King of the North Wind

His first tutor was Peter of Saintes, chosen by Geoffrey because he was ‘more learned in Poetry than anyone this side of the Pyrenees’.89 Peter taught Henry Latin, and told him stories of the Greek and Trojan heroes; he even composed a poem on the Trojan War.90

When Henry was brought to England in 1142, he lived in his uncle Robert’s household at Bristol, where he continued his education under both Robert’s and his mother’s direction. Robert was a scholar. In 1138, Geoffrey of Monmouth dedicated his Historia regum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’) to the earl, and it was from this text that Henry probably first became aware of the legends of King Arthur. This was the first time that an author collated and wrote down in Latin, a language the educated classes understood, all the legends connected with Britain’s most famous king. Geoffrey may even have written the text as a reflection of the civil war. Robert had recently made an alliance with Morgan ap Iorwerth, lord of Usk; the Welsh saw themselves as the proud descendants of Arthur.91 And Matilda is possibly portrayed in the text as Cordelia, the loyal daughter of Lear. Geoffrey’s Cordelia is married to a Frenchman and forced to fight her cousin for her birthright.92 It is probable that Henry discussed the book with both Geoffrey and Robert.

His mother, meanwhile, having fled from Oxford at the end of the year, set up headquarters at Devizes, roughly thirty miles from Henry. Henry of Huntingdon enthusiastically called its castle ‘the most splendid’ in Europe.93 It would be the centre of Matilda’s court for the duration of her stay in England.

The chronicler Gervase of Canterbury wrote of the ‘joy’ Matilda experienced in her son.94 It was in England that Henry began his training for leadership. He began to sign himself as ‘rightful heir of England and Normandy’.95 And on the occasions when he was with his mother, he received joint homage from their English vassals.96

Walter Map, in his gossipy and beautifully written Courtiers’ Trifles on the machinations of Henry’s court, later wrote about Matilda’s methods, much of which she had learned from the old king:

I have heard that his [Henry’s] mother’s teaching was to this effect, that he should spin out the affairs of everyone, hold long in his own hand all posts that fell in, take the revenues of them, and keep the aspirants to them hanging on in hope; and she supported this advice by an unkind analogy: an unruly hawk, if meat is often offered to it and then snatched away or hid, becomes keener and more inclinably obedient and attentive. He ought also to be much in his own chamber and little in public: he should never confer anything on anyone at the recommendation of any person, unless he had seen and learnt about it.97

It is not a great leap to imagine that Matilda began to teach her son when he was still very young the political methods learned from her first husband and her father.

At Bristol, Henry, alongside Robert’s younger sons, was taught by Master Matthew.98 Historians are uncertain as to Matthew’s identity. Some believe that he was Robert’s appointment as Henry was living in Robert’s household; however, it would seem that Matthew had been in Geoffrey’s service for years, teaching his two sisters – Henry’s aunts.99 It is likely therefore that Geoffrey sent Matthew to England as part of Henry’s retinue, in consultation with Robert. Both Peter of Saintes and Master Matthew probably initiated Henry into the intricacies of government, working alongside his parents and uncle to teach him the theory as the young boy observed the practice. Henry witnessed his first charter, issued by Geoffrey in June 1138, when he was only five years old.100

Robert undoubtedly had an influence on the young Henry’s education. Robert, who has been called ‘a happy compound of warrior, statesman, and scholar’, had studied enough to attract the admiration of William of Malmesbury.101 Henry I ensured this adored son was well educated, and his library was reputedly vast. It was probably at Robert’s invitation that the renowned scholar Adelard of Bath visited young Henry at Bristol.

Two years later, in January 1144, Henry was recalled to Normandy. It was at about this time that Geoffrey heard of his own father’s death in a riding accident in Acre, in November 1143.102 Fulk and Melisende had two sons together, Baldwin and Almaric; Geoffrey’s brothers were destined to occupy the throne of Jerusalem.

