Chapter VIII: Henry Duke of the Normans (1)

1149–1154.

No loving hands have done for the early life of Henry Fitz-Empress what they did for that of his contemporary, his friend, his opponent Thomas of London; we have no stories of his boyhood, no picture of his home. Home indeed, in the full sense of the word, he never had and never could have. That instinctive attachment to one particular spot, or at the least to one particular country, which is innate in most men, was to a child of Geoffrey and Matilda simply impossible. Geoffrey was the son of an Angevin count and a Cenomannian countess; Matilda was the daughter of a king born in England of a Norman father and a Flemish mother, and of a queen whose parents were the one a Scottish Celt, the other a West-Saxon with a touch of High-German blood. In the temper of the Empress the Norman element was undoubtedly the strongest; no trace can be seen in her of the gentle spirit of her mother; and it is clear that no lingering regrets for the land of her birth[1083] haunted the girl-bride of the Emperor in her palace at Aachen as they haunted the monk Orderic, from boyhood to old age, in his cell at Saint-Evroul. Yet when she came to Normandy in her twenty-third year, she came there unwillingly and as a complete stranger. If Henry was to inherit any national or patriotic feeling at all, it could not be from his mother; what she transmitted to him instead was a sort of cosmopolitanism which saved the future duke of Normandy and king of England from the too exclusive influence of the demon-blood of Anjou, not by making him a Norman, still less an Englishman, but by rendering his nationality a yet more insoluble problem than her own. Even in his father, too, there are signs of a divided national sentiment. The son of Aremburg of Maine, the grandson and heir of Elias, could not cling to the black rock of Angers with the exclusive attachment of its earlier counts; a share of his patriotic affection and pride must have been given to that other, red rock above the Sarthe which had held out so long and so bravely against both Normandy and Anjou, to that Cenomannian land of heroes which Norman and Angevin alike had counted it their highest glory to overcome and win. It may have been by chance, or it may have been of set purpose, that Geoffrey and Matilda were at Le Mans when their first child was born; no other spot could have been half so appropriate. The land which Normans and Angevins and even Englishmen[1084] had done their utmost to wipe out of the list of states, the land whose claim to a separate existence, ignored or denied by them all, had yet proved the insurmountable stumbling-block which forced them into union:--that land was the most fitting birth-place for the child who was to be neither Norman, nor Angevin, nor English, and yet was to be all three at once. The vengeance of Maine upon her conquerors formed a characteristic close to her national career. They had swallowed her up at last; but they had no sooner done it than she gave a master to them all.

[1083] She was born in London: Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson,
_Becket_, vol. iii.), p. 13.

[1084] Eng. Chron. a. 1073.

If, then, Normandy, England and Anjou had each a part in Henry, Le Mans had two parts, as being at once the home of his father’s mother and the scene of his own birth. His earliest recollections, however, must rather have been associated with Normandy. His first journey thither was made when he was about twelve months old, when he accompanied his mother on a visit to King Henry in the spring 1134. His brother Geoffrey was born at Argentan on June 1, and the two children narrowly escaped being left motherless under their grandfather’s care.[1085] Possibly this made them all the dearer to him; he certainly found in them his last earthly pleasure, of which he was finally deprived by a quarrel with their mother, who seems to have sent them back to Angers shortly before her own return thither in the autumn of 1135.[1086] For the next seven years little Henry can have seen nothing of his future duchy; and we have no means of knowing whether its stately capital, its people, its dialect, had left any impression upon him, or whether any dim personal remembrance was associated in his mind with that name of “my grandfather King Henry” to which he appealed so constantly in later life. His training, after his return to Angers as before, must have devolved chiefly upon Matilda; for Geoffrey during the next three years was too busy with unsuccessful fighting abroad in the interest of his wife and son to have much leisure for devoting himself to their society at home. It was not till the close of 1138 that his influence can have been seriously brought to bear upon his children, of whom there were now three, another son, named William, having been born in August 1136.[1087] After the disaster of Toucques the count appears to have spent his time until the beginning of 1141 for the most part quietly at home, where his wife’s departure over sea left him in his turn sole guardian of his boys. In one respect at least he did not neglect his paternal duty. “Unlettered king, crowned ass,” was a reproach which would have fallen with double disgrace upon the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the grandson of Henry I.; and Geoffrey took care that his firstborn should never be exposed to it. It may even be that in those two years when war and politics left him at leisure for the quieter enjoyments of his books, his hunting and his home, the young father himself took up the task, of which he was certainly quite capable, of instilling into his child the first rudiments of that book-learning which he loved so well. At any rate, it was he who chose the first teacher to whom Henry’s education was intrusted. As if on purpose to add one more to the varied influences already working in that young mind, the teacher was neither Angevin, nor Cenomannian, nor Norman. He was one Master Peter of Saintes, “learned above all his contemporaries in the science of verse.”[1088]

[1085] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1134 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 33);
Rob. Torigni, a. 1134. Cf. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. cc.
27, 28 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, pp. 305, 306).

[1086] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (as above, p.
310).

[1087] Rob. Torigni, _ad ann._

[1088] “Hic [sc. Gaufridus] filium suum Enricum natu majorem ad
erudiendum tradidit cuidam magistro Petro scilicet Xantonensi,
qui in metris instructus est super omnes coætaneos suos.” Anon.
Chron., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 120.

