Henry the Young King, 1155-1183 Read online

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  1. The Young King, labelled as Henricus junior, appears in a small arch between his father, Henry II, and his brother Richard in the line of kings of England, as depicted in Matthew Paris’ Historia Anglorum, c.1250–59. By the mid-thirteenth century, the title of Henry III, given to the Young King by his contemporaries, had been transferred to his nephew Henry, shown here in the bottom right-hand panel.

  2. The coronation of the Young King by Roger, archbishop of York, at Westminster in 1170, from an illustrated Anglo-Norman verse, Life of Thomas Becket, c.1220–40. At the coronation banquet, depicted to the right, Henry II serves young Henry at table, offering him a cup, to emphasize his new regal status. As the rubric above proclaims, some found this gesture shocking and injurious to Henry II's own majesty.

  3. Though the Young King did not enjoy Henry II's reputation for learning, his father had ensured that he received a good education. From an early age, he was schooled in the workings of law and government, as well as in courtly accomplishments. Here, from the early fourteenth-century Codex Manesse, a king instructs his son.

  4. A charter of the Young King granting rents to Christ Church cathedral priory, Canterbury, probably dating from late 1175 or early 1176, with his great seal appended. Among the witnesses are Adam d'Yquebeuf, William Marshal's great rival in the Young King's household, and his vice-chancellor, Adam of Gloucester, who was soon to be tried for treason for betraying young Henry's letters to his father.

  5. The seal of King Louis VII of France, on which the Young King's own seal was modelled. The adoption of a single-sided seal served as an easy means of distinguishing the Young King's charters from those of his father, which bore a double-sided seal, but it also reflected the strong Capetian influence on the Angevins’ perception of kingship.

  6. The murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral on 29 December 1170, here depicted in a psalter dating to c.1220, shocked Christendom. In refusing to see Thomas in person after his return to England, young Henry had unwittingly played a part in this tragic event, and his grief at the death of his old tutor was matched by a mounting sense of guilt and remorse.

  7. The Young King's pilgrimage in 1172 to Canterbury, made before the canonization of Becket the following year, was the first of many royal pilgrimages to the martyr's shrine. The miraculous correlation of Henry II's own dramatic penance at Becket's tomb in Canterbury with the capture of William the Lion at Alnwick in 1174 convinced many that St Thomas was now reconciled with King Henry, depicted here in prayer at the shrine in a thirteenth-century stained-glass window, Canterbury cathedral.

  8. Heads of a young king and queen, perhaps representing young Henry and Queen Margaret, from the early thirteenth-century portal of the church of Candes-Saint-Martin, Anjou, close to the abbey of Fontevraud.

  9. The great castle of Chinon, on the river Vienne in the Touraine, combined the roles of palace, treasury, and fortress. It was here that, in March 1173, young Henry and his companions escaped from his father's control and made their daring ride to the safety of Louis VII's lands.

  10. The image of two hands pulling the crown in opposite directions represents the struggles between Henry II and his sons in this list of marginal signs, intended to direct readers to key topics, from the chronicle of Ralph of Diss. Above the hands are items of regalia representing the counts of Anjou, the dukes of Normandy, and the kings of England.

  11. The rebellion of sons against fathers was commonplace in dynastic politics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this mid-twelfth-century illustration from Otto of Freising's Chronicle, Henry IV of Germany, to the left, confronts his son Henry (labelled, respectively, as Henricus senior and junior) at the river Regen in 1105, while the rubric bemoans such internecine strife. In the war of 1173–74, the Young King and Louis VII shrank from engaging in pitched battle with Henry II.

  12. Sieges dominated twelfth-century warfare, but, in the war of 1173–74, the Young King and his allies were unable to overcome the defences of towns such as Verneuil and Rouen. Though this stained-glass window, from the north quire aisle of Canterbury cathedral, depicts the attack of the Danes on Canterbury in 1011, it dates from the 1170s and features contemporary arms and armour.

  13. In this illumination from the Morgan Bible, c.1250, a captive king is led away together with other prisoners and livestock. In contrast with the bloody combat depicted here, no knights were killed in the engagement at Alnwick in 1174, in which King William the Lion was surprised and captured, although his Flemish and Scots foot soldiers were treated more ruthlessly.

