Claudia Rubenstein
France: An English Provence: How Henry II Won and Lost a Country

Claudia Rubenstein - France: An English Province: How Henry II Won and Lost a Country

- Thank you. Good evening everyone. It’s lovely to see you all again. My name’s Claudia Rubenstein and it’s lovely being back on lockdown to talk about the subject of my book, King Henry II. Who was Henry II? He was the founder of the Plantagenet Dynasty who ruled England from 330, well for 330 years from from Henry II’s time up until 1485. Henry forged an empire that included a Kingdom, England, and his lands stretched from the Scottish highlands to the Pyrenees. We’ll see if we can find a picture of Henry. Let see if this works. Yes, here we go. This is Henry. His influence was felt far further afield than just his lands. It went to the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem where his cousins occupied the throne, through Sicily, which included southern Italy and Germany. Henry was trained for power, but he had to fight for everything he had. He not only won an empire, but he held it all. Besides his exceptional military skill, Henry instigated unprecedented reform that set in place the rule of law across England. He was a phenomenal administrator and he made his domains rich. Henry was a patron of the arts. He was highly educated and his court attracted some of the greatest writers, artists, and thinkers of his day. He married one of the most beautiful and wealthy women in the world, and together they had at least eight children, but Henry died miserable and alone. How did this incredible and talented man manage to end his life in such pitiable circumstances? We have a very detailed description of Henry’s looks and character from 1177 from a man called Peter of Blois. Peter, alongside characters such as Walter Map, John of Salisbury, Gerald of Wales, and Marie de France, who was probably Henry’s illegitimate half sister, were among the greatest writers of the age. If you think about Hillary Mantel, Howard Jacobson, Simon Shama, you get an idea.

They knew Henry well because they accompanied his court everywhere and they left very vivid descriptions. When Peter wrote this description, Henry was 43 years old and he had been king for 22 years. Peter described a middle-aged man with red hair streaked with grey and balding on top. He was of medium height with a round head and round eyes, which were white and plain. “While he is calm in spirit, but in anger and disorder of heart, they shine like fire and flash in fury.” Henry was stocky with a leonine face, a broad chest and fighter’s arms. He was a prize fighter. Henry loved to exercise both to keep fit and to stop himself getting fat. He rode, he hunted and he had a passion for woods walking and dogs. He never sat, unless on a horse or eating. Peter described Henry’s love of learning. “Every day,” he wrote, “is a school in the constant conversation of the most literate.” He went on to describe Henry’s honesty, his excellent manners, his generosity to the poor, his pursuit of peace for his people. Peter concluded, “It aims to the peace of his people that he calls councils, that he makes laws, that he makes friendships, that he brings low the proud, that he threatens battles, that he launches terror to the princes.

No one is more mild to the afflicted. No one more friendly to the poor. No one more unbearable to the proud.” Peter was describing a near perfect prince. Let’s have a look at the map that Henry held at the height of his power in the 1170s and the 1180s. Yesterday you looked, I believe, at the Hundred Years War in the later Middle Ages with William, and today we’re moving back a couple of centuries. I know that in the past few weeks you’ve looked at some of the French kings such as Louis IX and Philip the Fair. By the time of Louis IX of France or Saint Louis, who was incidentally Henry’s great grandson, France had become a recognisable nation straight with borders that would look familiar to us today. In Henry’s time, however, France was far weaker and the land controlled directly by the French king was far smaller. You can see how tiny the area directly under Capetian control was. It’s this area that is in the dark blue, if you can see my cursor around Paris and Orleans. The Capetians were the Royal House of France, which ruled France from 987 to 1328 and they were the descendants of Hugh Capet. The rest of the lands of France were controlled by vassals, such as Henry who owed allegiance to the French king, but in practise they were often far stronger than him. Louis VII, who was incidentally the first husband of Henry’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine and we’ll have more on that later. Henry found it very easy to dominate him. However, it would be a different story with Louis’s son, Philip Augustus, who did much to forge France as a nation state. However, within 25 years of his death, Henry’s empire on the continent was gone, lost by his sons to the Capetians.

Only Gascony, this little rump, which you can’t quite see at the bottom, remained to them. How did this happen? I was first drawn to the Henry story through James Goldman’s brilliant “The Lion in Winter”. I know that many of you have seen it and it’s been the subject of a lockdown talk. In this film, Peter O'Toole plays Henry and the magnificent Katharine Hepburn plays Eleanor. Henry, ageing, refuses to sort out the succession. He has three adult sons remaining and they all want to inherit. Into the mix comes his wife, Eleanor, who he’s imprisoned, and a new French king, the young Philip Augustus who secretly hates Henry. Henry brings them all to his Christmas court at Chinon. Although Goldman’s script takes huge liberties, in one scene, they decorate a Christmas tree. What fascinated me about his description of Henry was how accurate it was. Let’s take a look at Richard, Geoffrey and John arriving at their father’s Christmas court at Chinon in 1183. By the way, Chinon, which you’ll see here is, is absolutely tiny. It’s just the size of a large modern house.

CLIP BEGINS

• Ah Christmas. Warm and rosy time. The hot wine steams, the Yule Log roars and where the fat that’s in the fire. She’ll be here soon you know.

• Who?

• Mother.

• Does she still want you to be king?

• We are not as friendly as we used to be.

• If I’m supposed to make a fuss and kiss her hairy cheek, I won’t.

• What you kiss, little prince, is up to you.

• I’m father’s favourite. That’s what counts.

• You hardly know me, Johnny, so I beg you to believe my reputation. I am a constant soldier, a sometime poet and I will be king.

• Just to remember, father loves me best.