Under Peter’s care the boy remained till the close of 1142, when, as we have seen, he was sent to England in company with his uncle Robert of Gloucester. Henry now entered upon a third phase of education. For the next four years his uncle took charge of him and kept him in his own household at Bristol under the care of one Master Matthew, by whom he was to be “imbued with letters and instructed in good manners, as beseemed a youth of his rank.”[1089] This arrangement may have been due to the Empress, or it may have originated with Geoffrey when he sent the boy over sea in the earl’s company; for much as they differed in other matters, on the subject of a boy’s training the two brothers-in-law could hardly fail to be of the same mind. A well-balanced compound of soldier, statesman and scholar was Earl Robert’s ideal no less than Count Geoffrey’s; an ideal so realized in his own person that he might safely be trusted to watch over its developement in the person of his little nephew. As far as the military element was concerned, the earl of Gloucester, with his matured experience and oft-proved valour, was no less capable than the count of Anjou of furnishing a model of all knightly prowess, skill and courtesy; and if Henry’s chivalry was to be tempered with discretion--if it was to be regulated by a wise and wary policy--if he was to acquire any insight into the principles of sound and prudent state-craft--Robert was certainly, among the group of adventurers who surrounded the Empress, the only man from whom he could learn anything of the kind. The boy was indeed scarce ten years old, and even for the heir of Anjou and England it was perhaps somewhat too early to begin such studies as these. For the literary side of his education, later years proved that Robert’s choice of a teacher was as good as Geoffrey’s had been; the seed sowed by Peter of Saintes was well watered by Matthew, and it seems to have brought forth in his young pupil’s mind a harvest of gratitude as well as of learning, for among the chancellors of King Henry II. there appears a certain “Master Matthew” who can hardly be any other than his old teacher.[1090]

[1089] “Puer autem Henricus sub tutelâ Comitis Roberti apud
Bristoviam degens, per quatuor annos traditus est magisterio
cujusdam Mathæi, litteris imbuendus et moribus honestis ut
talem decebat puerum instituendus.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs.), vol.
i. p. 125.

[1090] “The person meant was no doubt that Matthew who is
called Henry’s chancellor in Foliot’s letters.” Stubbs,
_Gerv. Cant._, vol. i. p. 125, note 2. (“Master Matthew, the
chancellor,” is named in Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cli., Giles, vol.
i. pp. 201, 202). In his _Lect. on Med. and Mod. Hist._, p.
120, Bishop Stubbs speaks of Matthew as the king’s “tutor, who
was some time his chancellor, and who probably was identical
with the Bishop of Angers, Matthew of London.” Bishop Matthew
of Angers is described by the editors of _Gall. Christ._ (vol.
xiv. col. 570) as a native of _Loudun_--“Losduni natus.” He was
consecrated in 1155, which seems hardly to leave time for his
chancellorship.

To teach the boy “good manners”--in the true sense of those words--must have been a somewhat difficult task amid his present surroundings. Bristol, during the years of Henry’s residence there, fully kept up its character as the “stepmother of all England”; he must have been continually seeing or hearing of bands of soldiers issuing from the castle to ravage and plunder, burn and slay, or troops of captives dragged in to linger in its dungeons till they had given up their uttermost farthing or were set free by a miserable death. It seems likely, however, that the worst of these horrors occurred during Robert’s absence and without his sanction, for even the special panegyrist of Stephen gives the earl credit for doing his utmost to maintain order and justice in the shires over which he ruled.[1091] It was not his fault if matters had drifted into such a state that his efforts were worse than useless; and his good intentions were at any rate not more ineffectual than those of the king. Within the domestic circle itself it is not unlikely that the child was better placed under the influence of Robert and Mabel than either in the household of his violent-tempered mother or in that of his refined but selfish father, whom he rejoined in the spring of 1147, a year before the return of the Empress. He was in his sixteenth year when Geoffrey ceded to him the duchy of Normandy. A boy of that age, especially in the house of Anjou, was counted a man, and expected to act as such. The cession was in fact intended and understood as a solemn proclamation both to friends and foes that henceforth they would have to deal with King Henry’s chosen heir no longer indirectly, but in his own person; that his rights were to be vindicated in future not by his parents but by himself.

[1091] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 94.

He lost no time in beginning his work. In the middle of May 1149 Stephen, while endeavouring to put down a fresh revolt of the earls of Chester and Pembroke,[1092] was startled by news of Henry’s arrival in England. The young duke of the Normans landed we know not where, and made his way northward, recruiting a few of his mother’s old adherents as he went: his great-uncle King David welcomed him at Carlisle, and there knighted him on Whit-Sunday.[1093] Stephen evidently took this act as a challenge, for he immediately retorted by knighting his eldest son Eustace, thus pointedly setting up his own heir as a rival to his young kinsman.[1094] He then hastened with all his forces to York, but no hostilities took place.[1095] The intended campaign of David and Henry was frustrated by Ralf of Chester’s failure to keep his engagement with them;[1096] the two kings sat awhile, one at York and the other at Carlisle, each waiting for the other to strike, till David grew weary and retired to his own kingdom,[1097] taking his nephew with him; and in January Henry again withdrew beyond the sea.[1098] He saw that the political scales were as yet too evenly balanced to be turned by the mere weight of his maiden sword; and his work was being done for him, better than he could do it himself, by clerk and primate, abbot and Pope--most surely of all, by the blundering king himself.

[1092] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 124–127, gives the details
of this rising.

