CHAPTER I

HENRY FITZ-EMPRESS

When the _White Ship_ went down on 25th November 1120, carrying with her the only legitimate son of Henry I., the succession to the English throne became a question of great moment. Henry’s daughter, Maud, had been married to Henry V., Emperor of Germany, in 1114; it was clearly impossible for England and Normandy to be ruled in conjunction with the Empire, and Maud had no children to whom her father’s crown might pass. The king’s unruly brother, Robert of Normandy, was still alive, but a prisoner in England; and his son William, the most formidable candidate for the throne, was destined to die in Flanders in 1128. But before death had removed this dangerous and unpopular competitor, a fresh solution of the difficulty had become possible. Maud’s husband, the emperor, had died in 1125,[1] and on 1st January 1127, King Henry declared Maud his heir, and caused the peers to swear to accept her as his successor in England and in Normandy. There was no precedent for female sovereignty in either country, and it was probably not anticipated that she should reign alone, but rather that she should by marriage bestow the crown upon some fitting partner. The important matter of this marriage Henry had virtually undertaken to submit to the decision of his barons, but at the end of May 1127 he betrothed her, with an absence of preparation that amounted almost to secrecy, to Geoffrey, son of Count Fulk of Anjou, a boy of fourteen, eleven years the junior of his bride. The marriage, as Henry had foreseen, was unpopular, though the addition of the neighbouring provinces of Anjou and Maine to Normandy made the King of England the most powerful of all the feudatories of France.

The marriage of Geoffrey, now Count of Anjou, and Maud took place in June 1129, but within a few weeks the quick-tempered count and his haughty bride had quarrelled and separated, and it was not until the autumn of 1131 that they came together again. Their reunion was made by Henry the occasion for causing his barons to renew their oath of allegiance to Maud as his successor, thereby quashing any objection that might have been made to the previous oath as invalidated by her marriage. The king was now more than sixty years old, and his anxiety for the future of his country and his dynasty must have been greatly relieved by the birth of a son to Geoffrey and Maud on the 25th March 1133. The boy was called Henry, after his grandfather, and it is significant of the predominance attaching to his mother, as heiress of England and Normandy, that the title by which he was most commonly known to his contemporaries was that of Henry Fitz-Empress.

The death of Henry I., on 1st December 1135, seems to have taken the empress and her partisans by surprise. She went almost at once into Normandy to press her claims, half-heartedly and with little success; but in the meanwhile her cousin, Stephen of Blois, nephew of the late king, had crossed into England, and, with the assistance of his brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, had caused himself to be crowned king on 22nd December. The Norman barons accepted Stephen, and the final blow was given to Maud’s cause by the Pope’s declaration in favour of her rival. Her half-brother, however, Earl Robert of Gloucester, was not long in forming a party to support the claims of Maud and her son in England, and in 1139 Maud herself crossed the Channel with a small body of troops. With the varying fortunes of the long-continued war between the empress and Stephen we are not concerned, but it was when Maud’s cause was almost at its worst, in the winter of 1142, that her young son Henry, then in his tenth year, came over in charge of his uncle, Earl Robert, and was settled at Bristol. There he remained for four years under the tuition of a certain Master Matthew, who cultivated in him that love for learning which made him in later days the most literary prince of his time and a worthy successor of his scholarly grandfather.

During those four years Henry’s father, Geoffrey of Anjou, had been strengthening his position on the Continent, though apparently making no effort to assist his wife in her struggle with Stephen. By the end of 1143 he had secured control of the greater part of Normandy, and early in 1144 Rouen surrendered and Geoffrey was recognised as Duke of Normandy. Having established himself securely he now sent for his son to join him, and accordingly, late in 1146, or at the beginning of the next year, Earl Robert of Gloucester escorted young Henry to Wareham and there bade farewell to him. Uncle and nephew were destined to meet no more, for on 31st October 1147 Earl Robert died. Immediately the earl’s death was known, Earl Gilbert of Pembroke, whose castle of Pevensey was then undergoing a siege, urged Henry’s return. He considered that the only hope for the empress’s cause, now that its mainstay had departed, lay in the presence of Henry in England. The boy--he was only fourteen--hurriedly crossed with a few companions, landed at one of the western ports, and made feeble attacks on Cricklade and Bourton, in Gloucestershire, from which he was easily driven off. His forces dwindled rather than increased, and his scanty supply of money soon came to an end. An application to his mother for further funds proved ineffectual, as she was in the same straits herself. He then turned to the Earl of Gloucester for assistance; but Earl William was very different from his father; he cared little for war, had no enthusiasm for the cause of his cousin, and saw no reason why he should waste his treasure on a desperate and hopeless enterprise. Unable for lack of funds either to continue his injudicious venture or to leave the country, the humiliated prince had to apply for help to the rival whom he had so rashly attacked. Stephen, always chivalrous and good-natured even to weakness, in spite of the opposition and remonstrances of his advisers, at once supplied Henry with the necessary means of returning to his father’s court, where, in the early spring of 1148, he was joined by his mother, the empress.[2]