CLIP ENDS

• So it’s not making for a happy Christmas you’d think. I really urge you to watch it if you haven’t. The last time I was on Lockdown University almost a year ago, I interviewed Charles Spencer for his brilliant book, “The White Ship.” This story told of how Henry I’s only son and heir, William Atheling died in a shipwreck just off the coast of Normandy. Although this terrible shipwreck happened 13 years before Henry II’s birth, in many ways this is where his story begins. So who was Henry I? Henry I, Henry II’s grandfather was the fourth son of William the conqueror or the bastard as he was known in his time. And it was never expected that this fourth son would rule. However, when his older son, William Rufus was shot and killed in the new Forest in 1100 and many people thought that Henry was behind it, Henry didn’t waste any time. He immediately raced to Winchester to secure the Royal Treasury and then went on to Westminster where he was crowned. Henry then battled his brother, his other older brother, Robert Curthose who’d been on crusade and had just got married and was on his honeymoon, making his slow way back to Normandy, where he was Duke. And Henry I then battled his brother for Normandy and became Duke of Normandy too, which meant that he’d had exactly the same lands and titles as his father, William the Conqueror.

He was Duke of Normandy and King of England and Henry, in what became typical family feeling, locked up his brother until his brother’s death 30 years later. Henry I was a strong and effective ruler. His contemporaries called him licentious, and he had many, many mistresses and over 20 illegitimate children, but he only had two legitimate children. They were Matilda who was born in 1102 and she was married off to Heinrich V of Germany when she was only eight years old. And Henry had a son called William Atheling who was born the following year. In 1120, William and Henry had been in northern France. They’d been fighting William’s first cousin, William Clito there, but they’d won and they were victorious and the white ship was a very fast new ship and it was meant to carry William and 300 of Henry’s courtiers, relatives, a couple of illegitimate children, cousins, friends, et cetera, back to England. However, it struck a rock and it was a tragedy when William drowned. It was a personal tragedy for Henry I, but it was also a political tragedy because it precipitated a succession crisis.

Henry I had nobody logical to succeed him. There was Matilda, but she was a woman and she was married and she lived in Germany and although there was no official bar to female rule in England, it wasn’t common and it wasn’t really done. One of his illegitimate sons, Robert of Gloucester was enormously rich and powerful and incredibly smart, and Henry was very close to him, but it was becoming less acceptable to the Church for illegitimate sons to inherit, as in William the Conqueror. He had nephews, the sons of his sister Adela. But Henry’s desire was really to have a child of his, a legitimate child of his own body, inherit. So a bit desperate. He married again within weeks of William’s death and he married a 17 year old girl called Adeliza of Louvain, while Henry was about 52 years old. They never had children, although he kept her by his side for seven years. She went everywhere with him, but they never had children and funnily enough, she married the son of his butler when Henry died and they had seven children together. Anyway, things were moving on and in 1125, Matilda’s husband, Heinrich V died. Henry immediately ordered his daughter back to England and he forced his nobility to swear an oath of allegiance to her. Many of them didn’t want to do it because Matilda was a woman and she was also seen as being German as well.

But nevertheless, Henry was determined she would inherit. Henry also did something which was enormously unpopular with Matilda. He forced her to marry a man she really didn’t want to. Matilda was an empress and she was about 25 years old at this time. She was married off to a man called Geoffrey of Anjou who was 14 and he wasn’t even a count. His father Fulk V, was the Count of Anjou, which borders Normandy to the south, and Henry I wanted to shore up his influence on his Norman border here. So he ordered Matilda to marry him. Fulk was disposed of. He was sent off to Jerusalem to marry its Queen, Melisende of Jerusalem, which meant that eventually Henry’s cousins, that’s why they became the rulers of Jerusalem, which meant that at least Geoffrey could inherit his father’s title of Count. So this was a massive demotion for Matilda from an Empress to a Countess. And it’s interesting that she never, for the rest of her life, styled herself Countess. It was always Empress and Henry in turn was always Fitz-Empress. So Matilda left Geoffrey at least once because they really detested each other, but nevertheless they managed to have three sons together. The eldest of them was born at Le Mans in 1133 and that was Henry, the future Henry II. Henry I adored his grandson and they spent lots of time together but simultaneously his relationship with Matilda and Geoffrey was fast deteriorating. Geoffrey demanded some lands and castles that he said that Henry had promised to Matilda. Henry I didn’t want to give them up.

In 1135, Henry who was a bit greedy and he particularly liked a jawless, very ugly fish called lampreys, ate too many of them and he died. What happened next is a little bit controversial. On his deathbed, he may have bypassed Matilda because he was cross with her and Geoffrey and said instead that he wanted the throne to be inherited by his nephew Stephen of Blois. And it’s just an accident of history that Stephen, this man here, didn’t actually perish on the white ship. He pleaded diarrhoea and and got off sharpish, but he might just have been disturbed at all the drunken ribaldry that was going on while William Atheling was on the white ship. So what we have here is another race for the throne. As soon as Henry I dies, Stephen races across the sea to England. Again, he goes to Winchester, he secures the royal treasure. He goes on to be crowned and he is a crowned and anointed King of England. It’s incredibly difficult to depose an anointed king. There’s such mystique surrounding it that although Matilda petitioned for years for the Pope to have Stephen deposed, it was never done. Matilda was devastated, but at first she did nothing. She’d just given birth to another child. It may have been that it was difficult for her to travel, so she really sat on things until 1139 when things changed. At this point, her fabulously wealthy and powerful half brother, Robert of Gloucester put his money and resources behind Matilda’s cause.

She styled herself Empress and Lady of the English and set sail to conquer England to get her throne back from Stephen. This marked the beginning of one of the bloodiest civil wars in English history. We can see a a picture here of the beginnings of a pitched battle. It was a time that was called The Anarchy. Contemporaries said that Christ and his saints slept because there was no effective rule of law and it was the people who suffered. Crops were decimated, land was burnt, it was all an absolute disaster. And it’s no accident that under William’s rule that we see the first blood libel in Europe on Easter Eve in Norwich in 1144. Although Geoffrey and Matilda hated each other, they nevertheless fought together for Henry’s inheritance. Matilda was in England fighting with her brother, Robert. Geoffrey meanwhile, won Normandy for his eldest son. They were also entirely on the same page about Henry’s education, which was exemplary. So Henry was taught from books, he was taught military and political skills. He learned practically from the campaigns of his parents, which he participated in from a very young age, but more importantly his parents gave him the tools to enable him to become a philosopher prince. Walter Maps claimed that Henry had a knowledge of all the tongues used from the French Sea to the Jordan is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but it gives a hint as to Henry’s breadth of learning.