[1093] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 140, 141. Cf. Hen.
Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282). Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p.
159. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. The writer of _Gesta Steph._ (pp.
128, 129) has a most romantic account of Henry’s adventures.
Henry, he says, came over with a very small force, and nothing
to pay them with except promises. He made an attempt upon
Bourton and Cricklade, and was repulsed; whereupon his troops
all fell away and left him so helpless that he was obliged to
ask his mother for some money. She had none to give him; he
then asked his uncle Gloucester, but the latter, “suis sacculis
avide incumbens,” refused. Then Henry in desperation appealed
to the king, beseeching his compassion for the sake of their
kindred blood; and Stephen at once sent him the needful sum.
The trait is just what might be expected in Stephen; but it is
hard to conceive Henry ever getting into such a plight; and the
mention of Robert of Gloucester as still alive shews there must
be something wrong in the story.

[1094] Hen. Hunt. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. _Gesta
Steph._ (Sewell), p. 130.

[1095] Hen. Hunt. as above.

[1096] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 159, 160. Ralf had agreed to
give up his claims on Carlisle and accept instead the honour
of Lancaster for himself and the hand of one of David’s
granddaughters for his son; he promised on these conditions to
join David and Henry in an attack upon Lancaster, but was, as
usual, false to the tryst.

[1097] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282).

[1098] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 142.

A double chain connected English politics with those of the Roman court. The links of the one chain were S. Bernard and Henry Murdac; those of the other were Theobald of Canterbury and Thomas of London. What was the exact nature of those communications between the primate and the Pope of which Thomas was the medium--how much of the credit of Theobald’s policy is due to himself and how much to his confidential instrument and adviser--we have no means of determining precisely. The aim of that policy was to consolidate the forces of the English Church by deepening her intercourse and strengthening her connexion with the sister-Churches of the West, and thus bring the highest religious and political influences of Latin Christendom to bear upon the troubles of the English state. The way had been paved by Henry of Winchester in his legatine days. He and the councils which he convened had first suggested the possibility of finding a remedy for the lack of secular administration in an appeal to the authority of the canon law, now formulated as a definite code by the labours of a Bolognese lawyer, Gratian. The very strifes and jealousies which arose from Henry’s over-vigorous assertion of his authority tended to a like result; they led to more frequent appeals to Rome, to elaborate legal pleadings, to the drawing of subtle legal distinctions unknown to the old customary procedure of the land; as a contemporary writer expresses it, “Then were laws and lawyers first brought into England.”[1099] On the Continent the study of the civil jurisprudence of the Roman Empire had been revived together with that of the canon law; some members of Archbishop Theobald’s household resolved to introduce it into England, hoping thereby, as it seems, to sow amid the general confusion some seeds of a more orderly and law-abiding spirit. During the time of comparative quiet which intervened between his first journey to Rome in 1143 and his expedition with Theobald to the council of Reims in 1148, Thomas of London had spent a year at Bologna and Auxerre to perfect himself in the literary culture which he had somewhat neglected in his youth.[1100] The university of Bologna was the chief seat of the new legal learning; it may therefore have been through Thomas that a Lombard teacher, Vacarius, was induced to visit England in 1149 and open lectures at Oxford on the Roman law.[1101] Rich and poor flocked to hear him, and at the request of his poorer scholars he made an abridgement of the Code and Digests, sufficient for practical use, and more within reach of their scanty means than the heavy folios of Justinian.[1102] His lectures however were summarily brought to an end by order of the king; Stephen, scared by young Duke Henry’s presence in the north, jealous of the primate, jealous of the Church, jealous of everything in which he saw or thought he saw the least token of an influence which might be used against himself, at once silenced the teacher and ordered the students to give up their books. He gained as little as is usually gained by such a mode of proceeding in such cases. The study of the civil law only spread and prospered the more for his efforts to hinder it;[1103] and the law-school of the future university of Oxford may have sprung from a germ left in the cloisters of Oseney or S. Frideswide’s by the brief visit of the Lombard master, just as the divinity-school may have sprung from a germ left there sixteen years before by the lectures of Robert Pulein.

[1099] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.

[1100] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. iii.), p.
17.

[1101] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. Joh.
Salisb., _Polycraticus_, l. viii. c. 22 (Giles, vol. iv. p.
357), says that “domus venerabilis patris Theobaldi” brought
the Roman law into England.

[1102] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149.

[1103] Joh. Salisb. as above.

Stephen had struck at the southern primate indirectly this time; with the northern one he was still at open feud. One use which he made of his stay in Yorkshire was to exact a heavy fine from the inhabitants of Beverley, as a punishment for having given shelter to Henry Murdac. After the king’s departure the archbishop at last succeeded in enforcing his interdict at York; Eustace hurried thither, insisted upon the restoration of the services, and drove out all who refused to take part in them; there was a great tumult, in which the senior archdeacon was killed by the followers of the king’s son.[1104] About the same time a cardinal-legate, John Paparo, on his way to Ireland, asked for a safe-conduct through the dominions of the English king; Stephen refused to give it unless he would promise to do nothing on his journey to the prejudice of the English realm. John went home highly indignant at such an insinuation against his honour and that of the Apostolic See.[1105] Meanwhile Archbishop Murdac was writing bitter complaints both to S. Bernard and to the Pope. They apparently determined to give Stephen a warning which even he could not fail to understand; and they did it by sending a commission as resident legate _a latere_ for all Britain to the archbishop of Canterbury.[1106]

[1104] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17
(Howlett, vol. i. pp. 56, 57).

