King of the North Wind

One thing is for sure: a promise of this potency – a promise made to a woman desperate for the independence that power confers – once given, is best kept.

I

Henry’s story began with a drunken party, a dare, and a shipwreck. It was 1120, thirteen years before his birth, and thirty-one years before he met Eleanor. On a bitterly cold day, 25 November, a large party of the Anglo-Norman elite gathered at the town of Barfleur on the coast of northern France. They were led by Henry’s grandfather, King Henry I of England and Duke of Normandy, and his only legitimate son, the seventeen-year-old William Atheling. The royal pair were on their way back to England from war with Louis VI (the Fat) of France and King Henry’s nephew, William Clito, for control of Normandy. They were in exuberant spirits because they had won.

The party was to sail that night and conditions were perfect. The sky was cloudless, the sea was calm, the moon was in its first quarter but the stars were brilliant.

Prince and king were to travel separately. King Henry had been approached by the owner of a handsome new white ship. His name was Thomas FitzStephen and, during a conversation with the king, Thomas reminded him that it was his father who had carried Henry I’s own father, William the Bastard (or Conqueror), from France to England and conquest in 1066. Now he asked for the honour of taking Prince William Atheling across the Channel in his new ship.

William was impressed. The ship was modern and fast, and he was convinced it would outrun his father’s older and heavier vessel, the Esnecca (the snake, or fast warship).

The ship’s fifty oarsmen were delighted to carry William; the young prince, at their request, ordered the entirety of the town’s wine to be loaded on board.1

Throughout the long winter evening, the 300 or so travellers embarked. They numbered William’s bastard half-siblings Richard, and Matilda countess of Perche, most of his aristocratic friends, and many of their parents. William was in a celebratory mood. Not only had he defeated his enemies; just five months before arriving at Barfleur, he had married Matilda of Anjou at Lisieux to form an alliance with Count Fulk V of Anjou, whose territory bordered Normandy to the south.† His victory was secure. With the alcohol on board, the Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis tells us, the party began. The oarsmen and many of the passengers quickly became drunk. When the priests arrived to bless the ship before its crossing, they were teased and sent away.2 The mood on the ship was so raucous that some of the passengers got off rather than risk the crossing. Among those who left was William’s first cousin, Stephen, son of the king’s sister Adela, who pleaded diarrhoea rather than travel with the prince. Henry I had created him, a beloved nephew, count of Mortain.

King Henry’s ship departed first. The crossing had to be made at night, in high water, or the boats would not have been able to float. We know that on 25 November 1120 high water was at 10.43 p.m.3 The White Ship left the harbour perhaps an hour later. By now nearly everyone on board, probably including the captain, was drunk. Thomas FitzStephen was persuaded to take a dare from the prince and his friends to out-race King Henry’s ship, despite its head start. He was an experienced sailor who had made the journey from Barfleur to England numerous times. He possibly felt himself to be so familiar with the route that extra speed, despite the jagged rocks that dotted the outskirts of the harbour, would not matter. Perhaps he was so wine-soaked that all caution was disregarded. Or perhaps he was coerced by his drunken master. The White Ship hurtled out of the harbour’s mouth and almost immediately hit a rock, probably the Quilleboeuf Rock or Raz de Barfleur, which knifed through its planks.

The sailors desperately tried to free the boat, but it suddenly overturned. The night was freezing and the waters dark. From the shore, the clergymen whose traditional blessing the travellers had drunkenly jeered, heard the petrified screams of the foundering passengers. The bishop of Coutances was among the clerical witnesses. All three of his nephews and his brother were on board.

The situation was ghastly for the hundreds of souls perishing in the bitter winter seas, but it was not yet a disaster for the Norman dynasty. William still might have escaped. He was bundled into a lifeboat and swiftly steered away. But the prince had humanity. William was close to his illegitimate half-brothers and sisters, who had been given lands and titles by their father. He evidently loved his half-sister the countess of Perche and his brother Richard. He ordered his tiny vessel to go back and rescue them. As it reached the wreck, it was engulfed by the scores of panicked people who tried to climb aboard. The boat capsized and they too drowned. William Atheling, heir to England and Normandy, was dead.