So who were Henry’s educational influences? Geoffrey was known as a scholar. He was incredibly clever and learned and admired for his intellect besides being a brilliant military tactician. Matilda had experience of ruling in Germany and she’d also learned strategy at the side of her father when she came back to England. Walter Map wrote very interestingly on what Matilda actually taught Henry and his book “Courtiers Trifles”, even though it was written in the 12th century, it’s really fun and it’s worth a read. The following does fit Henry’s character. So this is what Walter said. “I have heard that his mother’s teaching was to this effect, that he should spin out the affairs of everyone, hold long in his own hand all posts that fell in, take the revenues of them and keep the aspirants to them, hanging on in hope. And she supported this advice by an unkind analogy, an unruly hawk if meat is often offered to it and snatched away or hid becomes keener and more reclinably obedient and attentive. He ought also to be much in his own chamber and little in public. He should never confirm anything on anyone at the recommendation of any person unless he has seen and learned about it.” So this is all good leadership advice. Other influences were his uncle Robert of Gloucester, who had a huge library and was also known as a scholar and his grandfather Henry I.

So young Henry was surrounded by books and ideas and this was all while something called, well later historians called the 12th Century Renaissance was happening. So the 12th Century Renaissance was an extraordinarily exciting period intellectually, which saw an explosion in knowledge and cultural exchange. A few of the reasons for this was, the first reason was in 1099, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was established by Christian Crusaders and it had endured for nearly 200 years and added to this in 1130, a Norman mercenary called Count Roger de Hautville, founded a dynasty out of the island of Sicily and much of southern Italy. This meant that Europe suddenly became a very international place. Sicily in particular, was a place where all scholars, regardless of their faith, were welcomed. And added to this, from the ninth century, Spain’s Christian kings began their slow conquest of the Iberian Peninsula from its Muslim rulers, leading to a rediscovery of the ideas of Greece and Rome and Arabic intellectual developments. It was in this exceptional atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and achievement that we find tolerant and humanitarian scholars such as Adelard of Bath, who was one of the four tutors of Henry’s that we know about, bringing the ideas and the teachings of the Greeks, the Muslims and the Jews to the cathedral schools and the burgeoning European universities.

Henry learned from amongst their finest and his education was the best of its day, and incredibly broad and international. Meanwhile, Henry was starting to demonstrate military ability. He was incredibly precocious. At the age of 14, he hired mercenaries without Geoffrey knowing about it and sailed to England to help Matilda and when it all went horribly wrong, he even persuaded Stephen to give him the money to go home, which Stephen did. He fought in successful campaigns alongside his father to win Normandy and by 1151, Henry is now 18, his father has won Normandy for him and King Louis of France was forced to accept that Geoffrey had conquered Normandy. Louis’s choice for Duke of Normandy was certainly not Geoffrey, it was actually his brother-in-law, Eustace, who was incidentally Stephen’s eldest son. But Louis had to face reality. The Angevin pair had won. Louis reluctantly invited Geoffrey and Henry to Paris in August, 1151 to accept Henry’s homage for the duchy and no one was prepared for what happened next. The year before, in 1150, Geoffrey had captured an ally and a friend of Louis’s in Normandy whose name was Gerard Berlay. Now, extremely provocatively, Henry and Geoffrey brought Gerard to Paris in chains as their prisoner and they presented him to Louis and his advisors in his great chamber.

Louis and his chief advisor, Bernard of Clairvaux, were furious. Here we can see Bernard who would eventually be canonised. Bernard hated the house of Anjou. He believed that the counts were rogues and that they were descended from the devilish fairy, Melisende. He further hated Geoffrey because Geoffrey had been absent from the second Christian crusade, and Bernard had subsequently persuaded the Pope to excommunicate Geoffrey for his capture of Gerard Berlay. He called Geoffrey “that hammer of good men and destroyer of the peace and liberty of the Church.” Like his son Henry, it’s very unlikely that Geoffrey was religious. Now in Paris, Louis and Bernard demanded Berlay’s release and the return of the Vexin, which Geoffrey had conquered, which is a small but very strategically important territory, halfway between Paris and Rouen. Geoffrey refused and he stormed out of the meeting tormented by vapours of black bile. However, something very strange happened. Almost immediately, Henry and Geoffrey came back and they accepted both of Louis’s demands. Henry paid homage for Normandy and he was officially pronounced Duke. Geoffrey refused to ask Bernard to lift his excommunication, and Bernard was furious. He cursed Geoffrey and said that he would be dead within two weeks. But despite the curse, Henry and Geoffrey joyfully left Paris. Why would they have walked out of the talks with Louis only to return extremely quickly and give him everything that he wanted? The likeliest reason is that Henry had made a bargain with Eleanor, Louis’s queen.

Within a few short months of meeting Henry, Eleanor and Louis would divorce, and in May, 1152, she would secretly marry Henry in her capital at Poitier. Their marriage shocked Europe. Who was Eleanor of Aquitaine? Well, we could do a whole other lecture on this absolutely fascinating woman. She is one of the most famous women in history. She was 27 or 29 years old when she met the 18 year old Henry. She was clever, powerful and possibly very beautiful, called by her contemporaries, a woman without compare. When Henry visited Paris in the summer of 1151, he was a young man with a potentially glittering future, but only one dukedom in his hands, Normandy. What could Eleanor, queen of France and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right have seen in this young man? This is how James Goldman imagines Eleanor recording her meeting. She says in the film, “Henry was 18 when we met and I was queen of France. He came down from the north to Paris with a mind like Aristotle’s and a form like mortal sin. We shattered the Commandments on the spot.” This is a later Victorian image of Eleanor, but Henry at the time was stocky with a muscled body and a compelling face. He was charismatic, athletic, clever, educated, empathetic and ambitious. He was already known as a skillful and lucky commander of armies.