[1105] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 164. In the _Hist. Pontif._
(Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. pp. 518, 519) this first
legation of John Paparo seems to be dated some years earlier.
But the _Hist. Pontif._ is very erratic in its chronology; and
John of Hexham seems quite clear and consistent in his account
of the matter.

[1106] The date of Theobald’s legatine commission seems to be
nowhere stated. He had certainly received it before Lent 1151;
it was therefore in all probability granted some time in 1150,
under the circumstances related above.

The warning took effect; Stephen changed his policy at once. He was weary of all his fruitless labour; his chief anxiety now was to secure the crown to his son; and he suddenly awoke to the necessity of setting himself right with the one power which alone could enable him to carry out his desire. Eustace himself was sent to act as mediator between his father and Henry Murdac; a reconciliation took place, and the archbishop was enthroned at York on S. Paul’s day 1151. Thence he went to keep Easter with the Pope, having undertaken, at Stephen’s request, to intercede for him with Eugene concerning the state of politics in England, and especially to obtain, if possible, the papal sanction to a formal acknowledgement of Eustace as heir to the crown.[1107] The southern primate meanwhile was beginning his legatine career with a Mid-Lenten council in London, at which Stephen, Eustace, and the principal barons of England were present. The main feature of this council was a crowd of appeals to Rome, whereof three were made by the bishop of Winchester.[1108] One of these appeals must have been against the suspension to which he had been sentenced at the council of Reims, and by which the Pope, less placable than the primate, still held him bound. Moreover, complaints against him were pouring into Rome from all quarters; so he carried his appeals in person, and went to clear himself before the supreme pontiff. He succeeded in obtaining absolution;[1109] his friends, of whom there were still many at the papal court, tried hard to win for him something more--either a renewal of the legation, or the accomplishment of his old scheme of a primacy over Wessex, or at least the exemption of his own see from the jurisdiction of Canterbury; but Eugene was inexorable. He believed that Stephen’s misconduct towards the Church was instigated by his brother; a very natural view, but somewhat unjust to the bishop.[1110] The truth seems rather to be that Henry, after vainly trying to rule the storm, had for awhile been swept away by its violence. Now he had emerged into the calm once more; and there henceforth he was content to remain. He consoled himself for the failure of his political hopes with a choice collection of antique statues purchased in Rome for the adornment of his palace at Winchester, and sailed quietly home with these treasures, stopping on his way to pay his devotions at the shrine of S. James at Compostella.[1111] At his request the Pope ordered Archbishop Murdac to absolve Hugh of Puiset, who was making himself useful at Winchester, not on clerical duty, but in taking charge of the bishop’s castles during his absence.[1112] With Hugh’s absolution the schism in the northern province came to an end, and the English Church was once again reunited.

[1107] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 162.

[1108] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 282): “Totum illud
concilium novis appellationibus infrenduit.” It is, however,
rather too hard upon Henry of Winchester when he adds that
appeals to Rome had not been used in England till that prelate
in his legatine days “malo suo crudeliter intrusit.”

[1109] Ann. Winton. a. 1151 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii.
pp. 54, 55).

[1110] As the author of the _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon.
Germ. Hist._, vol. xx. p. 542) truly says: “Credebatur
fratrem suum regem contra ecclesiam instigare; sed rex, quod
manifesta declarant opera, nec illius nec sapientis alterius
consilio agebatur.”

[1111] _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.),
p. 542.

[1112] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 158, 162. He places Hugh’s
absolution in 1150, but on his own shewing it cannot have
occurred before 1151.

For England and for Stephen alike the prospect seemed to be brightening. Stephen however was clearly beginning to feel that for him as well as for his Angevin rivals it was time to give place to a younger generation. It must have been chiefly for Eustace’s sake that he valued his crown; and in Eustace’s case, as in that of Henry Fitz-Empress, there were many circumstances which might make the pretensions of the child more generally acceptable than those of the parent. Eustace seems to have been about the same age as Henry, or probably a few years older; he was free from the personal obloquy and suspicion attaching to Stephen from the errors of the past; on the other hand, as the son of Matilda of Boulogne, he might reap the benefit of his mother’s well-earned personal popularity, as well as of her descent from the royal house of Wessex. Henceforth, therefore, Stephen showed a disposition to treat Henry Fitz-Empress as the rival less of himself than of his son, and to follow up every movement in Henry’s public life by a parallel step in the career of Eustace. And as Henry’s first independent act had been a sort of reconnoitring expedition to England, so the first retaliation was a visit made by Eustace to the king of France, with a view to ascertain his chances of support in an attempt to regain Normandy.