Geoffrey had captured Rouen, Normandy’s capital city. He had never been popular in England, but after his spectacular victories in Normandy and in recognition of his superb military skill, in Angevin and Norman sources he was a hero, ‘a second Mars … a powerful knight … a philosopher in his knowledge’.103

Soon afterwards he began styling himself ‘duke’. His seal at this time was double-sided, reflecting his conquest. One side depicted him on horseback, as duke of Anjou, and the other, holding a sword and shield, as duke of Normandy.104 Geoffrey, having established himself, recalled his son to continue his education and training in Normandy.

In Rouen, Geoffrey employed the remarkable William, ‘the grammarian’ of Conches, as Henry’s tutor. He taught him for three years, and probably taught his younger brothers too.105

William was one of Europe’s great scholars. He possibly taught at the great cathedral school of Chartres in northern France, was either a physician or a physicist (he is described as a ‘physicus’ which meant both), and had a passion for the natural sciences. William wrote commentaries on the works of Plato, Boethius and the Latin grammarian Priscian. When he quarrelled with a bishop, he sought sanctuary with Geoffrey. William approved of Geoffrey’s attitude to education. He dedicated his magnificent work Dragmaticon philosophiae (‘Dialogue on Natural Philosophy’) – the culmination of his studies in natural philosophy and observations of the physical universe, written for Henry – to Geoffrey, praising him for encouraging his children to study rather than playing the popular game of hazard.106 This became one of the most important texts of the twelfth-century renaissance. The work ranged over subjects such as medicine and astronomy, and took the form of a ‘dialogue’ between a philosopher and a duke – that is, between William and Henry. One particular episode may have been based on the recollection of a conversation that took place between them:

Duke: ‘There is one thing that still puzzles me about hearing. If I emit a sound in a cave or a high forest, someone repeats and returns my word to me.’

Philosopher: ‘Do you not know, then, that this is performed by “Echo, the resounding nymph”?’

Duke: ‘I am not Narcissus to be pursued by her. I ask for a physical explanation.’

The philosopher goes on to explain the science to his pupil, and the duke replies, ‘I do not know if what you are saying is true, but I do know that it pleases me a great deal. And so I am waiting all the more keenly for what remains to be said about the other senses.’

Philosopher: ‘It pleases me that such explanations please you.’107

William had taught John of Salisbury – himself among the greatest writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, who wrote on the intellectual energy of the age, and the debt owed to the past:

Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the menial strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Clairvaux used to compare us to punt dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.108

The linguist and scientist Adelard of Bath, at the forefront of this renaissance, also had a profound impact on Henry’s education. Adelard probably taught Henry when he was at Bristol. He was famed for his knowledge of Arabic and his translations into Latin of Arabic treatises on mathematics and astronomy. It was Adelard who introduced Arabic innovations in mathematics into England and France. He had travelled for seven years in Italy, Sicily, Antioch and Cilicia (the southern coast of Turkey), dedicating himself to the ‘studies of the Arabs’.109

The twelfth century saw an explosion in knowledge and cultural exchange from as far afield as the icy western fringes of northern Europe to the Middle East. Crusaders had established a Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem in 1099, and it would not fall until nearly two centuries later.

In 1130 in Sicily, a Norman mercenary – Count Roger de Hauteville – founded a dynasty, conquering the island and much of southern Italy. He and his successors presided over a society of remarkable cultural and religious tolerance, marked by an exchange of ideas between Christians, Muslims and Jews. It was a place where all scholars, regardless of faith, were welcomed. From the ninth century, Spain’s Christian kings began their slow conquest of the Iberian Peninsula from its Muslim rulers, leading to a ‘rediscovery’ of the ideas of Greece and Rome, and Arabic intellectual developments, in western Europe. It was in this exceptional atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and achievement that we find tolerant and humanitarian scholars such as Adelard bringing the ideas and teachings of the Greeks, the Muslims and the Jews to the cathedral schools and the burgeoning European universities. Henry learned from among their finest.

In 1150, Adelard dedicated his work De opera astrolapsus (‘The Workings of the Astrolabe’) to Henry. Here he laid out his understanding of the cosmos, gave detailed instructions on how to use the astrolabe, a device used to track the path of the sun and the stars, and even included a section on hawking as light relief for the scholar. It was the apotheosis of his career.

