Stapleton, _Mag.
Rot. Scacc. Norm._, vol. i., Observ., p. cxli. Of the other
houses, three were Austin priories: S. Laurence at Beauvoir
in the forest of Lions, founded while Henry was still only
duke of Normandy (_ib._ p. cxiv); Newstead, in Sherwood
Forest, founded before 1174 (its foundation-charter, dated at
Clarendon, has no mention of day or year, but is witnessed
by “Geoffrey archdeacon of Canterbury,” who in 1174 became a
bishop; Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi. pt. i. p. 474); and
the priory “B. Mariæ Mellinensis,” near La Flèche, founded in
1180 (_Gall. Christ._, vol. xiv. col. 600. I cannot identify
this place). The other two were Carthusian houses, Witham
in the forest of Selwood and Le Liget in that of Loches,
founded respectively in 1174 and 1175. (The date of Le Liget
is traditional; I cannot find any mention of the place in
_Gall. Christ._) Of all these, Witham is the only one of any
consequence; and the importance of even Witham lies chiefly in
its connexion with S. Hugh. (For its history see _Magna Vita
S. Hugonis_, Dimock, pp. 52 _et seq._) The insignificance of
the others is shewn by Gerald’s account of Henry’s religious
foundations, in _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c. 7 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., pp. 27, 28)--an account, however, which is by
no means fair. Henry on his absolution for S. Thomas’s death,
in 1172, promised to go on a crusade of three years’ duration
(Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 37); this undertaking he was
afterwards allowed to exchange for a promise that he would
build three religious houses in his dominions. According to
Gerald, he managed one of these by turning the nuns out of
Amesbury and putting a colony from Fontevraud in their place
(see _Gesta Hen._, Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 134–136, 165), and
another by turning the secular canons out of Waltham and
putting regulars in their place (_ib._ pp. 134, 135, 173, 174,
316, 317. Both these transactions took place in 1177.) “Tertium
vero,” says Gerald (as above) “vel nullum, vel simile prioribus
sibique prorsus inutile fecit; nisi forte domum conventualem
ordinis Cartusiensis de Witham, s. modicis sumptibus et exilem,
ad hoc fecisse dicatur.” No doubt Witham was one of the three.
But the other two are easily found; they were Newstead and
Vaubourg or Le Liget. R. Niger (Anstruther, p. 168) is as
unjust to Henry in this matter as Gerald; but so he is on most
others also.
[949] See Stapleton, _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._, vol. i.,
Observ., pp. lix., lxi., lxvii.
[950] _Ib._ p. ci. Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.
[951] Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.
[952] See Stapleton as above, pp. cxlvi–cxlvii.
[953] Of Marçay--or Matha--or Turnham; authorities differ so
much as to his identity that I dare not venture upon adopting
either surname.
[954] C. Port, _Cartulaire de l’Hopital St. Jean d’Angers_, pp.
2–10, ii–vi.
[955] _Ib._ pp. 11–13.
[956] _Ib._ p. xiv.
[957] On the hospital-buildings see an article by M. D’Espinay
in _Revue de l’Anjou_, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 264–273.
This Hospice of S. John formed a third with Fulk Nerra’s abbey of S.
Nicolas and Hildegard’s nunnery of our Lady of Charity in the group of
pious and charitable foundations round which there gathered, on the
meadows that bordered the right bank of the Mayenne, the suburb now
known as Ronceray or La Doutre,--a suburb which even before the close
of Henry’s reign had grown almost as populous as Angers itself, and
was actually preferred to it as a residence by Ralf de Diceto.[958]
Twice in Henry’s reign the bridge which linked it to the city was
destroyed by fire;[959] the present “Grand-Pont” probably owes its
erection to him. Fire was, however, by no means the most destructive
element in the valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. “Well-nigh
disappearing in summer, choked within their sandy beds,” these streams
were all too apt, as Ralf de Diceto says of the Mayenne, to “rage and
swell in winter like the sea;”[960] and the greatest and most lasting
of all Henry’s material benefactions to Anjou was the embankment or
“_Levée_”--a work which he seems characteristically to have planned and
executed in the very midst of his struggle with the Church[961]--which
stretches along Loire-side, from Ponts-de-Cé, just above the junction
of the Mayenne and the Loire, some thirty miles eastward to Bourgueil.
Further south, in the valley of the Vienne, the legend of the “Pont de
l’Annonain” illustrates the curious but not altogether unaccountable
confusion which grew up in popular imagination between the two great
builders of Anjou. The “bridge,” a long viaduct which stretched from
Chinon across river and meadow south-westward to the village of
Rivière, was in reality built by Henry to secure a safe transit from
Chinon into Poitou across the low ground on the south bank of the
Vienne, which in rainy seasons was an all but impassable swamp. Later
ages, however, connected it with a dim tradition, which still lingered
in the district, of the wonderful night-ride across Loire and Vienne
whereby Fulk Nerra had won Saumur, and in the belief of the peasantry
the Pont de l’Annonain became a “devil’s bridge,” built in a single
night by the Black Count’s familiar demon[962]--a demon who is but
a popular personification of that spirit of dauntless enterprise
and ceaseless activity which, alike in their material and in their
political workmanship, was the secret of Henry’s success no less than
of Fulk’s.
[958] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292 (_Hist. Com. Andeg._,
Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 337).
[959] In 1167 and 1177. Chron. S. Serg. a. 1167 and 1177,
Chron. S. Albin. a. 1177 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, pp.
149, 151, 44).
[960] R. Diceto as above.
[961] It was certainly made before 1169; see Rob. Torigni _ad
ann._
[962] See Salies, _Foulques-Nerra_, note civ., pp. 429, 430.
One portion, however, of Henry’s continental dominions has during
these years a political and military history of its own, which is not
without a bearing upon that of our own land. Geographically remote
as it was from England, still more remote in the character of both
country and people, Aquitaine yet concerns us more than any other part
of Henry’s Gaulish possessions. For not only was it a chief source of
the political complications which filled the closing years of his life;
it was the only one of those possessions whose connexion with England
survived the fall of the Angevin house. The heritages of Geoffrey and
Matilda were lost by their grandson; the heritage of Eleanor remained,
in part at least, in the hands of her descendants for more than two
hundred years.
It was in truth a dower at once valuable and burdensome that Henry
had received with his Aquitanian wife. She had made him master
of a territory whose extent surpassed that of all his Norman and
Angevin dominions put together, and was scarcely equalled by that of
England--a territory containing every variety of soil and of natural
characteristics, from the flat, rich pastures of Berry and the
vineyards of Poitou and Saintonge to the rugged volcanic rocks and
dark chestnut-woods of Auvergne, the salt marshes, sandy dunes, barren
heaths and gloomy pine-forests of the Gascon coast, and the fertile
valleys which open between the feet of the Pyrenees:--a territory whose
population differed in blood and speech from their fellow-subjects
north of Loire almost as widely as Normans and Angevins differed
from Englishmen; while in temper and modes of thought and life they
stood so apart from the northern world that in contradistinction to
them Angevins and Normans and English might almost be counted, and
indeed were almost ready to count themselves, as one people. It
was a territory, too, whose political relations varied as much as
its physical character, and were full of dangers which all Henry’s
vigilance and wisdom were powerless to guard against or overcome.
Setting aside, for the moment, the internal difficulties of Aquitaine,
its whole eastern frontier, from the banks of the Cher to the Pyrenees,
was more or less in dispute throughout his reign. The question of
Toulouse, indeed, was settled in 1173; thenceforth the county of
Toulouse, with its northern dependencies Rouergue and Alby, became a
recognized underfief of the Poitevin duchy of Aquitaine, to which its
western dependency, Quercy or the county of Cahors, had been already
annexed after the war of 1160. The north-eastern portions of the older
Aquitania, Berry and Auvergne, were sources of more lasting trouble.