The existing phase of the rivalry between the houses of Anjou and Blois--their struggle for the dominion of Normandy and England--was a matter which concerned the interests of the French Crown almost as deeply as the earlier phase in which Fulk the Black and Odo of Champagne strove with each other for political mastery over their common lord paramount. Neither the accumulation of England, Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Touraine in a single hand, nor the acquisition of Normandy and England by a branch of the mighty and troublesome house which already held Blois, Chartres and Champagne, could be viewed by the French king without grave uneasiness. Either alternative had its dangers; to Louis VII., however, the danger would appear much less threatening than to his father. Shortly before the dying Louis VI. granted the investiture of Normandy to Stephen’s little son in 1137, the last of the old line of the dukes of Aquitaine--William IX., son of the gay crusader and troubadour whom the Red King had hoped to succeed--died on a pilgrimage at Compostella.[1113] His only son was already dead, and before setting out for his pilgrimage he did what a greater personage had done ten years before: with the consent of his barons, he left the whole of his dominions to his daughter. Moreover, he bequeathed the girl herself as wife to the young King Louis of France.[1114] This marriage more than doubled the strength of the French Crown. It gave to Louis absolute possession of all western Aquitaine, or Guyenne as it was now beginning to be called; that is, the counties of Poitou and Gascony, with the immediate overlordship of the whole district lying between the Loire and the Pyrenees, the Rhône and the ocean:--a territory five or six times as large as his own royal domain, and over which his predecessors had never been able to assert more than the merest shadow of a nominal superiority.[1115] To a man who was at once king of France and duke of Aquitaine it was comparatively no great matter whether the dominions of Henry I. were to be annexed to those of Geoffrey of Anjou or allied to those of Theobald of Blois. The truest interest of France, however, obviously was that England and Normandy should be divided, one of them being held by each of the two competitors; and it was doubtless with this view that Louis, while sanctioning and aiding Geoffrey’s conquest of the Norman duchy, still kept on peaceful terms with the English king, and held to a promise of marriage made some years before between his own sister and Stephen’s son Eustace.[1116]

[1113] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 909.
_Hist. Franc._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.), p. 116.
Anon. Chron. (_ibid._) p. 119. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Maxent.
a. 1137 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 34, 432).

[1114] Suger, _Vita Ludov._ (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.)
p. 62. Chron. Mauriniac. (_ibid._) p. 83. _Hist. Franc._
(_ibid._), p. 116. Ord. Vit. as above. See also Besly, _Comtes
de Poitou_, p. 137.

[1115] Perhaps the most striking indication of the importance
of the duke of Aquitaine is the ceremony of the ducal crowning,
which Louis, as husband of the duchess, underwent at Poitiers
immediately after his marriage; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
Norm. Scriptt._), p. 911. There was a special “Ordo ad
benedicendum ducem Aquitaniæ” (printed in Besly, _Comtes de
Poitou, preuves_, pp. 183 _et seq._, and _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
vol. xii. pp. 451–453), nearly as solemn as the office for the
crowning of a king.

[1116] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
112. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 125.

At the time of Geoffrey’s final success Louis was at deadly strife with the count of Blois; a strife in which the king was wholly in the wrong, and for whose disastrous consequences he afterwards grieved so deeply that his penitence was the chief motive which induced him to go on crusade.[1117] Since then, Geoffrey in his turn had incurred the royal displeasure. There was a certain Gerald, lord of a castle called Montreuil-Bellay, near the southern border of Anjou--one of the fortresses raised by the great castle-builder Fulk Nerra in the earliest days of his warfare with Odo of Blois--whom an Angevin chronicler describes as an absolute monster of wickedness,[1118] but who had so won the favour of the king that he made him seneschal of Poitou. In 1147 this Gerald was the ring-leader of a fresh revolt of the Angevin barons against their count. The revolt was as usual soon put down: but it was not so easy to punish Gerald; for Montreuil was an almost impregnable fortress, with a keep of great strength and height, “lifting itself up to the stars,” surrounded by a double wall and rampart, and further protected by an encircling chasm, very deep and precipitous, which was called the “Valley of Judas,” and prevented any engines of war from coming within range of the castle.[1119] Some time in 1148 Geoffrey built three towers of stone in the neighbourhood of Montreuil, as a base for future operations against it.[1120] In the summer of 1150 an outrage committed by Gerald upon the abbot and monks of S. Aubin at Angers brought matters to a crisis;[1121] Geoffrey made the monks’ quarrel his own and at once set his engineers to level the ground all around Montreuil, in preparation for bringing up his machines to the assault. After nearly twelve months’ labour,[1122] however, the “Judas-Valley” still yawned between himself and his foes, till he ordered the annual fair usually held at Saumur to be transferred to Montreuil. In a fortnight the energies of the crowd who flocked to the fair, joined to those of his own soldiers, filled up the valley and made it into level ground.[1123] Geoffrey could now bring his engines within range, and he used them with such effect that at the first assault the outworks were destroyed and the garrison driven to take refuge in the keep. A summons to surrender was, however, scornfully rejected by Gerald, trusting in the strength of his tower and the expected help of the king.[1124]

[1117] See Arbois de Jubainville, _Comtes de Champagne_, vol.
ii. pp. 344 _et seq._

[1118] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 84.

[1119] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 282–284.
See also Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 147).

[1120] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. As he himself, as well as the
chronicles, makes the siege last altogether three years and end
in 1151, he must mean 1148.

[1121] See the whole curious story in _Cartæ et Chronn. de
Obedientiâ Mairomni_ (Marchegay, _Eglises_), pp. 65 _et seq._

[1122] Chron. Mairom. (as above), p. 87. Chron. S. Serg. a.
1151 (_ib._ p. 147).

[1123] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 284.

[1124] _Ib._ p. 285.