Adelard’s dedication to Henry sets out the aspirations he held for his able pupil:

I thoroughly approve of the fact that the nobility of a royal race applies itself to the study of the liberal arts. But I find it all the more remarkable that preoccupation in the affairs of government does not distract the mind from that study. Thus I understand that you, Henry, since you are the grandson of a king, have understood with the complete attention of your mind, what is said by Philosophy: that states are blest either if they are handed over for philosophers to rule, or if their rulers adhere to philosophy … Since your childhood was once imbued with the scent of this reasoning, your mind preserves it for a long time, and the more heavily it is weighed down by outside occupations, the more diligently it withdraws itself from them. Hence it happens that you not only read carefully and with understanding those things that the writings of the Latins contain, but you also dare to wish to understand the opinions of the Arabs concerning the sphere, and the circles and movements of the planets. For you say that whoever lives in a house, if he is ignorant of its material or composition, its size or kind, its position or parts, is not worthy of such a dwelling …110

The love of learning and spirit of inquiry Henry imbibed from these exemplary scholars would last all his life. His parents had provided him with the tools to be anything he wanted. His teachers (or masters, magistri), tolerant and inquisitive, had opened Henry’s mind; many chroniclers tell of his passion for books, learning and discourse. He would aspire to be a philosopher-prince in the Platonic mould.111

V

The first war on English soil since the Conquest was a war of attrition, bitter and vindictive, with the rule of law sporadic. Although the fighting was mostly confined to the south-east and south-west of England, Stephen’s leadership was inadequate. Contemporaries called it ‘the anarchy’, a time when they believed themselves abandoned by Christ. The author of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote in despair, ‘The earth bore no corn, for the land was all laid waste … and people said openly, that Christ and his saints slept.’

When he was fourteen Henry, imbued with loyalty to his parents and belief in his own right to rule, decided to fight alongside his mother for their birthright. At the beginning of 1147, he hired mercenaries on credit and sailed to England with a few companions to aid her. He led an attack against his first cousin, Philip of Gloucester, at Cricklade, just over thirty miles west of Oxford. Philip, Robert’s son, had deserted Matilda for Stephen, ‘seeing that at that time the king had the upper hand, [he] entered into a pact of peace and concord with him, and after being lavishly endowed with castles and lands, he gave hostages and paid him homage’.112 Philip’s defection was a reminder of the extent to which this war left families bitterly divided. But it is likely that Geoffrey knew nothing about his eldest son’s trip to England, for Henry had no money to pay his men, and had arrived in England with virtually nothing; once they realised, they deserted. Henry, desperate, asked his mother for money but she had none to spare. His uncle, Robert, gave him a similar answer.

When Stephen’s forces routed him nearby, at Bampton in Oxfordshire, Henry persuaded his cousin to give him money to pay for his journey home. Unwisely, Stephen agreed; he was, according to the author of the Gesta Stephani, ‘always full of pity and compassion’. But whether it was because, as his detractors claimed, chivalry was his undoing, or because he wanted Henry and his troublesome mercenaries out of England as quickly as possible, we may only speculate.113 By Ascension Day, 29 May 1147, Henry was back in Normandy.

For Henry, the moment marked the passing of the first chapter of his life. It was the last time he would see the uncle who had not only been responsible for shaping so much of his education but who had also made his and Matilda’s cause in England possible. Robert of Gloucester died on 31 October at Bristol. He was buried in the Benedictine priory church of St James, which he had founded.

Matilda left England less than four months after her brother’s death, in mid-February 1148, defeated and exhausted. Gervase of Canterbury wrote that she was ‘worn down by the trials of the English hostilities … preferring to retire to the haven of her husband’s protection than endure so many troubles in England’. She may have stomached the pitiful stalemate for so long because she was waiting for Henry to come of age. And it is possible that she felt unable to continue her cause without the leadership that her half-brother had provided. Robert’s son and heir, William, was not up to taking his father’s place; he was judged ‘effeminate and a lover of bedchambers more than of war’.114 Matilda made her home at Le Pré, near Rouen. She would never return to England.