Berry had long ago been split into two unequal portions, of which
the larger had remained subject to the dukes of Aquitaine, while the
smaller northern division formed the viscounty of Bourges, and was an
immediate fief of the French Crown. Naturally, the king was disposed
to use every opportunity of thwarting the duke in the exercise of
his authority over southern Berry; and Henry was equally desirous to
lose no chance of re-asserting his ducal rights over Bourges.[963]
The feudal position of Auvergne was a standing puzzle which king and
duke, count, clergy and people, all in vain endeavoured to solve.
During the struggle for supremacy in southern Gaul between the houses
of Poitiers and Toulouse, Auvergne, after fluctuating for nearly a
hundred years between the rival dukedoms, had virtually succeeded in
freeing itself from the control of both, and in the reign of Louis
VI. it seems to have been regarded as an immediate fief of the French
Crown, to which however it proved a most unruly and troublesome
possession. But the dukes of Aquitaine had never relinquished their
claim to its overlordship; and when a quarrel broke out between two
rival claimants of the county, it was naturally followed by a quarrel
between Henry and Louis VII. as to their respective rights, as overlord
and as lord paramount, to act as arbiters in the strife.[964] During
five-and-twenty years it was a favourite device of Louis and of his
successor, at every adverse crisis in Henry’s fortune, to despatch
a body of troops into Auvergne to occupy that country and threaten
Aquitaine through its eastern marches,[965] just as they habitually
threatened Normandy through the marches of the Vexin.
[963] His first attempt to do so was made in 1170, when a
pretext was given him by the declaration said--whether truly
or falsely--to have been made by the dying archbishop Peter of
Bourges, that his see belonged of right to Aquitaine. Nothing,
however, came of the attempt. See _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol.
i. pp. 10, 11.
[964] See Rob. Torigni, a. 1167.
[965] _E.g._ in 1164 (Ep. lx., Robertson. _Becket_, vol. v.
p. 115), 1167 (above, p. 58; Rob. Torigni _ad ann._), 1170
(Will. Fitz-Steph., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii. p. 116; Ep.
dccxxii., _ib._ vol. vii. p. 400), and again in 1188.
Such a threat implied a far more serious danger in the south than
in the north. The Aquitanian border was guarded by no such chain of
strongly-fortified, stoutly-manned ducal castles as girt in the Norman
duchy from Gisors to Tillières; and Henry’s hold over his wife’s
dominions was very different from his grasp of the heritage of his
mother. Twenty years of Angevin rule, which for political purposes
had well-nigh bridged over the channel that parted England from Gaul,
seem to have done nothing towards bridging over the gulf that parted
Aquitaine from France and Anjou. If our Angevin king sometimes looks
like a stranger amongst us, he was never anything but a stranger
among the fellow-countrymen of his wife. Nowhere throughout his whole
dominions was a spirit of revolt and insubordination so rife as among
the nobles of Poitou and its dependencies; but it was a spirit utterly
unlike the feudal pride of the Norman baronage. The endless strife
of the Aquitanian nobles with their foreign duke and with each other
sprang less from political motives than from a love of strife for its
own sake; and their love of strife was only one phase of the passion
for adventure and excitement which ran through every fibre of their
nature and coloured every aspect of their social life. The men of
the south lived in a world where the most delicate poetry and the
fiercest savagery, the wildest moral and political disorder, and the
most refined intellectual culture, mingled together in a confusion as
picturesque as it was dangerous. The southern warrior was but half
a knight if the sword was his only weapon--if he could not sing his
battles as well as fight them. From raid and foray and siege he passed
to the “Court of Love,” where the fairest and noblest women of the
land, from the duchess herself downwards, presided over contests of
subtle wit, skilful rime and melodious song, conducted under rules
as stringent and with earnestness as deep as if life and death were
at stake upon the issue; and in truth they sometimes were at stake,
for song, love and war all mingled together in the troubadour’s
life in an inextricable coil which the less subtle intellects of
the north would have been powerless to unravel or comprehend. The
_sirvente_ or poetical satire with which he stung his enemies into
fury or roused the slumbering valour of his friends often wrought more
deadly mischief than sharp steel or blazing firebrand. The nature of
the men of the south was like that of their country: it was made up
of the most opposite characteristics--of the lightest fancies, the
stormiest passions, the most versatile capabilities of body and mind,
the most indolent love of ease and pleasure, the most restless and
daring valour, the highest intellectual refinement and the lowest
moral degradation. It was a nature which revolted instinctively from
constraint in any direction,--whose impetuosity burst all control of
law and order imposed from without upon its restless love of action and
adventure, just as it overflowed all conventional bounds of thought and
language with its exuberant play of feeling and imagination in speech
or song.[966] We may see a type of it in the portrait, drawn by almost
contemporary hands, of one who played an important part both in the
social and in the political history of Aquitaine throughout the closing
years of Henry II. and the reign of his successor. “Bertrand de Born
was of the Limousin, lord of a castle in the diocese of Périgueux, by
name Hautefort. He had at his command near a thousand men. And all his
time he was at war with all his neighbours, with the count of Périgord,
and the viscount of Limoges, and with his own brother Constantine--whom
he would have liked to disinherit, had it not been for the king of
England--and with Richard, while he was count of Poitou. He was a
good knight, and a good warrior, and a good servant of ladies, and a
good troubadour of _sirventes_; he never made but two songs, and the
king of Aragon assigned the songs of Guiraut de Borneil as wives to
his _sirventes_; and the man who sang them for him was named Papiol.
And he was a pleasant, courteous man, wise and well-spoken, and knew
how to deal with good and evil. And whenever he chose, he was master
of King Henry and his sons; but he always wanted them to be at war
among themselves, the father and the sons and the brothers one with
another; and he always wanted the king of France and King Henry to
be at war too. And if they made peace or a truce, he immediately set
to work to unmake it with his _sirventes_, and to shew how they were
all dishonoured in peace. And he gained much good by it, and much
harm.”[967]
[966] As John of Salisbury says--“auctor ad opus suum”:--
“De Pictavorum dices te gente creatum,
Nam licet his linguâ liberiore loqui.”
(_Enthet. ad Polycrat._, Giles, vol. iii. p. i.)
[967] From the two old Provençal sketches of the life of
Bertrand de Born, printed and translated into French by M. Léon
Clédat in his monograph _Du rôle historique de Bertrand de
Born_, pp. 99–101.
Until the dukedom of Aquitaine passed to a woman, as were the vassals,
so was their sovereign. Eleanor’s grandfather the crusader-duke William
VIII. and her father William IX. were simply the boldest knights, the
gayest troubadours and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy.