For Louis had now returned from Palestine;[1125] and so great was his wrath at Geoffrey’s treatment of his favourite that he consented to join Eustace in an attack upon the Norman duchy. Its defence was left to its young duke, then busy with the siege of Torigni on the Vire, held against him by his cousin Richard Fitz-Count--a son of Earl Robert of Gloucester.[1126] Louis and Eustace marched upon Arques; Henry led a force of Normans, Angevins and Bretons to meet them; but his “older and wiser” barons averted a battle,[1127] and nothing more came of the expedition. Geoffrey had never stirred from his camp before Montreuil. Despite a formidable array of engines,[1128] he made little progress; every breach made in the walls by day was mended by night with oaken beams, of which the besieged seemed to have a never-ending supply. Geoffrey was characteristically taking counsel with his books as to the best method of overcoming this difficulty when some monks of Marmoutier came to him on an errand for their convent. One of them took up the book which the count laid down--the treatise of Vegetius Renatus _De Re Militari_, then, and long after, the standard work on military engineering. It may have been some memory of bygone days when he, too, had worn helm and hauberk instead of cowl and scapulary that brought into the monk’s eyes a gleam which made Geoffrey exclaim, “Stay with me till to-morrow, good brother, and what you are now reading shall be put in action before you.” Next day a large red-hot iron vessel filled with boiling oil was launched from the beam of a mangonel against one of the timber insertions in the wall, and its bursting set the whole place on fire.[1129] Gerald, his spirit broken at last, came forth with his family and his garrison “like serpents crawling out of a cave,” as a hostile chronicler says,[1130] and surrendered to the mercy of the count, who sent him to prison at Angers. The keep was razed at once, save one fragment of wall, left by Geoffrey, and still standing at this hour, as a memorial of his victory and of the skill and perseverance by which it had been won.[1131]

[1125] He returned in the autumn of 1149. See Rob. Torigni, _ad
ann._, and M. Delisle’s note thereon, vol. i. p. 252, note 1.

[1126] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 and 1154.

[1127] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151. See also Chronn. S. Albin. a.
1150 and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 36, 148).

[1128] “Petroritas, fundibularias, mangonellos et arietes,”
_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 285, and “sex
tormenta quæ vulgo perreriæ vocantur.” Chron. S. Serg. (as
above), p. 147.

[1129] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 286, 287. The monk
is called “frater G.” M. Marchegay suggests that he may have
been the “Gauterius Compendiensis,” monk of Marmoutier, whom
the writer names among his authorities in the Proœmium to his
_Hist. Abbrev._ (_ib._ p. 353). If so, this detailed account
of the last scene at the siege of Montreuil is due to an
eye-witness.

[1130] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, _Eglises_), p. 87.

[1131] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 287.

The count of Anjou now moved northward to help his son against the king. By the help of a brother of his old ally William Talvas he gained possession of La Nue, a castle belonging to the king’s brother Count Robert of Dreux.[1132] Louis and Robert avenged themselves by burning the town of Séez. Presently after, in August, Louis gathered together all his forces and brought them down the Seine to a spot between Meulan and Mantes. Geoffrey and Henry collected an opposing army on their side of the Norman border; but an attack of fever detained the king in Paris, and a truce was made until he should recover.[1133] The ostensible ground of the dispute was Geoffrey’s treatment of Gerald of Montreuil, which certainly seems to have been unjustly cruel. Not content with receiving his unconditional surrender, razing his castle, and forcing him to make full atonement to the injured monks of S. Aubin, Geoffrey still persisted in keeping in prison not only Gerald himself but also his whole family. The Pope anathematized him for his unchristianlike severity;[1134] but anathemas usually fell powerless upon an Angevin count. Geoffrey was in truth visiting upon Gerald his wrath at the double-dealing of Gerald’s royal master; for he was well aware that King Louis’s interference was prompted by far other motives than disinterested sympathy for his seneschal. Louis was, according to his wont, playing fast and loose with the rival claimants of Normandy, in such shameless fashion that his own chief minister, Suger, had been the first to reprove him in strong terms for his unwarrantable attack upon the Angevins, had stood firmly by Geoffrey all through the struggle, and was now endeavouring, through the mediation of the count of Vermandois and the bishop of Lisieux, to baffle the schemes of Eustace and his party and bring the king back to his old alliance with Anjou.[1135]

[1132] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 (Delisle, vol. i. p. 254; see the
editor’s note 3, _ib._)

[1133] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

[1134] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).

[1135] Suger, Epp. cl., cliii., clxvii., clxviii., clxxv.
(Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 186, cols. 1418, 1419–1420,
1427–1429, 1432).

As soon as Louis was sufficiently recovered a meeting was held in Paris to discuss the possibility of a settlement, and the cause of peace was pleaded by no less an advocate than S. Bernard in person. But, almost for the first time, Bernard pleaded in vain; Geoffrey started up in the midst of the colloquy, and without a word of salutation to any one, sprang upon his horse and rode away. The assembly broke up in despair, and Gerald, who had been brought to hear its result, threw himself at the feet of S. Bernard to implore a last benediction before returning, as he thought, to lifelong captivity. “Fear not,” replied the saint, “deliverance is nearer than you think.” Scarcely had the prisoner turned away when his jailer reappeared.[1136] Geoffrey during his solitary ride had revolved the political situation in his mind and perceived that for his son’s sake he must make peace with the king. Matters in England had reached such a crisis that it was absolutely necessary to secure Henry’s tenure of Normandy, as he might at any moment be required to go beyond sea. To that end Geoffrey did more than give up his personal vengeance upon Gerald of Montreuil; he persuaded Henry to give up the Norman Vexin--the land between the Epte and the Andelle, so long the battle-ground of France and Normandy--to the king of France, in exchange for the investiture of the rest of the duchy. If we may believe the French chroniclers, the young duke made a yet further sacrifice and became the “liegeman” of the king--a form of homage to which none of his predecessors had ever stooped.[1137] Of the homage in some shape or other there is however no doubt;[1138] and it appears that the same opportunity was taken to secure for Henry, without waiting for his father’s death, the investiture of his father’s own dominions.[1139]

[1136] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
Opp._, Mabillon, vol. i. col. 1135).