Matilda was once again cast as a failure. Her biographer Marjorie Chibnall calls her ‘almost a queen’.115 But Matilda’s mission was doomed from the start. She was castigated for her character, her fiery temper – she ‘drove [her enemies] from her presence in fury after insulting and threatening them’ – and for her lack of femininity: ‘The countess of Anjou … was always above feminine softness and had a mind steeled and unbroken in adversity.’116 She was a ‘virago’, who ‘put on an extremely arrogant demeanour instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex’.117

For not even clever, ambitious, determined Matilda could overcome the ‘problem’ of her sex. Her father had foreseen the difficulties of his magnates accepting female rule, which is why he had induced them to swear their oaths to her three times. The very few women who did rule independently were encouraged to disregard their femininity altogether and to behave as kings. When Geoffrey’s father Fulk died in Jerusalem in 1143, the powerful Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux urged his widow Queen Melisende to ‘show the man in the woman; order all things … so that those who see you will judge your works to be those of a king rather than a queen’.118 Urraca of the Spanish kingdom of León and Castile pretended to be a man, signing her documents as a king rather than a queen.

Matilda’s hopes would now rest in Henry, her heir. As the coming man and despite his youth, Henry was already attracting support in England to add to those nobles who had staunchly championed the Angevin cause. This allegiance was motivated at least in part by economic interests. As soon as Geoffrey was recognised as duke of Normandy by Louis VII in 1145, it was clear to those magnates who held land on both sides of the Channel that Stephen would never reunite Normandy and England. But once Stephen died, should they offer their allegiance to Henry, and not Eustace, the problem would be solved.

Geoffrey always contended that he conquered Normandy on behalf of his son. His charters, after becoming duke, often read ‘with the advice and consent of Henry my son’.119 The intention was that there should be no impediment to Henry inheriting Normandy. Gilbert Foliot, when consecrated bishop of Hereford in September 1148, swore allegiance to Henry, and not to Stephen. And in mid-1148 William of Gloucester swore to aid Roger of Hereford against all men ‘saving the person of their lord Henry’.120 At this stage, it was more to do with Henry’s lineage, as the grandson of Henry I and the descendant of the Norman conquerors and the Anglo-Saxon kings, than his abilities. That was all about to change.

In October 1148, Henry’s immediate family – Matilda, Geoffrey, and his two younger brothers – met at Rouen to decide their strategy. Normandy was theirs, won both by diplomacy and by military action, and they had a good shot at England. To claim his entire birthright, Henry would return to England where his uncle, David King of Scots, would knight him. The knighting ceremony, very important as a passage to power, would mark the beginning of Henry’s manhood. And as he turned sixteen, it was an apt time to hold the ceremony. On Whit Sunday 1149, David knighted his nephew with the belt and garter in a magnificent ceremony at Carlisle Castle, followed by a lavish party. Henry now began to call himself ‘duke’; the bishop of Lisieux wrote to his friend Robert, bishop of Lincoln, to ‘favour as much as you can the cause of our duke.’121

Many of Matilda’s staunchest supporters – Miles of Gloucester, Brian Fitz Count, her brother Robert – were either dead or retired. With Henry’s return, a new body of men began to coalesce around the freshly anointed scion of Anjou and Normandy. These men included his uncle Reginald of Cornwall, who remained true to his sister’s cause; Robert Fitz Harding of Bristol; Ranulf earl of Chester, married to Robert’s daughter but whose allegiance throughout the past ten years had been in flux; Ranulf’s brother the earl of Lincoln; and the earl of Hereford. Henry was their acknowledged leader – not so much for his qualities, but more as a result of their bitter experience that Stephen could be duplicitous and capricious. Stephen, after Matilda left for Normandy, had courted the earls of Chester and Essex with lands; he had then, without warning or cause, imprisoned them.122 These Anglo-Norman magnates yearned for stability, and they looked to the as yet unproven Henry to provide it.