There can be no doubt that the submission of Aquitaine to Louis VII.,
so far as it ever did submit to him, was due to Eleanor’s influence;
and it was the same influence which chiefly contributed to preserve its
obedience to her second husband during those earlier years of their
married life when, at home and abroad, all things had seemed destined
to prosper in his hands. But at the first symptom of a turn in the
tide of his fortunes, southern Gaul at one rose against its northern
master. Eleanor’s tact and firmness, Henry’s wariness and vigour, were
all taxed to the uttermost in holding it down throughout the years of
his struggle with the Church; and when Eleanor herself turned against
him in 1173, the chances of a good understanding between her subjects
and her husband became very nearly desperate. Henry himself seems to
have long ago perceived that a duke of Aquitaine, to be thoroughly
sure of his ground, needed a different apprenticeship from that which
might befit a king of England, a duke of Normandy or Britanny, or a
count of Anjou. The very first step in his plans for the future of
his children--a step taken several years before he seems even to have
thought of crowning his eldest son--was the designation of the second
as his mother’s destined colleague and ultimate heir. Richard had been
trained up ever since he was two years old specially for the office of
duke of Aquitaine. After long diplomacy, and at the cost of a betrothal
which became the source of endless mischief and trouble, the French
king’s sanction to the arrangement had been won; and on Trinity-Sunday
1172 Richard, in his mother’s presence, had been formally enthroned
at Poitiers. He was probably intended to govern the duchy under her
direction and advice; if so, however, the plan was frustrated by
Eleanor’s own conduct and by the suspicions which it aroused in her
husband. She was one of the very few captives whom at the restoration
of peace in 1175 he still retained in confinement. Richard, on the
other hand, had been like his brothers fully and freely forgiven; and
while his father and eldest brother went to seal their reconciliation
in England, he was sent into Poitou charged with authority to employ
its forces at his own discretion, and to take upon himself the
suppression of all disturbance and disorder in Aquitaine.[968]
[968] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 81.
What had been the precise nature of Richard’s training for his
appointed work--what proportion of his seventeen years’ life had
been actually spent in Aquitaine, what opportunities he had had
of growing familiar with the people over whom he was now set to
rule--we have no means of determining. By his own natural temper,
however, he was probably of all Eleanor’s sons the one least fitted
to gain the goodwill of the south. The “Cœur-de-lion” of tradition,
indeed--the adventurous crusader, the mirror of knightly prowess and
knightly courtesy, the lavish patron of verse and song, the ideal
king of troubadours and knights-errant--looks at first glance like
the very incarnation of the spirit of the south. But it was only in
the intellectual part of his nature that his southern blood made
itself felt; the real groundwork of his character was made of sterner
stuff. The love of splendour and elegance, the delight in poetry and
music,[969] the lavish generosity, the passion for adventure, which
contrasted so vividly with his father’s practical businesslike temper,
came to him without doubt from his mother. The moral deficiencies
and evil tendencies of his nature he himself charged, somewhat too
exclusively, upon the demon-blood of the Angevin counts.[970] But we
need not look either to an ancestress so shadowy and so remote as the
demon-countess, nor to a land so far distant from us as Poitou, for
the source of Richard’s strongest characteristics both of body and
of mind. In him alone among Henry’s sons can we see a likeness to
the Norman forefathers of the Empress Matilda. His outward aspect,
his lofty stature, his gigantic strength--held in check though it
was by the constantly-recurring ague which “kept him, fearless, in a
tremor as continual as the tremor of fear in which he kept the rest
of the world”[971]--his blue eyes and golden hair, all proclaimed him
a child of the north. And although he spent the chief part of his
life elsewhere, the slender share of local and national sympathies
which he possessed seems to have lain in the same direction. The
“lion-heart” chose its own last earthly resting-place at Rouen, not
at Poitiers;[972] and the intimate friend and comrade whose name is
inseparably associated with his by a tradition which, whatever its
historical value, is as famous as it is beautiful, was no Poitevin
or Provençal troubadour, but a trouvère from northern France.[973]
The influence of his northman-blood shewed itself more vividly still
when on his voyage to Palestine, having lived to be more than
thirty years old without possessing a skiff that he could call his
own, or--unless indeed in early childhood he had gone a cruise round
his father’s island-realm--ever making a longer or more adventurous
voyage than that from Southampton to Barfleur or Wissant, he suddenly
developed not only a passionate love of the sea, but a consummate
seamanship which he certainly had had no opportunity of acquiring in
any way, and which can only have been born in him, as an inheritance
from his wiking forefathers. When scarcely more than a boy in years,
Richard was already one of the most serious and determined of men.
His sternness to those who “withstood his will” matched that of the
Conqueror himself; and Richard’s will, even at the age of seventeen,
was no mere caprice, but a fixed determination which overrode all
obstacles between itself and its object as unhesitatingly as the old
wiking-keels overrode the billows of the northern sea. He went down
into Aquitaine fully resolved that the country should be at once, and
once for all, reduced to submission and order. He set himself “to bring
the shapeless into shape, to reduce the irregular to rule, to cast
down the things that were mighty and level those that were rugged; to
restore the dukedom of Aquitaine to its ancient boundaries and its
ancient government.”[974] He did the work with all his might, but he
did it with a straightforward ruthlessness untempered by southern
craft or Angevin caution and tact. He would not conciliate; he could
not wait. “He thought nothing done while anything still remained to
do; and he cared for no success that was not reached by a path cut
by his own sword and stained with his opponent’s blood. Boiling over
with zeal for order and justice, he sought to quell the audacity of
this ungovernable people and to secure the safety of the innocent amid
these workers of mischief by at once proceeding against the evil-doers
with the utmost rigour which his ducal authority could enable him to
exercise upon them.”[975] In a word, before Richard had been six months
in their midst, the Aquitanians discovered that if their Angevin duke
had chastised them with whips, the son of their own duchess was minded
to chastise them with scorpions.
[969] See R. Coggeshall’s description of Richard’s love of
church music: “clericos sonorâ voce modulantes donis et
precibus ad cantandum festivius instimulabat, atque per chorum
huc illucque deambulando, voce ac manu ut altius concreparent
excitabat.” R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 97.
[970] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 27 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 154).
[971] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 105).
[972] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 84.
[973] That is, if the Blondel of tradition is to be identified
with Blondel of Nesle.
[974] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 104).
[975] _Ibid._ (p. 105).
He set off at once upon a furious campaign against the strongholds of
the unruly barons. “No mountain-side however steep and rugged, no tower
however lofty and impregnable, availed to check his advance, as skilful
as it was daring, as steady and persevering as it was impetuous.”[976]
By midsummer the castles of Poitou itself were mostly in his hands, and
the young conqueror was busy with the siege of Castillonnes-sur-Agen,
which surrendered to him in the middle of August.[977] Before the
winter was over he was master of Périgueux, and had, in the phrase of
a local writer, well-nigh “disinherited” the barons of Périgord, the
Quercy and the Limousin. But in the spring their smouldering resentment
was kindled into a blaze by the incitements of Bertrand de Born, whose
brother Constantine, expelled by him from the castle of Hautefort which
the two brothers had inherited in common, had appealed to Richard
for succour; the signal for revolt, given by Bertrand in a vigorous
_sirvente_, was answered by all the malcontents of the district,[978]
and at the opposite end of Poitou by the count of Angoulême; and at
Easter Richard found his position so difficult that he went to seek
advice and reinforcements from his father in England.[979] Geoffrey
of Britanny arrived at the same time on a like errand. Henry bade
his eldest son go to the help of the younger ones; the young king
complied,[980] somewhat unwillingly, and went to collect forces in
France while Richard hurried back into Poitou. The peril was urgent; in
his absence Count Vulgrin of Angoulême had invaded Poitou at the head
of a host of Brabantines. The invaders were however met and defeated
with great slaughter at Barbezieux by Richard’s constable Theobald
Chabot and Bishop John of Poitiers.[981] By Whitsuntide Richard had
gathered a sufficient force of loyal Poitevins and stipendiaries from
the neighbouring lands to march against Vulgrin and his Brabantines
and defeat them in a battle near the border of the Angoumois and
Saintonge. He then turned upon the viscount of Limoges, besieged
and took his castle of Aixe, and thence advanced to Limoges itself,
which he captured in like manner. At midsummer he was rejoined at
Poitiers by his elder brother, and the two led their combined forces
against Vulgrin of Angoulême.[982] A fortnight’s siege had however
scarcely made them masters of Châteauneuf on the Charente when the
young king--seduced, it was said, by some evil counsellor whom we may
probably suspect to have been Bertrand de Born[983]--suddenly abandoned
the campaign and withdrew again to France. Richard, undaunted by his
brother’s desertion, pushed on to Moulin-Neuf and thence to Angoulême
itself, where all the leaders of the rebellion were gathered together.