He possessed a restlessness and unquiet energy. Henry could not keep still. What was Eleanor like? Well, although she’s one of the most famous women in history, we actually know very little about her. More stories have been invented about her than any other mediaeval woman. She’s been portrayed as a vixen, a sexual predator and a deviant, as the poisoner of her husband’s mistress, Henry’s later mistress, Rosamund Clifford. The chroniclers accused her of incest with Geoffrey, Henry’s father and with her own uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Shakespeare called Eleanor “a cankered grandam” But she’s also been seen as a model of queenly virtue, of erudition, as the leader of an army of bare breasted crusader women, an intellectual powerhouse, a feminist prototype, an intellectual patron of the arts. She even as the initiator of the famous troubador courts of love, which is entirely incorrect. In fact, everything that has been written about her, about Eleanor is either a half truth, wrong or ultimately unknowable. What then do we know? We know who her parents were. We know that she was the daughter of William X of Aquitaine, and Aenor de Chatellerault and she was born in either 1122 or 1124 in or near Poitier. We don’t have an exact date of her birth as girls’ births were not always recorded. Aquitaine was the largest and richest of the Duchys that owed nominal allegiance to the French king.

After Eleanor’s young brother died and then her father in 1137, she became the Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, Eleanor’s father had died on pilgrimage, but before he left, he entrusted her, the richest heiress in Christendom, to the guardianship of his overlord, Louis VI, otherwise known as Louis the Fat of France. On William’s death, Louis immediately betrothed Eleanor to his 17 year old son and heir, also named Louis. Louis wasn’t meant to be king, he was far more suited to the cloister where he was studying with one of his other advisors who later became his advisor, Abbott Suger. But his older brother, Philip was killed when he was chasing a pig through Paris’s streets and died. And Louis reluctantly left the cloister to be trained for kingship. On their marriage, Aquitaine was subsumed by the French crown. Within days of their marrying, Louis the fat was dead and Eleanor and Louis were crowned queen and king of France. Louis adored Eleanor, the writer John of Salisbury, said he loved her almost beyond reason, but Eleanor was extremely unhappy. She was caught up in court politics and the machinations of Louis’s powerful mother and she was hated by many of Louis’s counsellors. just as Bernard of Clairvaux disliked Geoffrey of Anjou and his family, he had no love for Eleanor’s. Eleanor’s father, Duke William X had supported the Antipope Anacletus II in 1130.

Anacletus’s great-grandfather was Jewish and although he converted to Christianity, Bernard couldn’t bear it. Louis’s military ineptitude was disappointing to Eleanor and she was also unable to conceive, a tragedy for a mediaeval queen. The succession and having an heir was the only thing a mediaeval queen was really meant to do. But Eleanor complained she had married a monk, not a man, and they rarely slept together. As early as 1143, a dislike had sprung up between the royal pair. However, in 1145, Eleanor finally gives birth to a daughter called Marie. Two years later, Eleanor goes with Louis on the disastrous second crusade. It was a disaster in so many ways. Louis’s army was decimated. Eleanor disagreed with him over his military planning. There were rows. She begged him for a divorce and Louis was incredibly jealous of her relationship with her uncle Raymond, who was Prince of Antioch, who they visited while they were on crusade. The pair got on enormously well. Raymond was only nine years older than his niece. Whether or not they slept together, we have no idea, but they certainly enjoyed one another’s company. Louis dragged Eleanor away. She was distraught and as they travel home loathing each other, they visit the Pope who is so fed up with their bad marriage that he physically puts them to bed in one of his beautiful chambers. Eleanor Conceives and a second daughter, Alex was born in 1150. Funnily enough, it was the birth of the second daughter that convinced the deeply religious Louis that the marriage was damned in the eyes of God as they were too closely related. By the time Eleanor met Henry in August, 1151, divorce wasn’t quite settled upon. However, after meeting Henry, she pushed for it hard. It’s likely that Henry offered her more autonomy than Louis ever had.

He denied his wife any real power. Eventually, Henry probably promised she would be independent Duchess of Aquitaine, in fact, and in reality. Henry and Louis could not have been more different. Louis was kind, but he was subsumed by his piety. It was everything to him. Henry had charisma, innate self-belief and optimism. Funnily enough, although very different, both of Eleanor’s husbands would go out of their way to protect their Jewish communities. However, within days of Geoffrey and Henry leaving Paris so joyfully, Count Geoffrey was dead in a fulfilment of Bernard’s prophecy. Geoffrey was only 37 years old. Henry had planned to go to England where the fight was still going on against Stephen and Eustace, but he was forced to stay to consolidate his father’s territories. Henry was now master of Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Terraine. In March, 1152, Eleanor and Louis divorced. All the lands were hers intact and Louis let her go. She fled south to Poitier and she was forced to leave her daughters, Marie and Alex behind. We have no evidence that she ever saw them again. On her way south she was, there were two attempted kidnaps, which was normal practise for wealthy heiresses. The first person who tried to kidnap her was Henry’s younger brother Geoffrey, and the second person was the Count of Blois, who would later marry her daughter, Alex.

