Part 23

None of the holders of these dependencies, however, had as yet entered into full enjoyment of their possessions. At the close of their first revolt, in 1175, the young king was but just entering his twentieth year; Richard was in his eighteenth and Geoffrey in his seventeenth year; and although the one had been titular duke of Aquitaine and the other titular duke of Britanny since 1169, the real government of both duchies, as well as that of Normandy and Anjou, had been until now in the hands of their father. For the purposes of our story there is only one part of these continental possessions of our Angevin king into whose internal concerns we need enter at any great length; a very slight sketch may suffice for the others. The part which lay nearest to England, and which politically was most closely connected with it--the duchy of Normandy--was also associated with it in many of Henry’s legal, constitutional and administrative reforms. A comparison of dates indeed would almost suggest that Henry, when contemplating a great legal or administrative experiment in England, usually tried it first in Normandy in order to test its working there upon a small scale before he ventured on applying it to his island realm. An edict issued at Falaise in the Christmas-tide of 1159–1160, ordaining “that no dean should accuse any man without the evidence of neighbours who bore a good character, and that in the treatment of all causes, the magistrates of the several districts at their monthly courts should determine nothing without the witness of the neighbours, should do injustice to no man and inflict nothing to the prejudice of any, should maintain the peace, and should punish all robbers summarily,”[929] seems to contain a foreshadowing at once of some of the Constitutions of Clarendon which created such excitement in England four years afterwards, and of the Assize which followed two years later still. A commission of inquiry into the administration of the Norman episcopal sees and viscounties in 1162[930] was a sort of forerunner of the great inquest into the conduct of the English sheriffs in 1170. This again was followed next year, as we have seen, by an inquiry into the state of the ducal forests and demesnes,[931] which has its English parallels in the great forest assize of 1176 and in an inquest into the condition of the royal demesnes ordered in the spring of 1177.[932] On the other hand, a roll of the Norman tenants-in-chivalry compiled in 1172 seems to have been modelled upon the English “Black Book” of 1168;[933] and when Henry determined to institute a thorough reform in the whole Norman administration, it was at the English exchequer-table that he found his instrument for the work. In 1176 William de Courcy, the seneschal of Normandy, died. In his stead the king appointed Richard of Ilchester. Richard, to judge by his surname, must have been an Englishman by birth; from the second year of Henry’s reign he was employed as a “writer” in the royal treasury;[934] about 1163 he was made archdeacon of Poitiers, but his archidiaconal functions sat as lightly upon him as upon a contemporary whose name is often associated with his, Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury and vice-chancellor; and throughout the struggle with Archbishop Thomas he was one of the most active agents of Henry’s foreign diplomacy.[935] Unlike his colleagues Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, he contrived, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical disgrace in which he became involved through his dealings with the schismatic Emperor and the antipope, to retain the general respect of all parties among his fellow-countrymen.[936] Throughout the same period, when not absent from England on some diplomatic mission, he frequently appears as an acting justice of the King’s Court and baron of the Exchequer.[937] He continued to fulfil the same duties after his elevation to the see of Winchester in 1174; and the estimation in which he was held is shewn by the fact that on his return from Normandy, where he was replaced at the end of two years by William Fitz-Ralf,[938] a special seat was assigned to him at the exchequer-table between the presiding justiciar and the treasurer, “that he might diligently examine what was written on the roll.”[939] He was evidently invested with far more authority in Normandy than that which usually appertained to a Norman seneschal--authority, in fact, more like that of an English justiciar; indeed, he is actually called justiciar, and not seneschal, by contemporary English writers.[940] His work in the duchy seems to have been moreover specially connected with finance;[941] and we may perhaps venture to see a trace of his hand in the organization of the Norman Court of Exchequer, which first comes distinctly to light in Henry’s latter years, its earliest extant roll being that of the year 1180.[942] The earlier stages of the legal and administrative organization of Normandy are, however, so lost in obscurity that neither constitutional lawyers in Henry’s day nor constitutional historians in our own have been able to determine the exact historical relation of the Norman system to that of England;[943] and the speedy severance of the political connexion between them makes the determination of the question, after all, of little practical moment.

[929] Contin. Becc. (Delisle, _Rob. Torigni_, vol. ii. p. 180). Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 459, 460.

[930] Rob. Torigni, a. 1162.

[931] Rob. Torigni, a. 1171. See above, p. 128.

[932] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 138.

[933] See above, p. 125.

[934] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II., pp. 30, 31; 4 Hen. II., pp. 121, 122 (Hunter); 5 Hen. II., p. 20; 6 Hen. II., p. 57; 7 Hen. II., p. 48; 8 Hen. II., p. 21 (Pipe Roll Soc.)