A six days’ siege sufficed to make Vulgrin surrender himself, his
fellow-rebels, his city and five of his castles to the mercy of the
duke and the English king. Richard sent over all his prisoners to his
father in England; Henry, however, sent them back again, and Richard
put them in prison to await their sentence till the king should return
to Gaul.[984]
[976] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.
Christ. Soc., p. 105).
[977] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 101.
[978] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, pp. 29, 30.
[979] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 114, 115.
[980] _Ib._ p. 115. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 93.
[981] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. He adds: “Sicque
salus in manu clericorum data satis evidenter ostendit
plerisque non animos deesse sed arma.”
[982] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 121.
[983] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, p. 35.
[984] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 121.
Northern Aquitaine, or Guyenne, was now for the moment subdued. As
soon as Christmas was over Richard proceeded to the reduction of
Gascony. Dax, held against him by its viscount Peter and by the count
of Bigorre, and Bayonne, defended by its viscount Ernald Bertram,
submitted each after a ten days’ siege; S. Pierre-de-Cize, on the
Spanish frontier, fell in one day; the Basques and Navarrese were
compelled to promise peace; the plunderings habitually inflicted by
the border-folk upon pilgrims to the shrine of S. James at Compostella
were suppressed; and from his court at Poitiers on Candlemas-day
Richard triumphantly reported to his father that he had pacified the
whole country.[985] But the peace did not last long. Trouble was
already threatening at the opposite end of the duchy. Ralf of Déols,
the wealthiest baron in Berry, had lately died leaving as his heir
an infant daughter. She was of course, according to feudal law, a
ward of her overlord, King Henry; but her relatives seized both her
and her estates, and refused to give up either.[986] Henry, probably
feeling that the boy-duke of Aquitaine had already more than enough
upon his hands, charged his eldest son with the settlement of this
affair, bidding him take possession of all Ralf’s lands without delay,
and significantly adding: “While I governed my realms alone, I lost
none of my rightful possessions; it will be shame to us all if aught
of them be lost now that we are several to rule them.” The young king
took the hint, marched with all his Norman and Angevin forces into
Berry, and laid siege to Châteauroux;[987] but he seems to have had
no success;[988] and there was no chance of help from Richard, for
not only was the Limousin again plunged in civil war,[989] but all
southern Aquitaine was in danger of a like fate--an attempt of Count
Raymond of Toulouse to exert his authority as overlord of Narbonne
with greater stringency than its high-spirited viscountess Hermengard
was disposed to endure having stirred up against him a league of all
the princes of Septimania and the Spanish border, under the leadership
of Hermengard herself and of Raymond’s hereditary rivals, the king of
Aragon and his brothers.[990] The way in which Raymond prepared to meet
their attack supplies a vivid illustration of southern character and
manners. He sought an ally in Bertrand de Born, and he appealed to him
in his character not of knight but of troubadour. He sent a messenger
to Hautefort to state his cause and to ask Bertrand, not to fight for
it, but simply to publish it to the world in a _sirvente_. Bertrand
answered readily to the appeal; he was only too glad of any excuse for
a _sirvente_ which should “cause dints in a thousand shields, and rents
in a thousand helms and hauberks.” “I would fain have the great barons
ever wroth one with another!” is the characteristic exclamation with
which he ends his war-song.[991]
[985] _Ib._ pp. 131, 132.
[986] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 127.
[987] _Ib._ p. 132.
[988] The _Gesta Hen._, as above, say Châteauroux was
surrendered to him at once; but we hear nothing more of it till
the autumn, and then we find that the elder king has to besiege
it himself; so if the younger one ever did win it, he must have
lost it again as quickly.
[989] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. cc. lxix., lxx. (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. pp. 322, 323).
[990] See Vic and Vaissète, _Hist. du Languedoc_ (new ed.),
vol. vi. pp. 69, 70; and the terms of the league, _ib._ vol.
viii. cols. 325, 326.
[991] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 38, 39.
The strife thus begun for the mastery in Septimania was continued at
intervals between the houses of Toulouse and Aragon for many years to
come. The overlord of Toulouse, however, seems to have taken no part in
it as yet; and indeed, it had scarcely more than begun when Richard was
summoned away to meet his father in Normandy. Three times in the course
of that spring and summer had King Henry collected his host in England
for the purpose of going over sea to the help of his sons; twice had he
remanded it,[992] for the sake, as it seems, of continuing his legal
and administrative work in England. By midsummer however the tidings
from Gaul were such that he dared not further prolong his absence.
Geoffrey wanted his help in Britanny; Richard wanted it almost as much
in Aquitaine; the young king’s unaccountable lack of vigour in their
support, and in the prosecution of the war in Berry, was justly raising
suspicions of his loyalty to the family cause; and the treaty made
with Louis of France at the close of the last war was proving, as such
treaties too often did prove, only a source of fresh disputes. Henry
summoned Louis to fulfil his part of the agreement by handing over
the Vexin to the young king and the viscounty of Bourges to Richard,
according to his promise, as the dowries of their brides;[993] Louis
insisted that Henry should first complete his share of the engagement
by allowing Adela, who had been in his custody ever since the treaty
was signed, to be wedded to her promised bridegroom, Richard. At last,
in July, he succeeded in bringing the matter to a crisis by extorting
from a papal legate who had been sent to deal with a heresy that had
arisen in southern Gaul a threat of laying all Henry’s dominions under
interdict unless Richard and Adela were married at once.[994] The
English bishops appealed against the threat;[995] while Henry hurried
over to Normandy,[996] met first his two elder sons,[997] then the
legate,[998] then the French king,[999] and once again contrived to
stave off the threatening peril. At Nonancourt, on September 25,
the two kings made a treaty containing not one word of marriages or
dowries, but consisting of an agreement to bury all their differences
under the cross. They pledged themselves to go on crusade together,
to submit to arbitration the questions in dispute between them about
Auvergne and Berry, and to lay aside all their other quarrels at once
and for ever.[1000] Such a treaty was in reality a mere temporary
expedient; but it served Henry’s purpose by securing him against
French interference while he marched against the rebels in Berry. As
usual, he carried all before him; Châteauroux surrendered without a
struggle; the lord of La Châtre, who had stolen the little heiress
of Déols and was keeping her fast in his own castle, hurried to make
his peace and give up his prize.[1001] Henry used his opportunity to
advance into the Limousin and exert his authority in punishing its
turbulent barons;[1002] soon after Martinmas he and Louis met at Graçay
and made another ineffectual attempt to settle the vexed question of
Auvergne;[1003] a month later he was again in Aquitaine, purchasing
the direct ownership of one of its under-fiefs, the county of La
Marche, from the childless Count Adalbert who was purposing to end his
days in Holy Land;[1004] and at Christmas he was back at Angers, where
he kept the feast with his three elder sons amid such a gathering of
knights as had never been seen at his court except at his own crowning
or that of the young king.[1005]
[992] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 138, 160, 167, 168.
[993] _Ib._ p. 168.
[994] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 180, 181. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 271.
[995] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 181.
[996] In the night of August 17–18. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p.
190. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 421.
[997] Rob. Torigni, a. 1177.
[998] On September 11. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 190.
[999] September 21. _Ibid._ Cf. Rog. Howden and Gerv. Cant. as
above.
[1000] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 191–194. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
vol. ii. pp. 144–146; Gerv. Cant. as above, pp. 272–274;
shorter in R. Diceto as above, pp. 421, 422. The place and date
are from this last authority.