It seemed there would be three survivors of the tragedy: Berold, a butcher from Rouen; a son of the nobleman Gilbet l’Aigle; and the captain, Thomas FitzStephen. Berold and l’Aigle’s son managed to grab hold of a piece of the wreckage and stay afloat. Thomas fought his way through the freezing waters and asked them for news. When they told him William was dead, unable to face the king, he slipped down into the sea to die. And when l’Aigle’s son could hold on no longer, he too drowned. Only Berold the butcher, kept from freezing in the water by his pelisse and his sheepskin coat, lived to bear witness. In the morning, he was rescued by three fishermen.

No one dared tell the king. The screams of the drowning caught the ears of King Henry and his fellow passengers, but they were bemused by what they had heard. It was not until the following day that the king’s nephew, Theobald, persuaded a young boy to break the news.4 The king collapsed in grief.

Many of the Anglo-Norman nobility were dead too. A generation of aristocrats was obliterated, confounding the lords of England and Normandy who survived. Besides William, the king lost an illegitimate son and daughter, his niece Matilda of Blois, her husband Richard earl of Chester, Richard’s half-brother, and members of his household including his scribe Gisulf, William Bigod, Robert Mauduit, Hugh de Moulins, and Geoffrey Ridel.5 Gilbet l’Aigle lost two sons, both of whom had served in Henry I’s household. Eighteen women were among the dead. For the most part their bodies were never recovered, despite the efforts of the families who hired private divers to claw their remains from the sea.

We know so much about the shipwreck because the chroniclers could not make sense of it; so for centuries they picked over the facts. It was an example of what the historian and chronicler William of Malmesbury called ‘the mutability of human fortunes’.6 So senseless did it seem, that a later historian even speculated that the disaster had been the result of a conspiracy to murder.7

King Henry I grieved bitterly. The tragedy was both personal, and political. He was the fourth son of William the Bastard and had had no expectation of the throne. But he was ruthless and ambitious for power. When his elder brother King William Rufus was shot in the eye with an arrow and killed in the New Forest in 1100 (some believed Henry was behind his death), he raced to secure the treasury at Winchester; he was crowned within three days at Westminster by Maurice, bishop of London, before his other elder brother, Robert, honeymooning in Italy on his way back from crusade, even heard of Rufus’s death. By 1106, Henry I was master of Normandy too; he locked Robert up for nearly thirty years rather than concede power. He successfully battled Robert’s son and his own nephew William Clito for lordship of Normandy, and so ruthless was he in pursuit of supremacy that he even ordered the tips of his granddaughters’ noses be cut off to avoid appearing weak.8

William Atheling’s death negated all his efforts. He had no heir, just numerous bastard children, and one legitimate daughter, Matilda, who was married to the emperor of Germany. Even had she been free to return to England, it is doubtful that the nobility would have accepted her as queen. Although no law barred women from the throne of England, there was little precedent in an age when a ruler was expected to lead troops into battle. Matilda was older than her brother, but when William Atheling was born, no one expected her to rule.

King Henry’s heartache was such that he never sailed from Barfleur again.9 But it did not stop him from thinking of the future. The continuation of his ‘usurper’ Norman dynasty as rulers of England lay in his providing the country with an uncontested heir.

The king was a consummate politician. In August 1100, after stealing the crown from his older brother, he had immediately married Edith (Matilda) of Scotland, just days after William Rufus’s death and his own hasty coronation. She was the daughter of the Scottish king Malcolm Canmore, and Margaret, the great-granddaughter of the Saxon king Edmund Ironside. Henry was aware that their children’s claim to rule England, with their blood inheritance of both William the Conqueror and the Saxon kings of England, would be far less precarious than his own. The chroniclers noted that their new king had married ‘a kinswoman of King Edward, of the true royal family of England … descended from the stock of King Alfred’.10

She had been crowned by Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury; he had ignored objections to the marriage, that Edith had ‘taken the veil’ (become a nun) while in her aunt Christina’s care at Wilton Abbey, where Christina was abbess. Edith strongly repudiated these claims, insisting that her disciplinarian aunt had forced her to wear the veil to protect her from libidinous Normans, including Henry I’s brother William Rufus, and that she had never taken vows.11 She had, she said, ‘gone in fear of the rod of my aunt Christina, and she would often make me smart with a good slapping and the most horrible scolding’.12 The marriage, nevertheless, and therefore her and Henry’s heirs, were undisputedly legitimate. Edith’s character was unimpeachable; she was the model of queenly piety and devotion. But now William Atheling, Henry’s only son by his queen, was dead.