  14. A cast of the tomb of William Marshal (d. 1219), from the Temple Church, London, made before the original was badly damaged by fire during bombing in 1941. Regarded as one of the greatest knights of his day, William Marshal served as young Henry's tutor in arms from 1170, and he became one of his closest companions.

  15. The violence of the mêlée is vividly captured in this depiction of the tournament from the Codex Manesse. Deliberate killing or serious wounding, however, was forbidden, and the aim was to capture opponents, often by tearing off their helms or wrestling them from their saddles.

  16. The Young King was famed for his generosity and open-handed giving, which attracted knights from many regions to his service in the tournament and in war. Here, from the Codex Manesse, a king distributes largesse to his knights, clerks, and minstrels.

  17. The Young King's participation in the coronation of Philip Augustus at Rheims in November 1179 was later seized on by French royal propagandists to demonstrate the subjection of the kings of England to those of France. In this illumination by Jean Fouquet, from the Grandes Chroniques de France, c.1455–60, the Young King, holding the crown and standing next to Count Philip of Flanders, who bears the sword of Charlemagne, is depicted anachronistically wearing the royal arms of England, adopted by his brother Richard in the 1190s.

  18. The seal of Philip Augustus, 1198. Young Henry played a prominent role in supporting King Philip, his brother-in-law, in the first troubled years of his reign. Though their own relations were cordial, the Young King's death ushered in a period of unrelenting hostility from the king of France towards the Angevins.

  19. The Old Testament afforded many exemplars of good and bad kingship, as well as of divine punishment of filial disobedience. In the bottom register of these scenes by the Master of the Morgan Leaf, Winchester, c.1160–80, illustrating the life of David from the Book of Samuel, King David's rebellious son Absalom, to whom the Young King was compared by contemporaries, is run through as his hair is caught in a tree while attempting to flee. Like King David, depicted hiding his face in his cloak, Henry II felt bitter grief at the death of his son.

  20. The Young King as imagined by the late nineteenth-century restorers of his tomb, now in the north aisle of the quire of Rouen cathedral. The tomb effigy itself probably dates from the early fourteenth century, but it was badly damaged in the Wars of Religion and the French Revolution. The head, shown here, and other details, as well as the tomb base and inscription, are later restorations.

  CHAPTER 1

  A
Forgotten King?

  You would have been king of the noble and emperor of the brave, lord, if you had lived longer, for you had gained the name Young King; you were indeed the guide and father of youth. And hauberks and swords, and beautiful buckram, helmets and gonfalons, pourpoint and lappets and joy and love have nobody to maintain them or bring them back. They will follow you; like all mighty, honourable deeds, they will disappear with you.

  – Bertran de Born, Mon chan fenis ab dol et ab maltraire1

  IN EARLY JUNE 1183, Henry III, king of England, lay dying in the little town of Martel in the Quercy.2 Gathered around him in the humble house of a blacksmith were some of the greatest nobles of France, his recent allies in a bitter and still ongoing war against his own brother and father which had devastated much of Aquitaine by fire and sword. Finally, on 11 June, after days of being racked by acute fever brought on by dysentery, the Young King – li res jovens, li giemble reis, l res joves or rex junior, as he was better known to his contemporaries – breathed his last, aged only twenty-eight.3 Of all the Plantagenet kings, the young Henry remains the least known. His effigy is not at the abbey of Fontevraud among the famous tomb sculptures of Henry II, Eleanor and Richard the Lionheart for he died before Fontevraud became established as the principal Angevin mausoleum.4 Instead, he was buried in Rouen cathedral with his ducal ancestors. There, however, his tomb fared less well, and little remains of his original monument.5 The stylized images of young Henry on the few surviving examples of his great seal are badly worn, and as he struck no independent coinage, no silver pennies or deniers carry his depiction. He and his wife Margaret may be represented by the finely sculptured heads of a young king and queen in the early thirteenth-century portal of the church of Candes-Saint-Martin, close to Fontevraud, but there are few if any contemporary images extant of a man once famed for his striking good looks, charm and knightly prowess.6