[1001] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 195, 196. Cf. R. Diceto as
above, p. 425.
[1002] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 196.
[1003] The proceedings on this occasion are worth notice.
Henry, it seems, tried to substitute for the arbitration of
three prelates and three laymen on each side (which had been
agreed upon at Nonancourt) his own favourite plan of sworn
inquest. He called together the barons of Auvergne, and
required them to certify what rights his predecessors the dukes
of Aquitaine had enjoyed in their country. They answered that
by ancient right all Auvergne pertained to the ducal dominions,
except the bishopric (Clermont), which was dependent on the
French Crown. To this definition Louis would not agree; so
they fell back upon the former scheme of arbitration--which,
however, seems never to have got any further. _Gesta Hen._
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 196. This was apparently the last meeting
(except the one in England; see below, p. 216) between Henry
and Louis, and must therefore be the one of which a curious
account is given by Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii.
c. 1 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 85, 86).
[1004] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 197. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 147, 148. Rob. Torigni, a. 1177. R.
Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 425, under a wrong year. Geoff.
Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p.
324). Henry received the homage of the under-tenants of La
Marche (_Gesta Hen._ as above); but he did not really get what
he paid for, as will be seen later.
[1005] Rob. Torigni, a. 1178.
For six months there was peace, and in July the king ventured to
return to England.[1006] He knighted his son Geoffrey at Woodstock on
August 6,[1007] and when the lad hurried over sea, eager to flesh his
maiden sword and emulate the prowess of his brothers, he could find no
more serious field in which to exercise his warlike energies than a
succession of tournaments on the borders of France and Normandy.[1008]
Richard however was again busy with more earnest fighting. The rivalry
between the houses of Aragon and Toulouse had stirred up the petty
chieftains of southern Gascony, whom the king of Aragon was seeking
to enlist in his service; and Richard was obliged to undertake a
campaign against the count of Bigorre in particular, which seems to
have occupied him till the end of the year. The defiant attitude of the
nobles of Saintonge and the Angoumois, and especially of a powerful
baron, Geoffrey of Rancogne, called him back at Christmas to Saintes;
as soon as the feast was over he laid siege to Geoffrey’s castle of
Pons; after spending more than three months before the place, he left
his constables to continue the blockade while he himself went to
attack the other rebel castles. Five of them were taken and razed
between Easter and Rogation-tide,[1009] and then Richard gathered up
all his forces to assault Geoffrey of Rancogne’s mightiest stronghold,
Taillebourg. It stood a few miles north of Saintes, on the crest of a
lofty rock, three of whose sides were so steep as to defy any attempt
to scale them, while the fourth was guarded by a triple ditch and
rampart. Three lines of wall, built of hewn stone and strengthened
with towers and battlements, encircled the keep, which was stored
with provisions and arms offensive and defensive, and crowded with
picked men-at-arms who laughed to scorn the rashness of the young duke
in attempting to besiege a fortress which all his predecessors had
looked upon as well-nigh unapproachable. But he cleared its approaches
with a ruthless energy such as they little expected, cutting down
vineyards, burning houses, levelling every obstacle before him, till
he pitched his tents close to the castle walls under the eyes of the
astonished townsfolk. A sally of the latter only resulted in making
a way for Richard’s entrance into the town; three days later the
castle surrendered, and Geoffrey himself with it.[1010] Ten days’ more
fighting brought all the rebels to submission and reduced Vulgrin
of Angoulême himself to give up his capital city and his castle of
Montignac in Périgord;[1011] and at Whitsuntide Richard went to report
his success with his own lips to his delighted father in England.[1012]
[1006] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 206, 207. R. Diceto as above,
p. 426.
[1007] R. Diceto as above.
[1008] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 207.
[1009] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 212, 213.
[1010] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 431, 432. Cf. _Gesta
Hen._ as above, p. 213, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1179.
[1011] _Gesta Hen._ as above.
[1012] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 432.
He returned shortly before Michaelmas,[1013] to witness the opening
of a new phase in the relations between the Angevin house and the
French Crown. Philip of France, the only son of Louis VII., was now
fourteen years old, and his father was desirous to have him crowned
king. Before the appointed day arrived, however, he fell sick almost to
death.[1014] Louis, half wild with anxiety, dreamed that the martyr
of Canterbury required him to visit his shrine as a condition of the
boy’s recovery.[1015] He hurried across the Channel; Henry met him at
Dover and conducted him to Canterbury, where they both spent three days
in fasting and prayer before the shrine; and on the fourth day after
his landing Louis re-entered his own country, to find that his prayers
were answered.[1016] His brief visit was long remembered in England,
where no king of France had ever been seen before,[1017] or was ever
seen again save when John the Good was brought there as a prisoner in
the days of Edward III. Scarcely, however, had Philip recovered when
Louis himself was stricken down by paralysis.[1018] This calamity made
him all the more anxious for his son’s coronation, which took place at
Reims on All Saints’ day. The archbishop of the province--a brother of
Queen Adela--performed the rite, assisted by nearly all the bishops of
Gaul; all the great vassals of the kingdom were present, among them
the young King Henry, who in his capacity of duke of Normandy carried
the crown before his youthful overlord in the procession to and from
the cathedral church, as Count Philip of Flanders carried the sword of
state.[1019] Like the crowning of young Henry himself, the crowning
of Philip Augustus proved to be a beginning of troubles. His father’s
helpless condition left the boy-king to fall under the influence of
whatever counsellor could first get at his ear. That one happened to be
his godfather, Philip of Flanders; and the policy of Flanders was to
get the boy entirely under his own control by setting him against all
his father’s old friends,[1020] and even against his mother, whom he
tried to rob of her dower-lands and persecuted to such a degree that
she was compelled to leave his domains and fly to her brothers for
the protection which her husband was powerless to give her.[1021] The
united forces of Flanders and of the Crown--for the latter were now
wholly at Philip’s command[1022]--were, however, more than a match for
those of Champagne and Blois; and the house of Blois was driven to seek
help of the only power which seemed capable of giving it--the power of
their old rivals of Anjou.[1023]
[1013] So it appears from an entry in the Pipe Roll of 1179;
Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 227.
[1014] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 240. According to Rob.
Torigni, a. 1179, Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
vol. v. p. 5), and Will. Armor., _Philippis_, l. i. (_ib._ pp.
99, 100), the boy’s sickness was the effect of a fright caused
by an adventure in the forest of Compiègne, very like that of
Geoffrey Plantagenet at Loches.
[1015] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 240–241. Cf. Rog.
Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 192.
[1016] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 241, 242; Rog. Howden, as
above, pp. 192, 193; Will. Armor., _Philipp._, l. i. (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.) pp. 100, 101. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 432, 433, relates the pilgrimage without
any mention of its motive; while Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), p. 293,
seems to think Louis came for the benefit of his own health,
not his son’s.
[1017] R. Diceto, as above, p. 433.
[1018] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 243.
[1019] _Ib._ p. 242. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 193, 194. R.
Diceto as above, p. 438. It is Roger who says that Henry
bore the crown officially--“de jure ducatûs Normanniæ.”
Ralf explains away the matter as a mere act of courtesy and
friendship.
[1020] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 244. Rog. Howden as above, p.
196.
[1021] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 196. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
294.
[1022] He had stolen his father’s royal seal, to prevent all
further exercise of authority on the part of Louis. R. Diceto,
as above.
[1023] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 244. Rog. Howden as
above.