King Henry’s contemporaries called him licentious. He had numerous mistresses, and when the White Ship sank he was left with many capable although illegitimate sons, as well as nephews. But the king wanted his own legitimate descendant to rule after him. The dual realm of England and Normandy had only been in – albeit sporadic – existence since 1066, and the king, perhaps thinking of his own experiences of purloining the throne from his brother, needed an heir whom all his nobles would accept. Edith died in 1118. Within ten weeks of the tragedy, Henry married again. His bride was Adeliza, daughter of Godfrey, duke of Lotharingia and count of Louvain. She was seventeen, the same age as his dead son. King Henry was fifty-two or fifty-three years old. The chroniclers called the new queen puella (girl) at her wedding.13

No child arrived. During their fifteen-year marriage the chroniclers did not even hint at a miscarriage or a stillbirth for Adeliza.14 The problem may well have been the king’s. (After his death Adeliza made a love match with William d’Aubigny, the son of Henry’s butler, and they had seven children together.) The king was obviously sensitive about his queen’s childless state. During Easter 1124 he brutally punished leaders of a rebellion and meted out the same punishment – blinding – to a knight, Luc de la Barre. This castigation was universally perceived as too harsh for a mere knight. But Luc had composed offensive songs about the king, and some historians have speculated they were about Adeliza’s failure to have a child. Luc took his own life, crushing his skull against the walls of his cell, rather than face his awful punishment.15

Four years after his second wedding the old king, possibly despairing, was offered a solution to his succession problem when the husband of his only legitimate daughter, Matilda, died.

Matilda was born at the beginning of February 1102. During her early childhood, while her father was fighting for control of Normandy, she and her brother William were placed in the care of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury. Matilda was extremely fond of him, and they would remain close for the rest of his life. Anselm had been the abbot of Bec in Normandy, and Matilda would show a lifelong devotion to this house, possibly because of her friendship with Anselm.16

When she was only eight years old, King Henry sent Matilda away to Germany and a splendid diplomatic marriage with Heinrich V. Heinrich had gained the throne of Germany only two years before his betrothal; it was his bloody prize following years of fighting his own father, Heinrich IV, for the crown. Matilda was formally betrothed to her groom at Westminster, in his absence, on 13 June 1109. Heinrich’s envoys arrived in England the following year, to escort her to Germany. He was about seventeen years older than his child bride. For King Henry the match and its association with one of Europe’s most powerful princes bolstered his position as a newly crowned king, who had still not been acknowledged duke of Normandy by his overlord, Louis the Fat, over his defeated brother, Robert. Heinrich wanted Matilda because her father was rich; he desperately needed money to pay for his wars and to aid his campaign to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope. Matilda’s dowry of 10,000 marks‡ in silver was very attractive.17

Eight-year-old Matilda arrived in Heinrich’s lands in February 1110, at Liège, and although the couple, because of Matilda’s youth, remained unmarried, she was crowned queen at Mainz on 25 July. The day was the feast of St James, whose shrine lay to the west, in northern Spain. St James, one of the twelve apostles, was probably the brother of John the Evangelist – and his hand, looted by Heinrich’s father from the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen on his death in 1072, was a prized relic of the German kingdom. Matilda developed a strong attachment to it.18 Later, she would steal it, perhaps in memory of her coronation.