[1137] _Hist. Ludov._, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 127;
_Chron. Reg. Franc._ (_ibid._), p. 213. Both these writers,
however, tell an apocryphal story of Louis, at Geoffrey’s and
Henry’s request, reconquering the duchy for them and receiving
these concessions in return for his help.

[1138] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

[1139] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 291 (Marchegay, _Comtes_,
p. 336).

Geoffrey was but just entering his thirty-ninth year, and one can hardly help speculating for a moment as to his plans for his own future. For him, now that his work in the west was done, there was no such brilliant opening in the east as there had been for Fulk V. when he, too, in the prime of manhood, had chosen to make way for a younger generation. But Geoffrey had begun public life at an earlier age than either his father or his son; and he seems to have had neither the moral nor the physical strength which had enabled one Angevin count to carry on for half a century, without break and without slackening, the work upon which he had entered before he was fifteen, and to die in harness at the very crowning-point of his activity and his success. Geoffrey Plantagenet was no Fulk Nerra; he was not even a Fulk of Jerusalem; and he may well have been weary of a political career which must always have been embittered by a feeling that he was the mere representative of others, labouring not for himself, hardly even for his country or his race, but only that the one might be swallowed up in the vast dominions and the other merged in the royal line of his ancestors’ Norman foe. He may have seriously intended to pass the rest of his days among his books; or he may have felt an inner warning that those days were to be very few. With a perversity which may after all have been partly the effect of secretly failing health, although he had now set Gerald at liberty he still refused to acknowledge that he had treated him with unjust severity, or to seek absolution from the Pope’s censure; and he even answered with blasphemous words to the gentle remonstrances of S. Bernard. “With what measure thou hast meted it shall be meted to thee again” said the saint at last as he turned away; one of his followers, more impetuous, boldly prophesied that Geoffrey would die within a year. He did die within a fortnight.[1140] On his way home from the king’s court,[1141] overcome with the heat, he plunged into a river to cool himself;[1142] a fever was the consequence; he was borne to Château-du-Loir, and there on September 7 he passed away.[1143] His last legacy to his son was a piece of good advice, given almost with his dying breath:--not to change the old customs of the lands over which he was called to rule, whether by bringing those of Normandy and England into Anjou, or by seeking to transfer those of the Angevin dominions into the territories which he inherited from his mother.[1144] Dying in the little border-fortress whence his grandfather Elias had gone forth to liberate Maine, Geoffrey was buried, by his own desire, not among his Angevin forefathers at Tours or at Angers, but in his mother’s home at Le Mans.[1145] A splendid tomb, bearing his effigy adorned with gold and gems, was raised over his remains in the cathedral church,[1146] whence it has disappeared to become a mere antiquarian curiosity in a museum. Geoffrey’s sole surviving monument is the one which he made for himself--the ruined, blackened fragment of his great ancestor’s keep at Montreuil.

[1140] Geoff. Clairv., _Vita S. Bern._, l. iv. c. 3 (_S. Bern.
Opp._, Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).

[1141] At Paris, says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; on the frontier
of Normandy and France, say the _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay,
_Comtes_), p. 156. But if it was the assembly at which Henry
received his investiture, that was certainly in Paris; and
there does not seem time enough for another.

[1142] _Gesta Cons._ as above.

[1143] _Ibid._ _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (_ibid._), p. 292. Chronn.
S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 36,
37, 147). Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; etc.

[1144] “Ne Normanniæ vel Angliæ consuetudines in consulatûs
sui terram, vel e converso, variæ vicissitudinis altercatione
permutaret.” _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), pp. 292, 293.

[1145] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 147);
_Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 292. “Inque solo materno
sibi locum eligens sepulturæ.” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
16 (Marchegay, _Comtes_, p. 341).

[1146] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (as above), p. 293. “Hic solus
omnium mortalium intra muros civitatis Cinomannicæ sepultus
est,” says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

Stephen could not do what Geoffrey had done. His kingdom was no mere fief to be passed from hand to hand by a formal ceremony of surrender and investiture; the crowned and anointed king of England could not so easily abdicate in favour of his son. He might however do something to counterbalance Henry’s advancement by obtaining a public recognition of Eustace as his heir. In Lent 1152, therefore, he summoned a great council in London, at which all the earls and barons swore fealty to Eustace.[1147] Still the king felt that his object was far from being secured. He himself was a living proof how slight was the worth of such an oath when the sovereign who had exacted it was gone. There was, however, one further step possible, a step without precedent in England, but one which the kings of France had taken with complete success for several generations past: the solemn coronation and unction of the heir to the throne during his father’s lifetime. It was at this that Stephen had aimed when he sent Archbishop Henry of York to Rome. He took an unusually wise as well as a characteristically generous measure in intrusting his cause to a reconciled enemy; nevertheless the attempt failed. Pope Eugene by his letters absolutely forbade the primate to make Eustace king; therefore, when Stephen called upon Theobald and the other bishops to anoint and crown the youth, they one and all refused. Father and son were both equally vexed and angry. They shut up all the bishops in one house and tried to tease them into submission. A few, remembering that “King Stephen never had loved clerks,” and that it was not the first time he had cast bishops into prison,[1148] were so frightened that they gave way; the majority stood firm, and the primate himself escaped down the Thames in a fishing-boat, made his way to Dover, and thence retreated beyond sea.[1149] Without him there was nothing to be done, and of his yielding there was no chance whatever; for close at his side stood the real fount and source of the papal opposition--Thomas of London.[1150]

[1147] Ann. Waverl. a. 1152 (Luard, _Ann. Monast_., vol.
ii. p. 234). Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1152 (Liebermann,
_Geschichtsquellen_, p. 82).