The days were long gone by when it had been a chief part of the
Angevin interest and policy to set the French king and the house of
Blois at variance with each other. If Henry had needed any proof that
the rivalry of Blois was no longer to be feared, he would have found
it in the appeal for succour thus sent to him by Queen Adela and her
brothers, and supported by his own eldest son, who at Mid-Lent 1180
went over to England purposely to consult with him on the state of
affairs in France. Before Easter father and son both returned to
Normandy, and there held a personal meeting with the French queen,
her brothers Theobald of Blois and Stephen of Sancerre, and several
other victims of young Philip’s tyranny. Pledges of good faith were
exchanged, and summons were issued for a general levy of all Henry’s
forces, on both sides of the sea, ready to attack Philip after
Easter.[1024] Before the attack could be made, however, Philip had
got himself into such difficulties as to render it needless. As soon
as Lent was over he went into Flanders and there married a niece of
its count, Elizabeth, daughter of the count of Hainaut.[1025] He
then summoned all the princes of his realm to meet him at Sens on
Whit-Sunday for the coronation of himself and his queen. The marriage
had, however, given such offence that Philip of Flanders, in dread
of opposition to his niece’s crowning, persuaded the young king to
anticipate the ceremony and have her crowned together with himself at
S. Denis, early in the morning of Ascension-day, by the archbishop of
Sens.[1026] The wrath of the great vassals knew no bounds; and the
wrath of the archbishop of Reims was almost more formidable still,
for the exclusive right to crown the king of France was a special
prerogative of his see, and he at once forwarded to Rome an indignant
protest against the outrage done to him by his royal nephew.[1027]
Philip of France and Guy of Sens had in fact put themselves into a
position which might easily have become almost as full of peril as that
into which Henry of England and Roger of York had put themselves by
a somewhat similar proceeding ten years before. As, however, William
of Reims was not a Thomas of Canterbury, the consequences were less
tragic; and Henry himself must have been tempted to smile at the
turning of the tables which suddenly placed in his hands the task of
shielding Philip from the consequences of his rashness, and reconciling
him to the outraged Church and the offended people.
[1024] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 245. Rog. Howden as above.
[1025] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above, p. 5. Gerv. Cant. as above.
Rob. Torigni, a. 1181 (a year too late). The bride is called
Elizabeth by her husband’s panegyrist, Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist.
Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 7), and Isabel by another of his
biographers (_ib._ p. 258). R. Diceto calls her Margaret.
[1026] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 245, 246. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 197. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
5. Rob. Torigni, a. 1181. This last writer, whose chronology
has now become extremely confused, puts the event a year too
late. So does Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
vol. v.), p. 7. Rigord indeed gives an account of the matter
so different from that of the English writers--_e.g._ he
represents it as taking place publicly, amid a great concourse
of spectators--that one might almost suppose he was relating a
second coronation, performed in the following year. But there
seems no other record of any such thing; and there are some
details in his story which point to a different conclusion.
Not only does he, too, name the archbishop of Sens as the
consecrator--an outrage upon Reims which could not possibly
have been repeated--but he betrays his own confusion by giving
the date as June 1, 1181, and then describing the day as
Ascension-day, which in 1181 fell on May 14, but which really
was the day of the crowning in 1180 (May 29). The truth is
that the panegyrists of Philip Augustus are obliged to slur
over this first disgraceful year of his reign as rapidly and
confusedly as they can.
[1027] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 246. Rog. Howden as above.
There was a story that young Henry of Anjou, standing close behind his
brother-in-law Philip on his first coronation-day in Reims cathedral,
had bent forward to hold the crown upon the boy’s head, and thus
relieve him of its weight and keep it safely in its place.[1028] The
little act of brotherly kindness and protecting care may be taken as
typical of the political attitude which Henry’s father actually assumed
towards the boy-king of the French, and which he faithfully maintained
until Philip himself rendered its maintenance impossible. It was in
truth no new thing for a count of Anjou to act as the protector of a
king of France. But we may fairly question whether this traditional
function of the Angevin house had ever been fulfilled so honestly
and unselfishly as it was by Henry during the first two years of
Philip’s reign. It was Henry alone who, by his personal influence and
tact, brought Philip himself to reason and the count of Flanders to
submission.[1029] Next year, when Philip had been left sole king of
France by the death of Louis VII.,[1030] it was Henry whose mediation
checked an attempt of the Flemish count to avenge by force of arms the
loss of his influence at court;[1031] and when a few months later the
house of Blois, with characteristic inconstancy, made common cause
with Flanders against France, it was the prompt and vigorous action
of Henry’s sons which alone saved the royal domain from invasion on
all sides at once, and enabled their young sovereign to hold out
against his assailants till Henry himself came over to patch up another
settlement in the spring of 1182.[1032]
[1028] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 439. Rigord (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 5, tells the same story
more briefly, and it is amusing to see how differently he
colours it.
[1029] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 246, 247. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 6.
[1030] September 18, 1180; _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 250;
R. Diceto as above, p. 7; Will. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 72. Rigord
(_ib._), p. 7, makes a confusion about the year.
[1031] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 277. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
vol. ii. p. 260.
[1032] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 284–286. R. Diceto as above,
pp. 9–11. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 297, 300. Gir.
Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. cc. 15, 16 (Angl. Christ.
Soc., pp. 42–47). Rob. Torigni, a. 1182.
Other needs, however, than those of the French Crown were once more
calling for Henry’s presence in Gaul. The condition of Aquitaine
only grew more unsatisfactory, in spite or in consequence of
Richard’s efforts to improve it. Henry’s bargain with Adalbert of
La Marche had failed to secure him the possession of that county;
the brother-lords of Lusignan claimed it as next-of-kin to Adalbert
as soon as the king’s back was turned, and made good their claim by
forcible occupation.[1033] The Limousin was again threatening revolt;
the town-walls of Limoges were razed by Richard’s order at midsummer
1181.[1034] Almost at the same moment the death of Count Vulgrin of
Angoulême opened a fresh source of strife; his two brothers laid claim
to his inheritance against his only daughter, whom Richard of course
took into wardship as a feudal heiress, and on Richard’s refusal to
admit their claims they made common cause with Ademar of Limoges.[1035]
The mischief however did not end here. Richard’s unbending resolve
to bridle Aquitaine had gradually stirred up against him the bitter
hatred of the whole people--a hatred for which his stern rule is quite
sufficient to account, without admitting the blacker charges brought
against him by the reckless tongues of the south.[1036] The voice of
Bertrand de Born had once more given the signal for a general rising.
A _sirvente_ which went forth from Hautefort in 1181 rang like a
trumpet-call in the ears of the lords of Ventadour and Comborn and
Périgord and Dax, of Angoulême and Pons and Taillebourg.[1037] But even
this was not all. Years before, it seems, there had flashed through
the troubadour’s quick brain a possibility of stirring up strife in
higher quarters than among the petty princes of his native land. Now he
distinctly saw the possibility of finding for the Aquitanian resistance
to Richard a rallying-point and a leader in Richard’s own brother.
[1033] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 324).
[1034] _Ib._ c. 72 (p. 326).
[1035] _Ibid._ He was their half-brother, the only son of their
mother’s first marriage.
[1036] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292, with Gerv.
Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303, and Gir. Cambr., _De Instr.
Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 105).
[1037] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 44, 45.
One of the most puzzling figures in the history of the time is that of
the younger Henry of Anjou--the “young king,” as he is usually called.