It was all very, very incestuous. She and Henry married in May and let’s look at what Henry now possessed. So you can see here, the orange is the territory that was inherited by Henry II. He would eventually become King of England as we’ll see in a few minutes. And then from his father, he had the area around Normandy, Maine to Rennes. He would eventually bring Britannia under his control. But this is the territory. Look, it’s half the size of everything that he’s had in France, double the size of everything that he’s already had in France. And the pink is the territory that Eleanor brings to Henry on their marriage. Louis was furious. It was incredibly naive politically that he’d let Eleanor go and maintain Aquitaine in her own right. As Eleanor’s overlord, Eleanor should have sought his permission to marry, but she disregarded it and Louis went to war with Henry. Henry won. He managed to completely defeat Louis and to defeat his brother Geoffrey who fought with Louis.

And he left Eleanor, who was now pregnant to finally sail for England to try and gain power there to topple Stephen. However, by this point Stephen had really lost the will to fight. The civil war had been going on for years and he only kept it going because of Eustace. His eldest son, Eustace, who was a particularly unpleasant man, died probably because of food poisoning. And at this stage Stephen reached a diplomatic solution with Henry. Their armies refused to fight. Neither of them really wanted to fight. It was agreed that Stephen would remain king of England until his death, at which point Henry, who he formally adopted, would become his heir. Incidentally, a young clerk whose name was Thomas Becket was one of the architects of this diplomacy. Henry was finally crowned alongside Eleanor on the 19th of December, 1154 at Westminster after Stephen died. Henry crushed any dissent. He styled himself fitz-empress and he presented himself as the rightful successor to his grandfather Henry I, declaring that he was now king in his own land, papal legate, patriarch, emperor and everything he wished. Henry fostered huge talent in his new administration. He had a carefully crafted plan to administer his many diverse territories. He was excellent at delegation and he trusted his deputies who would serve him well. His mother acted as his regent in Normandy and Eleanor frequently acted as his regent in England. He placed in his administration many of his father’s deputies and his former enemies who had served Stephen. Henry believed in institutional memory and he believed in talent wherever it came from.

This was a period when so-called men raised from the dust would serve Henry. He really didn’t care about status. It was all about talent, skill, and loyalty. And you had to be smart to work for Henry even if you were family. His half illegitimate brother, Hamlin and his youngest legitimate brother, William were made rich by Henry, but they never became his advisors and they never had a seat at the table. Thomas Becket remained one of Henry’s most trusted advisors and in 1154 in one of his first acts, Henry appoints him his chancellor. Henry was a genius administrator and he made England rich. He centralised the rule of law and enabled the king’s justice to be available for all. Henry’s court was an international court where talented and interesting individuals, including roving scholars were welcomed. How did the Jews, by the way, fare under Henry? This was often seen as the golden age for Anglo-Jewry. Henry extended his grandfather’s charter of protection to the Jewish communities and he allowed the Jewish communities to govern themselves by Talmudic law. William of Newberg, a chronicler, was absolutely furious and he blustered, “By an absurd arrangement, they, the Jews were happy and renowned far more than the Christians.” Jewish communities were established in new economic centres of activity in Exeter, Bradford, Devizes, Ipswich, Canterbury and others.

And the Jews international connections meant that scholars from Germany and Spain came to England too. In 1158, the wandering Spanish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra, visited London and Northern France and it’s possible in the light of Henry’s interest in Arabic learning that this Jewish poet, scientist and biblical scholar met with the king. Conditions under Henry’s rule were so favourable to the Jews that many came from the rest of Europe to settle in England. And in 1168, Frederick Barbarossa complained that so many of his most lucrative community were leaving Germany to settle in England. Henry used Eleanor, Matilda and his other trusted intimates as his regents because he travelled so much. No English king has ever ruled over such a vast conglomerate of lands. And Henry rarely stayed in one place for more than three days at a time. His courtiers absolutely hated it and they complained bitterly. Henry acquired a reputation for inhuman speed and was noted to fly rather than travel by horse or ship. In the execution of a lightning campaign, no one could touch Henry. The famous deterioration of Henry’s relationship with Thomas Becket was problematic for Henry, but he continued on his upward trajectory. So let’s look briefly at what happened between Henry and Becket and who Becket was. So we’ve seen that he became Henry’s chancellor in 1154. He was enormously talented. His parents were Norman, he was very well educated in Paris, and he was also a very effective soldier. He was one of the architects of Henry’s Toulouse campaign In 1159.

Eleanor and Becket together persuaded Henry to go and fight for Eleanor’s claim to Toulouse, which he claimed through her maternal grandmother Phillipa. By the way, it’s the only campaign that Henry ever lost until his final days and he only lost it because Louis VII placed himself in the city of Toulouse and Henry could not move against to physically attack his overlord for his lands in France. In 1162, Archbishop Theobold of Canterbury died, which meant that the Archbishopric of Canterbury fell vacant. Henry wanted Becket to take this role. He wanted a yes man in the dual position of chancellor and Archbishop and even though his mother, Matilda and Becket himself said that he was entirely unsuitable and he shouldn’t do it, Henry was adamant. It would turn out to be an enormous mistake and the pair soon clashed over the issue of criminalist clerics. Henry wanted to have clerics who had committed serious crimes, tried by his own secular courts rather than the Church’s, but Becket refused. This led to an enormous row, which went on until 1170 for the next few years, the next six years. Henry, however, could not take the Archbishopric away from Becket, but instead, he took away his lands and his titles. Becket said that he thought that Henry was trying to kill him, which may or may not have been true. He fled England to Louis and France who welcomed him with open arms.

By 1169 to 70, however, Henry bowed to international pressure to have his Archbishop back, but Becket’s return was marred by his pettiness as the archbishop executed his so-called English enemies when he landed on English shores. Henry was furious and he reportedly exploded. He shouted, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household who let their Lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low born clerk?” Four of Henry’s loyal knights interpreted the king’s ravings as a licence to murder. They spread from Normandy to Canterbury where they brutally killed Thomas Becket in his own cathedral church at Canterbury. Did Henry mean it? We’ll never know. We do know that Henry used anger as one of the weapons in his arsenal of kingship, but nevertheless, the four knights believed that he wanted Becket dead. Henry’s reaction in the aftermath of Becket’s death was absolutely perfect. He immediately went into seclusion and performed public acts of contrition, which culminated in the Compromise of Avranches in 1172 with the Pope. He promised the Pope that he would go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He never did. He built some abbeys instead, pleading that he was too busy. Meanwhile, in 1173, Becket was canonised and Henry typically used it to his advantage. Henry was the master of public relations and now his dynasty became linked inexorably with the cult of the newly canonised St. Thomas to the glory of their house. Despite his concessions to the Pope, Henry maintained control of the church.