Geoffrey, now that he was firmly established in Normandy, seems to have begun to plan the aggrandisement of his son, in whose right he had obtained the duchy. And so, in April 1149, Henry was sent to England to receive the honour of knighthood from King David of Scotland, his mother’s uncle. Landing, probably, at Wareham, he made a brief stay at Devizes, where we find in his company Roger, Earl of Hereford, Patrick, Earl of Salisbury, William Beauchamp, John St. John, Roger Berkeley, Hubert de Vaux, Henry Hussey, Manser Bisset and others.[3] Thence he passed peacefully northwards, the whole of western England being in the hands of magnates, such as the Earls of Leicester and Warwick, who were friendly to his cause or at least hostile to that of Stephen. To Carlisle he was brought by Earl Ralph of Chester, and there he was received by King David and his son Henry, Earl of Northumberland, and on Whitsunday, 22nd May, was duly invested with the insignia of knighthood. Henry and his ally of Scotland now persuaded the powerful Earl of Chester to join forces with them against Stephen, but before this scheme could be carried out King Stephen had outbid his rivals and bought the support of the earl by a bestowal of fiefs so lavish as to render him almost king of northern England.

Returning to his father in January 1150, Henry was invested with the dukedom of Normandy. But a little more than a year later Stephen’s son, Eustace, persuaded King Louis of France, with whom Geoffrey

[Illustration: (1)]

[Illustration: (2)

SEALS OF HENRY AS DUKE OF NORMANDY (3/4)]

had quarrelled, to assist him in regaining Normandy. The allies advanced as far as Arques, where they were opposed by the forces under the young duke. Henry here exhibited that scrupulous respect for his feudal overlord, the King of France, which he displayed so conspicuously in later years, and acted on the defensive, refusing to attack his suzerain. Eustace was a man of warlike spirit, but King Louis, who, though not averse to war, seems to have had a profound distaste for fighting, did not care to risk a battle and retired for the time. Later in the year he despatched another force to operate against Mantes, but Geoffrey now came to terms and agreed to surrender the Vexin, the borderland between France and Normandy, on condition that Louis should confirm Henry in the possession of the rest of the Norman duchy, and these terms the French king gladly accepted.

Henry had now established his claim to half of his grandfather’s dominions, and began to plan the recovery of the remainder by an invasion of England. His plans, however, were interfered with by the sudden death of his father on 7th September 1151. The recovery of England was postponed, but a great accession of territory was obtained by Henry in the following spring. Louis VII. had married Eleanor, the heiress of Aquitaine, in 1137, but relations between the able and energetic queen and her feeble husband had gradually become strained to breaking, and at last, early in 1152, they discovered that they ought never to have married, being related to one another, distantly but within the degrees theoretically prohibited by the Church.[4] A divorce was granted on 18th March, and Eleanor, avoiding the too pressing attentions of Count Theobald of Blois and Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry’s younger brother, intimated her willingness to bestow her hand and great possessions upon the Duke of Normandy. Henry, now nineteen, but with a reputation that many an older man might have envied, hastened at once to meet Eleanor at Poitiers, and they were married in May. By this marriage Henry became master of Aquitaine and Poitou, in addition to Anjou, Maine, and Normandy, and his rule reached from the Channel to the Pyrenees.

He now once more prepared for the invasion of England, and was assembling his forces at Barfleur in June when he found himself called upon to face the combined forces of Eleanor’s late husband, King Louis, and her disappointed suitors, Count Theobald and Geoffrey of Anjou. Henry displayed the energy and rapidity of movement which in later years made the French king declare that he must be able to fly, dashed down to Pacey and prepared to attack the French forces, but Louis, with his usual discretion, retired at once. Henry promptly turned north to crush the rebellious Richer of L’Aigle and destroy his robbers’ castle of Bonmoulins. The Norman frontier had been secured before the end of August, and the duke was free to turn his hand against his brother Geoffrey, which he did very effectually, reducing Montsoreau and compelling Geoffrey to sue for peace. A truce patched up between Henry and Louis was speedily renounced by the latter, but Henry, estimating his adversary’s military abilities at a low rate, continued his preparations for the invasion of England, and eventually crossed about the second week in January 1153, with a fleet of thirty-six ships.