From the day of his crowning to that of his death not one deed is
recorded of him save deeds of the meanest ingratitude, selfishness,
cowardliness and treachery. Yet this undutiful, rebellious son, this
corrupter and betrayer of his younger brothers, this weak and faithless
ally, was loved and admired by all men while he lived, and lamented
by all men after he was gone.[1038] The attraction exercised by him
over a man so far his superior as William the Marshal[1039] is indeed
well-nigh incomprehensible. But the panegyrics of the historians,
unaccountable as they look at first glance, do throw some light on
the secret of young Henry’s gift of general fascination. It was a
gift which indeed, in varying degrees, formed part of the hereditary
endowments of the Angevin house. But the character which it took in
Fulk Nerra or Henry Fitz-Empress was very different from that which it
assumed in Henry’s eldest son. The essence of the young king’s nature
was not Angevin. He had little either of the higher talents or of the
stronger and sterner qualities of the Angevin race; he had still less
of the characteristics of the Norman. It is by studying his portrait
as drawn in contrast to that of Richard by a hand equally favourable
to both that we can best see what he really was. “The first was
admired for his mildness and liberality; the second was esteemed for
his seriousness and firmness. One was commendable for graciousness,
the other for stateliness. One gained praise for his courtesy, the
other for his constancy. One was conspicuous for mercy, the other for
justice. One was the refuge and the shield of vagabonds and evil-doers,
the other was their scourge. One was devoted to the sports of war, the
other to war itself; one was gracious to strangers, the other to his
own friends--one to all men, the other only to good men.”[1040] Henry
in fact was at bottom what Richard never was but on the surface--a
careless, pleasure-loving, capricious, but withal most gracious and
winning child of the south. The most philosophic English historian of
the day was reduced to account for the young king’s popularity by the
simple and comprehensive explanation that “the number of fools is
infinite.”[1041] But it was not folly, it was a shrewd perception of
their own interest, which led the Aquitanians writhing under Richard’s
iron rule to see in his elder brother a prince after their own
hearts.[1042]
[1038] Except the ever-independent William of Newburgh; see his
l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).
[1039] See Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 279.
[1040] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl.
Christ. Soc. p. 106).
[1041] “Quia ut scriptum est, Stultorum infinitus est numerus.”
Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 234). The
quotation is from the Vulgate version of Ecclesiastes i. 15;
the English A. V. conveys a wholly different idea.
[1042] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. See also Gerald’s
other account of young Henry, _De Instr. Princ._, dist. ii. c.
9 (Angl. Christ. Soc., pp. 31, 32).
It was not the first time that Bertrand de Born had sought to kindle in
the young king’s mind the sparks of jealousy and discontent which were
always latent there.[1043] Now, he fed the flames with an unsparing
hand. In words of bitter satire he ridicules the position of the young
king, who bears the titles of a great sovereign, but has no authority
in his own land, and cannot even claim the tolls upon the traffic along
its roads: “Barons of Aquitaine, are we not all of us better than a
carter who leaves his cart to go as it may, and counts his dues, if he
counts any at all, with trembling fingers?” “I prize a tiny tract of
land with honour above a great empire with disgrace!”[1044] Richard,
meanwhile, was playing into his enemies’s hands by an encroachment
upon territory which in name at least belonged to his brother. He had
built a castle at Clairvaux, between Loudun and Poitiers, but on the
Angevin side of the frontier. If the thought of resentment did not
occur to Henry, Bertrand took care to suggest it: “Between Poitiers and
Ile-Bouchard and Mirebeau and Loudun and Chinon some one has dared to
rear, at Clairvaux, a fair castle in the midst of the plain. I would
not have the young king see it or know of it, for it would not be to
his taste; but its walls are so white, I doubt he will catch sight of
their gleam from Mateflon!”[1045] The troubadour’s shafts were well
aimed, and they rankled. When King Henry returned to Normandy in the
spring of 1182 the Aquitanian rising was in full career; as soon as
he had composed matters in France he hurried to the help of Richard,
who was fighting the rebels in the Limousin; at Whitsuntide the counts
of Angoulême and Périgord and the viscount of Limoges came to confer
with him at Grandmont, but nothing came of the negotiations; Henry then
went to attack Pierre-Buffière, while Richard returned to the siege of
Excideuil. At midsummer the king was back at Grandmont, and Geoffrey
of Britanny with him; thence they went to rejoin Richard, who was now
busy with the siege of Périgueux.[1046] Matters were in this stage when
the young king at last made up his mind to advance into Aquitaine.
He was joyfully welcomed at Limoges on the festival of its patron S.
Martial--the last day of June. On the morrow, however, he joined his
father and brothers before Périgueux, and within a week peace was made;
Périgueux surrendered, its count and the viscount of Limoges submitted
to Richard, and only the brother-counts of Angoulême still remained in
arms against him.[1047]
[1043] See Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 36.
[1044] _Ib._ p. 44.
[1045] _Ibid._
[1046] Strictly, of its suburb Puy-St.-Front.
[1047] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 1, 2 (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. pp. 330, 331).
Peace, however, never lasted long either in Aquitaine or in King
Henry’s family. His eldest son now again grew importunate for a
definite and immediate share in the family heritage. When this was
refused, he fled to the court of France, and was only recalled by
a promise of an increased pecuniary allowance for himself and his
queen.[1048] Aquitaine, as soon as Henry had left it, drifted into
a state of anarchy more frightful than any that had ever been known
there before; the sudden conclusion of the war had let loose all over
the country a crowd of mercenaries--commonly known as “Brabantines,”
but really the off-scouring of every land from Flanders to Aragon--who
wrought, as a local writer says, such havoc as had never been seen
since the days of the heathen northmen.[1049] The evil in some measure
brought its own remedy with it, for it drove the common people to
take into their own hands the maintenance of peace and order. A poor
Auvergnat carpenter, urged by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, set
forth under the protection of the diocesan bishop to preach the cause
of peace in his native district of Le Puy. Those who were like-minded
with him, no matter what their rank or calling, enrolled themselves
in a society bound together by solemn pledges for mutual support in
adherence to right and resistance to wrong in every shape; and in a few
years these “_Caputii_,” as they were called from the linen capes or
hoods which they always wore in fight, proved more than a match for the
Brabantines.[1050]
[1048] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 289, 291. Cf. Rog.
Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 266, 267.
[1049] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 73 (as above, p. 328).
[1050] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 22 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 339). Rob. Torigni, a. 1183. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs),
vol. i. pp. 300, 301. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 11, 12.
Meanwhile, however, the warlike barons of Aquitaine were exasperated
at the failure of their league against Richard; and their anger
reached its height when at the conclusion of the Christmas festivities
held by King Henry and his sons at Caen, the young king of his own
accord renewed his oath of allegiance to his father, confessed his
secret alliance with Richard’s enemies, and offered to abandon it
and make peace with his brother if his father would but insist upon
the surrender of Clairvaux. Richard, after some hesitation, gave up
to his father the fortress in dispute.[1051] The incident apparently
opened Henry’s eyes to the necessity of clearly defining his sons’
political relations with each other; and while Bertrand de Born was
giving a voice to the wrath of his fellow-barons at the young king’s
desertion of their cause,[1052] Henry led his three sons back to
Angers, made them all take an oath of obedience to him and peace with
each other,[1053] and then called upon the two younger to do homage
to the eldest for their fiefs.[1054] Geoffrey obeyed;[1055] Richard
indignantly refused, declaring it was utterly unreasonable that there
should be any distinction of rank between children of the same parents,
and that if the father’s heritage belonged of right to the eldest son,
the mother’s was equally due to the second.[1056] The young king, on
the other hand, was on account of his entanglements with the Aquitanian
barons almost as unwilling to receive the homage as Richard was to
perform it.[1057] The end of the discussion was that Richard quitted
the court, “leaving behind him nothing but threats and insults,” and
hurried into Poitou to prepare for defence and defiance.[1058]
[1051] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 291, 294, 295.
[1052] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 47.
[1053] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 295. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
vol. ii. p. 18.
[1054] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 291. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
vol. ii. p. 273.
[1055] _Ibid._ R. Diceto as above.