And in 1173 in an act that was absolutely typical of Henry, he ordered the monks of Winchester Cathedral priory to, I quote, “Hold a free election, but nevertheless, I forbid you to elect anyone except Richard, my clerk.” The physical problem of Becket was eliminated. Now Henry faced a far more direct threat to his kingdom and from a totally unexpected source, his wife and sons, it staggered him and it nearly lost him his empire. Here’s a picture of the children that Henry and Eleanor had together. You can see William who had died young at only three years old, but in 1170 the rest of Henry’s children are still living. And in 1170 the oldest, young Henry or Hal was 15 and the youngest, John was three years old. Henry and Eleanor had arranged brilliant marriages or betrothals for their children. Their eldest daughter, Matilda was married to Henry, the lion of Saxony. Her sister Eleanor was betrothed to the king of Castile. And young Henry, who was the second oldest child, was betrothed to Margaret, who was the daughter of Louis VII and his second wife, Costanza of Castile. Richard was betrothed to Margaret’s sister, Alice and another son, Geoffrey was betrothed to Constance, the heir to Britannia, which brought it under Henry’s control. Joanna was betrothed to the king of Sicily, which spread Henry’s influence there. In 1168, after 16 years of marriage, Henry and Eleanor separated amicably. Eleanor left for Poitier taking her favourite son, Richard with her. She was about 44 years old and she would now be the independent Duchess of Aquitaine, grooming Richard to rule after her. It suited Henry. He was very much in love with a woman over this period called Rosamund Clifford.

Any passion and love in the marriage may have become a friendship and a harmonious partnership. We don’t really know, but it suited Henry to have Eleanor in Aquitaine, particularly as Aquitaine was the most rebellious of all of the territories under his control. And he likely felt that Eleanor as its rightful Duchess would have more influence there, and she did and it worked incredibly well. But Henry wasn’t true to his word. He limited her autonomy. And over the next five years, Eleanor slowly lost trust in Henry as he syphoned off various bits and pieces of her territory in Aquitaine and didn’t give her as much money as she needed to rule it effectively. By the spring of 1173, Eleanor had had enough. She turned Henry the young king who’d been crowned during their father’s lifetime in 1170, which was common practise amongst mediaeval kings, Richard and Geoffrey, against their father and they rebelled. It could be argued that Henry brought this all upon himself. Henry loved his children and he was a very fond father. He fretted over the succession, not one of his boys he believed could hold all of his lands. Instead he envisaged a loose federation with brother helping brother. Young Henry would have England, Normandy, Anjou and Maine. Richard would have Aquitaine and marry Louis’s other daughter by his second wife, Alice. Geoffrey would have Brittany as he’d been married off to the young Countess there. John was still very young, but Henry felt likely something would materialise. However, Henry made a fatal mistake.

He failed to communicate his plans. He failed to talk it through with Eleanor and with any of his children and he failed to take his children’s characters, ambitions, relations with one another and with their mother into account. ‘Cause Henry’s children were not a tight-knit group. They hardly knew one another. They’d grown up in different households and there was a large gap between the eldest and the youngest. They never lived together and there was no harmony. Henry believed, however, that through the extraordinary strength of his resolve, he could fashion bonds between his offspring, powerful enough to hold his empire together at his death. Although Henry was a loving parent, he was an absent parent, often spending years apart from his offspring. Although Eleanor travelled too, she didn’t travel as much as Henry and whenever she travelled she took at least one child with her. Richard’s and John’s behaviour towards Eleanor after Henry’s death showed what high esteem they held their mother in. However, none of Henry’s boys really liked him. The major problem was that Henry refused to give his son’s power during his lifetime. It was a big mistake and they bitterly resented him for it. Although as we have seen, young Henry was crowned alongside his father in his lifetime. He was always referred to as the young king. It was simply to ensure the succession and he had no real authority. He became a bit of a wastrel, spending his time on the tournament circuit and spending a huge amount of money. Richard, although he was trained by his mother to rule in Aquitaine, and he quickly showed himself to be an incredibly successful soldier and stratestician, held no formal power. Louis VII cannily stroked the boys’ frustration and anger. Henry, the young king was now, Louis’s son-in-law, and Henry spent a great deal of time at his father-in-law’s court.

Egged on by Louis and likely by Eleanor as well, young Henry demanded that his father hand over one of his promised territories, either England, Normandy or Anjou so that he could start to administer it himself. When Henry refused, war ensued and the odds were stacked against Henry. A strong coalition was built up with Henry’s sons, and his wife’s former husband and all of Henry’s enemies, including his cousins, the counts of Flanders. But however, against all the odds, Henry managed to defeat them all and he did it through trusted deputies because even Henry couldn’t be everywhere at once. And rather than travel thousands of miles here, there and everywhere to fight battles, Henry trusted that his deputies could do it for him and they did. Eleanor was captured at the very start of the great rebellion as she was trying to flee to Paris to join her sons there. Henry would imprison her for the next 15 years. Richard believed that his betrothed Alice was his father’s mistress and that Henry wanted to start a new family with her. It may have been true, Richard certainly believed it. And Henry, despite his brilliance, his learning, his passion and his enormous gift to inspire friendship and loyalty was a hugely flawed character. He flagrantly disregarded the needs and desires of those closest to him, and in disregarding them, he engineered his own downfall.