Matilda was placed in the care of Bruno, archbishop of Trier, to continue her education, away from Heinrich. We do not know the details of her upbringing, but Heinrich asked ‘that she should be nobly brought up and honourably served, and should learn the language and customs and laws of the country, and all that an empress ought to know, now, in the time of her youth’.19

It was not until she was nearly twelve, however, in January 1114, that Matilda married Heinrich, now emperor, at Worms Cathedral.20 The occasion was the most splendid in living memory. An eyewitness, writing in the usual formulaic, adulatory manner reserved for princesses of whom they knew nothing personal, noted Matilda’s beauty and lineage. He wrote that:

the nuptials were attended by such a great concourse of archbishops and bishops, dukes and counts, abbots and provosts and learned clergy, that not even the oldest man present could remember ever having seen or even heard of such a huge assembly of such great persons. For the marriage was attended by five archbishops, thirty bishops and five dukes … so numerous were the wedding gifts which various kings and primates sent to the emperor, and the gifts which the emperor from his own store gave to the innumerable throngs of jesters and jongleurs and people of all kinds, that not one of his chamberlains who received or distributed them could count them.21

Henry I was doubtless immensely gratified to hear of the expense lavished on his daughter’s wedding.

Matilda had ability and Heinrich developed her talents. He encouraged her to participate in government, following the German tradition which allowed queens to work alongside their husbands. She was enthusiastic and able, acting as his regent in Italy and Lotharingia. She developed keen diplomatic skills, particularly in her dealings with the papal court. Matilda fulfilled the traditional queenly role of intercessor, and she was popular with her German subjects. Her beauty, vivacity and hard work earned their affections, and they called her ‘Matilda the Good’.

Heinrich used Matilda as one of his many instruments of government, just as he used his counsellors. His chief advisor was Adalbert, whom he would create both his chancellor, and then archbishop of the most prestigious diocese in the kingdom – Mainz. This archbishopric held a similar status in Germany to that of Canterbury in England. Ultimately, the combination of the post of chancellor and archbishop in a single individual was a disaster for the crown. It was a lesson that Matilda would never forget, when nearly half a century later she advised her eldest son against the most grievous decision of his life.

The chronicler Orderic Vitalis wrote of how unpopular Heinrich was, particularly for the imperial crowning he forced from Pope Pascal II. When Heinrich entered Rome in 1111 expecting to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, the pope refused unless he relinquished the privilege of investiture. Heinrich responded by kidnapping and imprisoning the pope until he agreed to crown him, which he did. Orderic wrote that, ‘the emperor loved so noble a wife very much but for his sins he lacked an heir worthy of the empire’.22

For despite his supposed affection for Matilda, they had no children together. Hermann of Tournai, a near contemporary, hinted at a stillbirth or a child who died soon after birth; whatever the cause, the marriage was childless.23

Heinrich had one illegitimate daughter, Bertha, whom he married to Count Ptolemy of Tusculum in 1117, but no legitimate heir.24 In 1122, he fell ill with cancer, and now he put his mind to deciding the succession. Bertha, illegitimate and a young woman with no military experience, was not a feasible candidate.

It is intriguing to speculate that had Heinrich not contracted a fatal illness, European history might have been very different. After William Atheling drowned in 1120, Heinrich saw a real possibility of inheriting Henry I’s domains through right of his wife. She was still young, and it was not impossible to think that they would have an heir who would inherit not only Germany, but the Anglo-Norman realm too. Besides Matilda, Henry I’s nearest legitimate heir was his nephew William Clito, son of the imprisoned Robert. Henry did everything in his power to ensure Clito would not succeed him, for William was allied to Louis the Fat, with whom Henry had spent years sparring for Normandy.

William Clito had not seen his father since he was three years old and would spend his entire life fighting his uncle for his birthright, allying himself with Henry’s foes; uncle and nephew were enemies, and Henry I would not allow him to succeed, despite his valid blood claim.

In the spring of 1122, probably with a view to discussing the succession of Matilda and Heinrich, Henry and Matilda attempted to meet. Henry was nervous at the number of his nobility who professed to support William Clito as duke of Normandy after his death.25 The meeting, however, did not take place as Charles, count of Flanders, for fear of offending his French overlord, refused Matilda safe conduct through his lands. Nevertheless, Heinrich and Matilda’s father continued as allies against the threat of William Clito and France.

Heinrich may feasibly have expected to add king of England and duke of Normandy to his titles. England and Normandy would have been, in the first part of the twelfth century, subsumed into a greater German empire, ruled from Aachen by the Holy Roman Emperor.