[1056] R. Diceto (as above), pp. 18, 19. _Gesta Hen._ (as
above), p. 292. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 303.
[1057] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 18. _Gesta Hen._
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292. The two accounts do not exactly
agree, Ralf placing at this point the young king’s confession
of his dealings in Aquitaine; while the story in the _Gesta_ is
extremely confused, because it is told twice over, in different
forms (pp. 291, 292 and 294, 295).
[1058] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 292.
In the first burst of his anger Henry bade the other two brothers
go and “subdue Richard’s pride” by force of arms.[1059] Immediately
afterwards, however, he summoned all three, together with the aggrieved
barons of Aquitaine, to meet him in conference at Mirebeau.[1060] But
the young king had already marched into Poitou and received a warm
welcome there;[1061] Geoffrey, to whom his father had intrusted his
summons to the barons, led a motley force of Bretons, Brabantines
and mercenaries of all kinds to Limoges;[1062] soon afterwards young
Henry joined him; with the viscount’s help they threw themselves into
the citadel,[1063] and set to work to raise the whole country against
Richard. He, in his extremity, appealed to his father;[1064] and Henry
at once hurried to the rescue. For six weeks he laid siege to the
citadel of Limoges;[1065] twice he was personally shot at, and narrowly
escaped with his life; twice the young king came to him with offers of
submission, and each time he was welcomed with open arms, but each time
the submission was a mere feint, designed to keep Henry quiet and give
the barons time to wreak their vengeance upon Richard.[1066] By Easter
matters were so far advanced that Bertrand de Born was openly calling
for aid upon Flanders, France and Normandy;[1067] and the dread of a
rising in this last-named quarter prompted Henry to send orders for the
arrest of those barons, both in Normandy and England, who had been most
conspicuous in the rebellion of 1173.[1068]
[1059] R. Diceto as above, p. 19.
[1060] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 295.
[1061] _Ib._ p. 292.
[1062] _Ib._ pp. 293, 295. Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 6 (Labbe,
_Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 332).
[1063] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 293, 296. Geoff. Vigeois as
above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304.
[1064] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 274.
[1065] From Shrove Tuesday--March 1--to Easter. Geoff. Vigeois,
l. ii. cc. 12, 16 (as above, pp. 334, 336).
[1066] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 296–298. Cf. Geoff. Vigeois,
l. ii. c. 7 (as above, pp. 332, 333).
[1067] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 52.
[1068] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 294.
The young king at the same time quitted Limoges to make a diversion
at Angoulême. On his return, however, he found it impossible to
re-enter Limoges; its townsfolk had by this time so fully awakened to
his real character and to their own best interests that they drove
him from their walls with a volley of stones, shouting “We will not
have this man to reign over us!”[1069] He had already robbed them of
their wealth and stripped the shrine of their patron saint to provide
wages for his Brabantines;[1070] and the insult goaded him to yet more
unsparing plunder and yet more reckless sacrilege. From the castle
of Aixe, which he took on the Monday in Rogation-week, he advanced
to Grandmont, a religious house whose inmates enjoyed, amid the now
general decay of monastic sanctity, an almost unique reputation for
piety and virtue, and were known to be held by his father in especial
reverence and esteem. He wrung from them all the treasure they
possessed, and forcibly carried off a golden pyx, his father’s gift,
from the high altar itself. He then proceeded to Uzerches, where the
duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse met him with reinforcements
on Ascension-day; from Uzerches he moved southward to Donzenac and
Martel, and thence to Rocamadour.[1071] Rocamadour was the most famous
of the holy places of Aquitaine; besides the tomb of the hermit from
whom its name was derived, it boasted of a statue of the Virgin which
attracted as many pilgrims as the shrine of S. James at Compostella;
and among the treasures of its church, which was said to have been
founded by Zacchæus the publican, was a sword traditionally believed to
be the famous “Durandal”--the sword of the Paladin Roland, devoted by
him to the Blessed Virgin on the eve of his last campaign, and carried
to her shrine at Rocamadour after the disaster of Roncevaux. Heedless
alike of paladins and of saints, the young king stripped the shrine
of S. Amadour[1072] as he had stripped that of S. Martial; and local
tradition declares that he also carried off the hallowed sword, leaving
his own dishonoured brand in its place.
[1069] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 336). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 299.
[1070] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 13, 14 (pp. 335, 336).
[1071] _Ib._ c. 16 (p. 336).
[1072] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 278.
He had been ailing ever since he left Uzerches;[1073] now, on his
return to Martel, his baffled rage threw him into a fever, to which
other complications were soon added.[1074] Conscience awoke as death
drew near. From the blacksmith’s cottage[1075] where he lay awaiting
his end he sent a message to Limoges, imploring his father to come and
speak with him once more.[1076] Henry would have gone, but his friends,
in their natural dread of another trick, prevented him;[1077] he sent,
however, a bishop charged with a message of love and pardon,[1078]
and as a token of the genuineness of the commission, a precious ring,
said to be an heirloom from Henry I.[1079] The messenger was only
just in time. On the Tuesday in Whitsun-week the young king called
together the bishops and religious men who had gathered round him at
the tidings of his sickness, confessed his sins first privately, then
publicly, before all his followers, was absolved and received the
Holy Communion.[1080] For three more days he lingered, long enough to
receive his father’s message of forgiveness and to dictate a letter to
him, pleading that the same clemency might be extended to his mother
the captive Queen Eleanor, to his own young Queen Margaret, and to
all his servants, friends, adherents and allies;[1081] beseeching also
that his father would make atonement in his stead for the sacrileges
which he had committed against the holy places of Aquitaine, and would
cause his body to be buried at Rouen in the cathedral church of our
Lady.[1082] In the early twilight of S. Barnabas’s day he repeated
his confession, after which he begged to be wrapped once more in his
cloak, marked with the cross which he had taken at Limoges in petulance
rather than in piety. Now, however, he was in earnest, and when the
sacred symbol had rested for a moment on his shoulder he gave it to
his best-beloved knight, William the Marshal, charging him to bear it
to the Holy Sepulchre and thus fulfil his vow in his stead.[1083] He
then caused his attendants to strip him of his soft raiment, clothe
him in a hair-shirt and put a rope round his neck; with this he bade
the assembled clergy drag him out of bed and lay him on a bed of ashes
strewed for the purpose. There, lying as if already in his grave, with
a stone at his head and another at his feet, he received the last
sacraments;[1084] and there, an hour after nones,[1085] kissing his
father’s ring he died.[1086]
[1073] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 336).
[1074] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 300. Will.
Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 233, 234).
[1075] “In domo Stephani cognomine Fabri.” Geoff. Vigeois, l.
ii. c. 19 (as above, p. 337). Is this to be taken literally,
or can it be merely a punning nickname applied to the lord of
_Martel_?
[1076] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Will. Newb. as above (p. 234).
[1077] Will. Newb. as above. Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 17 (as
above, p. 337).
[1078] _Gesta Hen._ as above.
[1079] “Annulum preciosum ... qui Henrici munifici Regis
olim extitisse narratur.” Geoff. Vigeois as above. Cf. Will.
Newb. as above, and Th. Agnellus, _De Morte Hen. Reg. jun._
(Stevenson, _R. Coggeshall_), pp. 265, 266.
[1080] Geoff. Vigeois as above.
[1081] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 24 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._,
vol. ii. p. 339). _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 300, 301.
[1082] Geoff. Vigeois as above.
[1083] _Ib._ c. 17 (p. 337). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
279. On young Henry’s vow of crusade see _Gesta Hen._ as above,
pp. 297, 298.
[1084] Rog. Howden as above.
[1085] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 19 (as above, p. 338).
[1086] Will. Newb., l. iii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 234).