He treated his wife and his children very shoddily and he was unable to empathise with them or understand their needs and desires. Eleanor, a clever and educated woman, was pushed to extremes. It’s likely that a little compromise from Henry would’ve ensured her loyalty. He should have given his son’s some authority and trained them to rule as he was trained to rule himself by his own parents. He gave them money after rebellion, but almost no power. Young Henry died fighting against his father in 1183, which was nearly 10 years after the Great Rebellion. Over this period, Geoffrey and Richard continued to rebel and to connive with the new king of France, Philip Augustus, who became king in 1180, Louis’s son with his third wife. In his early years, Philip was mentored by Henry and Philip believed that he had a willing and happy protege there. The only son who Henry enjoyed a good relationship with was his eldest illegitimate son, who was also called Geoffrey. At the time of the rebellion, he famously told this son, “You are my real son, it’s the rest who are the bastards.” Let’s look at Henry’s remorse over his legitimate sons from “The Lion in Winter”.

CLIP BEGINS

• My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived. Henry Fitz-Empress, first Plantagenet, king at 21, the ableist soldier of an able time. He led men well. He cared for justice when he could and ruled for 30 years a state as great as Charlemagne’s. He married out of love, a woman out of legend, not in Alexandria or Rome or Camelot has there been such a queen. She bore him many children, but no sons. King Henry had no sons. He had three whiskered things, but he disowned them. You’re not mine. We’re not connected. I deny you. None of you will get my kingdom, I leave you nothing. And I wish you plagued by all your children. Preach and die. My boys are gone. I’ve lost my boys.

CLIP ENDS

• I think you can really feel Henry’s pain here. And the problems with his sons weren’t going away. None of them were sympathetic characters and they all intermittently hated one another as well as their father. In 1186, Geoffrey died while staying with Philip in Paris. Philip was incredibly clever and he encouraged close relationships with Henry’s sons. And he was apparently so distraught at Geoffrey’s death that Philip jumped into Geoffrey’s grave. But as Geoffrey died, he’d been planning to battle against his father with Philip. Now Philip fostered Richard’s friendship and they became close friends. Richard spent a lot of time with Philip in Paris and there were rumours that they were lovers. In November, 1188 at a meeting of the English and the French courts, Richard had finally had enough. He demanded that his father name him his heir. Henry couldn’t bear to, and he stayed silent. While Richard knelt before King Philip pledging him homage for Normandy, Anjou and the Aquitaine. It was absolutely shocking. But Philip, the future unifier of France is remembered as one of the country’s most brilliant and cunning monarchs. Now, his careful manipulation of Richard had paid off. The tragedy for Henry is that he had failed to identify Philip’s true nature as his nemesis until it was too late. And Richard and Philip continued to attack Henry’s lands.

At the very end, just a month before he died, they set fire to Le Mans. This was Henry’s birthplace and where he was staying, he just about managed to escape the city with his life as it burned. And according to Gerald of Wales, one of those magnificent writers who always accompanied Henry. Henry was absolutely devastated at the taking of his beloved city and he cried out in anguish, “Oh God, since you have taken away from me the city that I loved most on Earth, the city where I was born and bred, the city where my father is buried, I will repay you as best I can. I will deny you that what you love best in me, my soul.” After fleeing Le Mans, Henry didn’t rush to the safety of his army in the north, but instead he turned south for his castle at Chinon. His health had been failing for months, but this trek of nearly 200 miles in the heat of summer finally destroyed him. His defences crumbled and Philip and Richard continued in their determination to break him. Henry in his last days was forced to reach a settlement and the conditions were absolutely humiliating. Richard would be recognised as his heir, Henry was forced to pay an indemnity of 20,000 pounds, a huge sum, surrender key castles and most humiliatingly show a willingness to follow Philip’s pleasure in all things. He had no choice but to agree. Although he whispered in Richard’s ear, “God grant that I may not die until I have my revenge on you.” Henry died two days later as he discovered that his youngest and most beloved son, John had joined with his enemies.

Contemporaries said that his heart was broken. Here we can see Chinon castle, which is, as you can see, not on a huge scale, and here’s Henry and Eleanor, Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, in happier times. The arc of Henry’s story was interpreted by contemporaries as one of magnificent promise, which hubris had turned to dust. It’s interesting to imagine what would’ve happened if Philip had encountered a Henry of 21 years old when he became king of England and was Lord of much of France instead of a man pitifully broken by his son’s betrayals. If he had, what happened next might have been very different. This is a statue of Richard I and Richard’s first act as king was to free his mother. Eleanor was about 67 years old, and the next 15 years were the most politically active of her life. She acted as Regent when Richard went on the third crusade. And when Richard was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria on his way back from crusade, it was Eleanor who raised the extortionate ransom of 100,000 pounds and who went to Germany to negotiate his release. Richard’s relationship with Philip swiftly deteriorated in the aftermath of his father’s death. And while Richard was in captivity, Philip and John tried to pay the Holy Roman Emperor to keep him. There was obviously not much return of feeling between Richard and John. It was Eleanor’s diplomacy that saved him. On the 26th of March, 1199, Richard was shot by a crossbow just as he’d negotiated a five year truce with Philip. He ignored the claims of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, Geoffrey’s son, and on his deathbed, he named John his heir.

Eleanor became equally integral to John’s government, but she knew what this youngest son of hers was. While Richard had been the prisoner of the emperor, she had written to the Pope, admitting that John was killing the people and ravaging the land with fires. John was probably the most unpleasant man ever to rule England, matched only by his grandson, Edward I. And this is his tomb at Worcester. In 1200, aged about 78 years old, and as part of a peace treaty with France Eleanor crossed the Alps to collect her granddaughter, Blanche of Castile as a bride for Philip’s son, who would be the future Louis VIII. She tried to retire, but John couldn’t do without her. Meanwhile, John’s disastrous policies lost him Brittany, Maine to Rennes and Normandy. And by the time Eleanor died in 1204, all that was left of Henry’s mighty empire in France were her Duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Poitou. And John lost these both too soon after his mother’s death. Only a small rump now remained. John’s nephew, Arthur disappeared in 1203 and it’s likely he was murdered by his uncle. And on the 27th of July, 1214, at the Battle of Bovine in northern France with the coalition army led by John’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, John finally lost most of his lands in France to Philip. Phillip’s victory against the Plantagenets was now complete.