But Heinrich died at Utrecht on 23 May 1125, the last of the Salian kings. He was buried at the Romanesque cathedral of Speyer, on the Rhine, beside the body of the father he had fought for the throne. Matilda, with no child heir to act as regent for, was superfluous. Aged twenty-three, she had lived in Germany all her adult life, yet she had few rights. Now she faced a choice. She could either remain in Germany under the protection of Heinrich’s family, married eventually to a candidate of their choice; she could enter a convent, the preference of many widowed noblewomen; or she could answer her father’s command and return to England.26

With no stake in the German throne, she went back to the land of her birth, carrying with her an enormous amount of treasure, including gold crowns, bolts of silk, and a relic: the hand of St James. She would never give up her title, though, calling herself ‘empress’ for the rest of her life.

What was to become of Matilda, the redundant empress with an empty title? Despite recalling her from Germany, it is likely that the king had not yet decided what to do with his daughter. King Henry, ever pragmatic, took his time to consider his options.

II

Kingship and inheritance in Europe in the first half of the twelfth century were flexible. Although by the end of the century, primogeniture – succession of the eldest son – was far more established in feudal law, at the beginning the rules were still fluid. In western Europe, the nation state was only just beginning to emerge as a political entity, which meant that inheritance was often precarious.

It was still possible for an illegitimate child to inherit his father’s throne or lordship, although it was not always easy; William the Bastard had had to fight for his claim to rule in Normandy. But illegitimacy or being the younger son did not yet automatically bar a strong candidate from the throne: successful kings were often the men who could secure the treasury first, or win in battles against their rivals, frequently close relations. Matilda’s own husband Heinrich V had fought his father Heinrich IV for control of Germany. William the Bastard, at war with his eldest son Robert at the time of his death, denied him his full inheritance in favour of his second son William Rufus.27 And King Henry I took full advantage of William Rufus’s death, leaving his brother’s dead body in the New Forest as he raced to Winchester to acquire the wealth of England before his elder brother Robert.

What of ‘queenship’, or a woman’s right to rule independently of a father or son? Women were encouraged to pursue the traditional queenly roles of intercessors, helpmates, and even occasionally regents. But there were hardly any examples in the twelfth century of women ruling alone, and King Henry would have been aware of how unusual it was to nominate a woman as his successor.

Although in France, Salic law – where women were barred from the throne – was a development of the fourteenth century (when the death of all of Philip le Bel’s male heirs by 1328 precipitated a succession crisis), there was no tradition of female rule in France; the French were, at best, ambivalent about women rulers.28 England developed no such law, but there was very little precedent for female rule. Many European noblewomen such as Matilda participated in government, although of Matilda’s contemporaries, only two ruled as queens in their own right – Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VI of Castile and León, and Melisende, daughter of Baldwin II of Jerusalem. Both found it impossible to rule alone for long. Urraca, after her father’s death, swiftly married Alfonso of Aragon, ‘the battler’, to shore up her regime. Melisende was married off to Count Fulk V of Anjou and never reigned entirely alone, obliged to associate herself first with her father, and then her husband.

With Matilda safely back in England, the king pondered. It was still plausible that his young wife would become pregnant and he kept her constantly at his side. The other possible contenders were his sister Adela’s sons, Theobald and Stephen; and his illegitimate son Robert of Gloucester, a man of great intelligence, capability and wealth.

Henry I liked to surround himself with the scions of the Anglo-Norman nobility, partly as companions for William Atheling before his death. At court, Matilda encountered her half-brothers and the king’s eldest bastard sons, Robert and Richard, as well as her uncle, David of Scotland. She also met her cousin, Stephen.

Stephen was born in about 1092, the third son of Adela and Étienne VI count of Blois-Chartres. Étienne was a controversial figure. He had answered the pope’s call to the first crusade enthusiastically in 1096 but had not, according to contemporaries, behaved well; he failed to bring his men to aid the Christian forces as they besieged Antioch. Perhaps to assuage his conscience, he returned to Jerusalem in 1101, where he was killed the following year, at the battle of Ramlah. Stephen’s father was absent during his childhood, and after his death it was Stephen’s uncle, now king of England and duke of Normandy, who showed him kindness and favour when he welcomed him at court.