[1148] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284).

[1149] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 151. _Vita Theobald._
(Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i.), p. 338.

[1150] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.

Some of Henry’s partizans in England now thought it time for him to interfere, and despatched his uncle Reginald earl of Cornwall to urge him to come over at once.[1151] Soon after Easter a meeting of the Norman barons--already summoned by Henry in the previous autumn,[1152] but delayed by the unexpected catastrophe of his father’s death--was held at Lisieux to consider the matter.[1153] But whatever the result of their deliberations may have been, Henry found something else to do before he could cross the sea. King Louis VII. had been meditating a divorce from his wife, the Aquitanian duchess Eleanor, ever since their return from the crusade. The great obstacle to his scheme was his father’s and his own old friend and minister Suger, who saw the grave political danger of such a measure and opposed it with all the influence he possessed.[1154] But Suger was dying; and the king had made up his mind. He took the first step at Christmas 1151 by going with Eleanor into Aquitaine and withdrawing all his own garrisons from her territories.[1155] Suger’s death on January 13 recalled him to Paris,[1156] and at the same time set him free to accomplish his desire unopposed. A Church council was held under the presidency of Archbishop Hugh of Sens at Beaugency on the Tuesday before Palm Sunday;[1157] the king and queen were made out to be akin, and their union was dissolved.[1158] Eleanor set out for her own dominions; she had however some trouble in reaching them. She was young and beautiful; her personal charms were more than equalled by those of her two great duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony; and more than one ambitious feudatary was eager to seize the prize which his sovereign had thrown away. At her first halting-place, Blois, the young count Theobald--son and successor of Theobald the Great who had died two months before[1159]--sought to take her by force and make her his wife. She fled by night to Tours, and there narrowly escaped being captured with the same intention by a still more youthful admirer, Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry’s brother. The audacious boy laid a plot to catch her at Port-de-Piles, on the frontier of Touraine and Poitou; but she was warned in time and made her escape by another road safe into her own territory.[1160] Thence she at once wrote to offer herself and her lands to the husband of her own choice--Henry duke of the Normans. He set out to join her immediately, and at Whitsuntide they were married at Poitiers.[1161]

[1151] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

[1152] _Ibid._ a. 1151.

[1153] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

[1154] _Vita Suger._, l. i. c. 5 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol.
xii. p. 104).

[1155] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
p. 135). Cf. Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 53 (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 307; _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii.
p. 437).

[1156] _Vita Suger._, l. iii. cc. 11, 13 (as above, pp. 111,
113).

[1157] _Gesta Ludov._, c. 29 (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 411). The _Hist. Ludov._ (_ib._ p. 415)
makes it Friday (March 21) instead of Tuesday.

[1158] _Gesta Ludov._ and _Hist. Ludov._ as above. Chron.
Turon. Magn. as above, etc.

[1159] In January 1152. See Arbois de Jubainville, _Comtes de
Champagne_, vol. ii. p. 398, note 12.

[1160] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_,
p. 135).

[1161] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149. See also Will.
Newb., l. i. c. 31 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 93); Chron. Turon.
Magn. a. 1152 (as above); _Hist. Ludov._ (Duchesne, _Hist.
Franc. Scriptt._, vol. iv. p. 413, and _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._,
vol. xii. p. 127); _Fragm. Chron. Com. Pictav._ (_Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 410). This last gives the place; Rob.
Torigni, a. 1152, gives the season. Whit-Sunday was May 18; and
a charter referred to by M. Delisle in a note to Rob. Torigni
_ad ann._ (vol. i. p. 260), proves that they were married
before May 27. Gervase’s story is the fullest; according to
him, they married for love, and Eleanor had herself procured
the divorce for that object--such, at least, was the story
which she wrote to her young lover. As to the question of
consanguinity, that of Louis and Eleanor is not very clear; it
was at any rate more remote than that of Eleanor and Henry,
who certainly were within the forbidden degrees. One would
like to know what S. Bernard, who had put a stop to a proposal
of marriage between Henry and Eleanor’s daughter (S. Bern.
Ep. ccclxxi., _Opp._, Mabillon, vol. i. col. 333), thought of
the matter; a saint of the next generation, Hugh of Lincoln,
thought and said plainly that it was the fatal sin which was
visited upon the children of the guilty couple in the downfall
of the Angevin empire. _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_, l. v. c. 16
(Dimock, p. 332). In his eyes, however, the sin lay in the
fact not of the kindred between the parties, but of Eleanor’s
divorce; and it is noteworthy that William of Newburgh, who
did not live to see the final catastrophe or to know the worst
crimes of Eleanor’s youngest son, took exactly the same view;
l. iii. c. 26 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 281).