[935] See the Becket correspondence, _passim_.

[936] Except, of course, the immediate personal friends of the archbishop, to whom he seems to have been even more obnoxious than the “_archidiabolus_” Geoffrey Ridel--that is, supposing Mr. Eyton to be right in his theory that Richard of Ilchester is the person designated in the private letters of Thomas and his friends as “Luscus.” Canon Robertson, however, took “Luscus” to mean Richard de Lucy; but the other interpretation seems on the whole more probable.

[937] Madox, _Formulare Anglic._, p. xix (a. 1165). Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 130 (a. 1168, 1169). He was one of two custodians of the temporalities of the see of Lincoln during the vacancy caused by Bishop Robert’s death in 1167; _ib._ p. 99, note 5, from Pipe Roll 12 Hen. II.

[938] See Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 100, and the editor’s note 3.

[939] _Dialog. de Scacc._, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 178; cf. _ib._ p. 184.

[940] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 124. “Curiâ sibi totius Normanniæ deputatâ” says R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 415.

[941] R. Diceto as above.

[942] Edited by Mr. Stapleton for the Society of Antiquaries--_Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ_, vol. i.

[943] _Dial. de Scacc._ as above, p. 176. Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 438.

Even more obscure than the internal history of Normandy under Henry II. is that of Anjou and of the two dependencies which may now be reckoned as one with it, Touraine and Maine. There is in his time throughout the whole of his dominions, with the marked exception of England, a dearth of historical records. Normandy cannot boast of a single historian such as those of the preceding generation, Orderic or William of Jumièges; the only Norman chronicle of any importance is that of Robert of Torigny, commonly known as “Robert _de Monte_,” from the Mont-St.-Michel of which he was abbot; and even his work is nothing more than a tolerably full and accurate chronicle of the old-fashioned type, arranged on the annalistic plan “according to the years of our Lord” which William of Malmesbury had condemned long ago. The Breton chronicles, always meagre, grow more meagre still as the years pass on; the same may be said of the chronicles of Tours; the “Acts of the bishops of Le Mans,” our sole native authority for the history of Maine, cease to record anything save purely ecclesiastical details. In Anjou itself the recent aggrandizement of the Angevin house stirred up in Henry’s early years a spirit of patriotic loyalty which led more than one of his subjects to collect the floating popular traditions of his race, as the ballads and tales of old England had been collected by Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, and weave them into a narrative which passed for a history of the Angevin counts; and one of these writers supplemented his work with a special memoir of Henry’s father, Geoffrey duke of the Normans. But the reign of Henry himself found no historian in the Marchland; and indeed the half-blank pages of the few monastic chronicles which still dragged out a lingering existence in one or two of the great Angevin abbeys shew us that under Count Henry Fitz-Empress Anjou was once more, as of old under Count Fulk the Good, happy in having no history.

Yet it is there, and there alone, that we can catch a glimpse of one side of his character which, if we saw him only in England or in Normandy, we should hardly have discerned at all. Strange as it seems to us who know him in his northern realms only as the enterprising and somewhat unscrupulous politician, the stern and vigorous ruler, the hard-headed statesman, the uncompromising opponent of the Church’s claims, Henry is yet the one Angevin count who completely reproduced in his Marchland, as a living reality, the ideal which was represented there by the name of the good count-canon of Tours. Fulk the Black and Fulk the Fifth had both tried to reproduce it, each according to his lights, during those few years when the pressure of external politics and warfare left them free to devote their energies for a while to their country’s internal welfare. But Henry’s whole reign was, for his paternal dominions, a reign of peace. If we drew our ideas of him solely from the traces and traditions which he has left behind him there, we could never have guessed that he was a greater warrior than Fulk Nerra; we should rather have taken him for a quiet prince who, like Fulk the Good, “waged no wars.” These traces and traditions lie scattered over the soil of Anjou, Touraine and Maine as thickly as the traces and the traditions of the Black Count himself. Henry is in fact the only one of the later Angevin counts who made upon the imagination of his people an impression even approaching in vividness to that left by Fulk the Black, and of whose material works there remains anything which can be compared with those of the “great builder” of the preceding century. But the memory which Anjou has retained of Henry differs much in character from that which she has kept of Fulk; and it differs more widely still from that which Henry himself has left in his island-realm. In English popular tradition he appears simply as the hero of a foolish and discreditable romance, or as the man who first caused the murder of S. Thomas and then did penance at his grave; and material traces of him there are literally none, for of his English dwelling-places not one stone is left upon another, and not a single surviving monument of public utility, secular or ecclesiastical, is connected with his name. In the valley of the Loire it was far otherwise. There the two great Angevin builders share between them the credit of well-nigh all the more important monuments which give life to the medieval history of the land--except the military constructions, which belong to Fulk alone. It is not in donjons such as that of Loches or Montrichard, but in palaces and hospitals, bridges and embankments, that we see our Angevin king’s handiwork in his own home-lands. Almost every one of his many local capitals was adorned during his reign with a palace of regal dimensions and magnificence, reared by him in place of the lowlier “halls” which had served for the dwelling of the merely local rulers whom he succeeded. The rebuilding of the ducal palace at Rouen was begun in 1161;[944] that of Caen was nearly finished in 1180; its hall, which still exists, is the traditional seat of the Norman Exchequer.[945] At Tours a round tower which still stands in the barrack-yard is the sole surviving fragment of a castle which Henry is said to have built. His favourite abode in Touraine, however, was not at Tours but at Chinon, where the little fortress above the Vienne which had been the last conquest of Fulk Nerra and the lifelong prison of Geoffrey the Bearded grew under Henry’s hands into a royal retreat of exquisite beauty and splendour--a gem, even now in its ruin, worthy of its setting in the lovely valley of the Vienne, with the background of good greenwood which to Henry was probably its greatest charm. Angers, again, almost put on a new face in the course of Henry’s lifetime. In the year before his birth it had been visited by a fire which reduced to almost total ruin its whole south-western quarter, including the palace of the counts,[946] of which nothing but the great hall seems to have remained. The work of reconstruction, begun no doubt by Geoffrey Plantagenet, was completed on a regal scale by his son, and before the close of Henry’s reign a visitor from England, Ralf de Diceto, could gaze in admiration at the “vast palace,” with its “newly-built apartments, adorned with splendour befitting a king,” which rose at the foot of the vine-clad hills above the purple stream of Mayenne.[947]