Within a generation the wheel of fortune had turned and Philip had humiliated Henry’s heir and was now the strongest ruler in Europe. We can see in this contrasting map of 1180 and 1223, exactly how much was lost. In 1180, Henry controls much of France, by 1223, it’s pretty much all gone. But worse was to come for John. In 1215, the barons forced him to sign the Magna Carta, the big charter or great charter. But once they realised that John had no intention of keeping the promises he’d made, some of them asked Prince Louis of France to invade England in the right of his wife, Blanche, Henry’s granddaughter. Luckily for the dynasty, John died of dysentery in October, 1216 in the midst of a French invasion. And John’s son now became king and he’d be crowned Henry III. He was only nine years old. In the strange accident of history, though, it was Henry and Eleanor’s granddaughter, Blanche who would become Philip’s protege. She would learn statecraft from Philip as he had studied and learned from Henry. And after her husband, Louis VIII’s death acting as regent for her young son, Louis IX, she continued his work in bringing the French barons firmly under royal control. Henry II had for over 40 years endured a ceaseless round of battle and diplomacy to build and hold an empire. He had amazed his contemporaries and he was their Alexander of the West. But Henry, perhaps in the belief that heroes were born and not made did not train any of his sons to succeed him. And this was his downfall. Within only 25 years of his death, the Capetian mission to remove Angevin power from France now complete, Henry’s glorious empire was finally gone. Thank you everyone. I’ll just see if there are any questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you for that very nice comment. It’s interesting. It’s wonderful to hear it again from the other side. Yes, it’s an English interpretation, but thank you for that, Michelle.

Q: Did the ransom for Richard come from the Jews?

A: No, not all of it, but a lot of it did come from the Jews. And Shelly, if you would like me to, I could find out the exact figure and and let you know. Judy will let me have your details. And I don’t think there are any other questions, so that if there are no other questions, Judy, shall we finish?

Q - Yes. Anybody, if they have any questions they can pop them onto the Q and A now. Should we give it? Was John’s nickname Land loss?

A - It was actually Lackland and it was because he never had any. Henry did find a solution for John. He gave John some of young Henry’s territories, which Young Henry was absolutely furious about and forced yet another rebellion. Henry wasn’t subtle.

And Shelly, yes, I will send you the exact amount.

Oh and yes, next time I will slow down, Gita. Thank you.

Yes. Many of Henry’s children died before him. Yes, that’s right. Hold on, if I can go back to my chart. I can tell you, don’t know if I can. One second. Yes. They were all pretty much gone, his legitimate children by the time Henry died, Henry died in 1189. The ones who remained were Eleanor of Castile, Joanna, she actually died. She went to Eleanor in her last days of her life, she went to Eleanor where she’d retired to Fontevreau. And then obviously John lived after Henry’s death. But yes, it was a great sadness for Henry, particularly as young Matilda had come back to live in England with her husband in Henry’s last years in the 1180s. But she died just before her father. He didn’t know about her death though. She died literally days before him.

No mention of Joan of Arc. That’s right. Joan of Arc is a bit later. Yes. It was the development of the Gothic style. It was incredibly costly. It’s the beginning of the Gothic style. It was really developed more in the reign, particularly in France of Philip Augustus.

Q: What language did they speak?

A: They spoke Norman French. And typical of Norman French is a hard pronunciation at the end. So instead of O for a-u-x, you would have ox.

Q: Could you clarify the Jewish connection, please?

A: Well, this is from Solomon. So the Jews had come to England for the first time in settled communities with William the Conquer. All of the Norman Kings valued the Jewish contribution, their economic contribution. Henry continued this policy of his Norman father and grandfather and great-grandfather and great-uncle. But he seems to have gone above and beyond and he seems to have really enjoyed and valued the Jewish community’s contribution. Having said that, he didn’t stop them stealing their money or purloining their money. Usually when a Jew died, their money would go to their family. However, when the fabulously wealthy Aaron of Lincoln died, Henry took everything and a separate exchequer was set up to deal with Erin’s enormous fortune.

Yes, Shelly. It is stranger than any TV series. The Plantagenets are so interesting and they all hated each other, which is just so awful and sad. I think it’s always fascinating that Henry had such a wonderful relationship with his own parents, but he didn’t manage to transfer what he’d learned from them onto his own children.

Q: What languages were spoken by the Jews who lived in Norman England?

A: They would have spoken Hebrew and they would have spoken Norman French for their trade and whatever. I don’t know. I can find out more about that. Yes. The lessons of family succession planning today are exactly the same as back in the 12th century and actually when I was writing this book, I was very lucky that a family business advisor, Peter Leach, presented the Plantagenet family to me as a modern family business. And it was fascinating to see the parallels there.

Q: Was John slow?

A: No, he wasn’t actually. He was the most learned and intellectual of all of Henry’s children. He had an enormous and varied library. He wasn’t as slow as it was implied in the “Lion in Winter”.

Q: Was there an early Jewish grandmother?

A: No. There was a Pope who had a Jewish great grandfather. I think that might be what you are thinking of. That was Pope Anacletus. Angevin comes from Anjou, which was the heartland of Henry’s territory inherited from his father. Plantagenet is a much later name. They wouldn’t have referred to themselves as Plantagenet. That’s a 14th century name, and it comes from the planta gesta that Geoffrey Plantagenet was said to wear in his hat. It’s a little white broom flower.

Thank you everyone. Lovely to see you and thanks very much, Judy.