But just as in the previous generation when William Atheling’s greatest foe had been his first cousin William Clito, so Henry’s biggest danger lay with his cousin Eustace, Stephen’s eldest son. Eustace was as determined to be king of England as Henry was. He had paid homage to Louis for Normandy in 1137, and had been married to Louis’ sister, Constance, as putative heir to England and Normandy. He was knighted a year or so before Henry, at the end of 1147.

Stephen, fearing Henry’s growing importance, and to ensure his son’s succession, appealed to Rome to have Eustace crowned alongside him. But Pope Eugenius III refused. Stephen was anointed king before Rome could approve it. If the pope had given his tacit support to an anointed King Stephen (made holy by the anointing ceremony) over Matilda, that support would not necessarily be extended to Eustace. Even the anonymous author of the Gesta Stephani, until now firmly in the king’s camp, switched sides and proclaimed Henry over Stephen as the coming man, calling him ‘the right heir of England’.123

Henry made his way south from Carlisle, possibly bound directly for Normandy, possibly intending to fight Stephen and Eustace. But whatever Henry’s intentions, Stephen and Eustace were determined to obliterate him. Henry at sixteen – knighted and head of the Angevin party – was a far greater threat than the fourteen-year-old boy who had sailed to England to help his mother. The chronicler John of Hexham captured the spirit of exactly what was at stake: ‘There was between [Henry] and Eustace … a contest of arms, for they were rivals for the same crown.’124 It would be a fight to death.

Henry evaded capture, taking back roads to Bristol, despite Eustace’s dogged quest. The Gesta Stephani recorded the devastation of Eustace’s campaign: ‘They took and plundered everything they came upon, set fire to houses and churches, and, what was more cruel and inhuman to behold, fired the crops which had been reaped and stoked all over the fields, and consumed or destroyed everything edible they found.’125 This bitter civil war had terrible consequences for ordinary men and women, particularly those who lived in the path of battles. The period was peppered with crop failure, famine, wanton destruction, crime and disorder.

Atrocities were committed on both sides; when Matilda’s ally Miles of Gloucester sacked Worcester in 1139, he burned the city; his army (made up of domestic forces, not foreign mercenaries), ‘rabid and debauched, took those citizens who were not killed in the pillaging and led them away, coupled like dogs, into wretched captivity’.126 In revenge, Stephen saw nothing amiss when he attacked the countryside rather than Hereford or Bristol castles, destroying everything in his path that could feed the population; he left ‘nothing at all, as far as it lay in his power, that could serve his enemies for food or any purpose’.127 It was commonplace to kill all the livestock and burn the crops, to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Livestock levels would still not return to normal even by the middle of the 1150s.128

In the West Country, scene of some of the bitterest fighting, the author of the Gesta wrote of famine, the death of the local peasant population, with no one alive or able to bring in the harvest. Stephen’s domains were ‘reduced to a desert’.129 Henry of Huntingdon wrote despairingly in 1140: ‘Gaunt famine, following, wastes away, whom murder spares, with slow decay.’130 Neither side left anything for the general population to live on. Those people who survived the path of the marauding armies often starved to death.

In the counties beleaguered by war, acts of generosity and kindness were considered unusual enough by the chroniclers to record them. A local landlord in Gloucestershire, the Angevin stronghold, paid for a chapel to be built at Winchcombe Abbey, ‘so that both he and his men could have some refuge there from the incursions of robbers and the ruthless machinations of evil men’.131 Similarly, Waleran of Meulan was considered kind when he freed those prisoners he had taken hostage after he attacked Tewkesbury.132

It was not just Stephen’s and Matilda’s forces who ravaged the land; some opportunists took it upon themselves to establish their own armies in areas with little rule of law. The author of the Gesta wrote bitterly of the atrocities carried out by the Caldret brothers, who he thought were Flemish.133 The author of the Peterborough Chronicle, meanwhile, recorded that ‘both men and women [were] put in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured with pains unspeakable’, captured by local lords and held in their dungeons.134 It was generally not the nobility who suffered during this dreadful war, but the innocent local population who stood in the way of their sieges, occasional battles and devastation of the countryside.