[944] Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

[945] _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._ (Stapleton), vol. i. p. 56. _Ib._ Observ. pp. xxvii–xxviii.

[946] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132 (Marchegay, _Eglises d’Anjou_, p. 144).

[947] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 292 (_Hist. Com. Andeg._, Marchegay, _Comtes d’Anjou_, p. 337).

But the count-king did not build for himself alone. It was, above all, with works of public usefulness that he delighted to adorn his realms. His beneficence indeed took a different shape from that of his predecessors. Church-building and abbey-founding met with little sympathy from him; throughout his whole dominions, only six religious houses, in the strict sense, could claim him as their founder; and even one of these was as much military as religious, for it was a commandery of knights Templars.[948] But no sovereign was ever more munificent in providing for the sick and needy. Not only do the Norman Exchequer-rolls contain frequent mention of sums set apart out of the ducal revenues for the support of lazar-houses and hospitals in the chief towns of the several bailiwicks;[949] nineteen years before the completion of his own palace at Caen, he had founded an hospital for lepers outside the walls of the town;[950] and a park and hunting-lodge which he had made for himself in the same year, 1161, at Quévilly by Rouen[951] were shortly afterwards given up by him to a colony of monks from Grandmont in Aquitaine, to be converted under their care into another great asylum for victims of the same disease.[952] At his own native Le Mans, the great hall of an almshouse or hospital outside the north-eastern boundary of the city, said to have been reared by him for the reception of its poor and sick folk, is still to be seen, though long since perverted to other uses. At Angers, on the other hand, it is only within the last half-century that the sick and disabled poor have exchanged for a more modern dwelling the shelter provided for them by Henry Fitz-Empress. Some time in the quiet years which followed the barons’ revolt, Stephen,[953] the seneschal of Anjou, bought of the abbess and convent of our Lady of Charity at Angers a plot of ground which lay between their abbey and the river, and on which he designed to build an hospice for the poor. In the last days of 1180 or the first days of 1181 the count-king took under his own care the work which his seneschal had begun, granted to the new hospital a rich endowment in lands and revenues, exempted it from secular charges and imposts, and won from Pope Alexander a confirmation of its spiritual independence.[954] Four priests were appointed to minister to the spiritual needs of its inmates; the care of their bodies was undertaken at first, it seems, by some pious laymen bound by no special rule; some years later, however, the hospital became, like most other establishments of the kind, affiliated to the Order of S. Augustine.[955] The pretty little chapel--dedicated to S. John the Baptist, and still standing,--the cloisters and the domestic offices were all finished before Henry’s death;[956] while of the two great pillared halls which now form the chief architectural glory of the suburb, one, the smaller and simpler, is clearly of his building; and the other, more vast and beautiful, is in all probability the last legacy of his sons to the home which was soon to be theirs no longer.[957]

[948] Founded in 1173, at Vaubourg in the forest of Roumare--an 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.