It was probably at Wareham that Henry landed with his hundred and forty men-at-arms and three thousand infantry, and he would seem to have gone straight to Bristol, where he was joined by those magnates who had supported his cause in the past, or who considered that it would be to their advantage to do so in the future. Operations were at once begun against Malmesbury Castle, and the outer works were speedily carried, but the massive keep was too strong to be stormed and could only be reduced by starvation. Meanwhile Stephen had collected his forces and was marching to the rescue; after halting for the night at Cirencester he advanced to the relief of Malmesbury, but found the little Avon swollen and impassable, while a bitter wind and blinding rain and sleet, driving in the faces of his men, made it impossible for him to advance or to retain his position. Abandoning his enterprise, the king marched back to London, and the castellan Jordan had no choice but to surrender. Enheartened by the capture of Malmesbury, Henry now directed his energies to the particular business which had brought him over--the relief of Wallingford. During the past five or six years, although the country as a whole had been at peace, some of the more restless spirits had carried on a sort of war on their own account, and of these one of the most prominent had been Brian Fitz-Count of Wallingford. In 1152 he had managed to destroy the castles set up at Brightwell and Reading to keep him in check, and Stephen had been obliged to besiege Wallingford Castle and blockade it by the erection of counter-works at Crowmarsh. Finding themselves in difficulties, the garrison had sent over to Henry for assistance, and he now came to the rescue and invested Crowmarsh. An outlying portion of the royalist siege works on Wallingford Bridge had already fallen into his hands, when Stephen once more offered fight. Henry, for his part, was very willing to give battle and drew out his forces, but the desire of the prelates to avoid further bloodshed, and the fear of the barons that a decisive victory might destroy the balance of power between the two parties and so render their own services less marketable, resulted in secret negotiations, and compelled the rivals to agree to a truce for five days, though suggestions for a more permanent cessation of hostilities, made at a private interview between Henry and Stephen, came to nothing. The terms of the truce were highly favourable to Henry, the king being obliged to withdraw his garrison from Crowmarsh and allow the fortifications to be dismantled.

Wallingford having been relieved, and the royalists under William Cheyney and Richard de Lucy having been defeated in a cavalry action near Oxford, Henry seems to have recruited his forces in the western counties, visiting Evesham and Warwick, where the Countess Gundreda handed over to him the castle, from which she had ejected Stephen’s garrison. Then, turning eastwards, he besieged and captured Stamford Castle about the same time that Stephen reduced Ipswich. The duke next plundered Nottingham, but did not attempt to take the castle. By this time the peace party were beginning to gain the upper hand, and the efforts of Archbishop Theobald and Bishop Henry of Winchester gained strength by the removal of their chief opponent, the king’s son, Eustace of Boulogne. That bellicose ruffian, enraged at the tame conclusion of the Wallingford affair, had gone off on a ravaging expedition in the eastern counties. After plundering Cambridgeshire he paid a similar attention to the lands of Bury St. Edmunds, rashly pillaging the monastic lands on St. Laurence’s Day (10th August). The offended saints were not slow to avenge the outrage, and within a week Eustace lay dead. With his death died Stephen’s hopes of founding a dynasty, for his younger son, William, had borne no part in the civil war and possessed neither the desire nor the ability to contest the crown with Henry.

After some weeks of negotiation a compromise was at last arrived at by which Stephen was to retain the crown for life on condition of acknowledging Henry as his heir, and on 6th November 1153 this agreement was ratified by the peers in council at Winchester; the rivals were reconciled and the barons of both parties did homage to the king and his successor. From Winchester the double court moved to London, where the news of the termination of the long and ruinous struggle was received with the greatest enthusiasm; and after Christmas king and duke met once more, at Oxford, on 13th January 1154, just a year since Henry had landed in England. A little later, when they met again, at Dunstable, Henry reproached Stephen for not having fulfilled one of the conditions of the treaty of peace, which was that the castles built since the death of Henry I. should be destroyed. The task was no small one, as these so-called adulterine castles had sprung up all over the country and were estimated by Robert of Torigny, usually an accurate authority, to number eleven hundred and fifteen. Stephen resented the charge of ill-faith, but the quarrel, if it deserve the name, was soon made up, and the two princes went down to Dover together in February to meet the Count and Countess of Flanders. While there it is said that Stephen’s Flemish mercenaries, without his knowledge but with the connivance of his son William, planned to murder Henry. Whether a rumour of the plot reached his ears or whether he considered that affairs in Normandy required his presence, Henry soon afterwards parted from the king and returned to Normandy, where he spent the next five months strengthening his position. With King Louis he was now on good terms; and he was actually engaged in a military expedition on that king’s behalf when the throne of England fell to him by the death of Stephen on 25th October 1154.