4
William Marshal was fortunate to survive his encounter with the Lusignans and the long, painful months of captivity that followed. Much of the time he was roughly treated, even by the standards of the day – led, astride an ass, on a seemingly endless journey through ‘the length and breadth’ of Poitou’s densely forested hills by his fugitive captors, the grave wounds to his thigh untended. The History of William Marshal described how none of the Lusignans ‘spared him a thought as they jolted along through the wooded land like men with much to fear’, because there ‘was no safety for them in any spot’. As wanted outlaws, their first concern was to evade Angevin retribution, so they remained constantly on the move, never staying in one place more than a night. Their prisoner, William, had little value – no one expected his ransom to be paid and a knight of such modest status was of limited use as a bargaining chip. They were not so vicious as to butcher him in cold blood, but would make scant effort to save his life.
In the first days after Earl Patrick’s death, William therefore had to fight for his own survival. At first, he fashioned strips of his own clothing into makeshift bandages, hoping to arrest his bleeding. Later he begged the Lusignans for a scrap of sackcloth and ‘swabbed and plugged his wounds with it’, but these dressings were soon ‘completely soaked in the blood that welled from his body’, and Marshal had to wash them as best he could and then reuse them. It is a remarkable testament to William’s physical resilience that he did not succumb either to blood loss or infection. Years later, these desperate days became a half-remembered blur of agonising pain and incessant discomfort, but Marshal’s recollections were punctuated by two notable incidents.
The first had the air of an embroidered chivalric tale, though it could be true. According to the History, one of the Lusignans’ allies offered them sanctuary for the night and the ‘noble-hearted, kind lady’ of the house apparently took pity on William: ‘she brought a loaf of bread from her room, removed the inside with her fingers and then filled the crust . . . with fine linen bandages’. Once this gift had been smuggled to Marshal he was better able to dress his wounds and his condition slowly improved. The second story is curious and comical, but perhaps offers an authentic sense of William’s intensely competitive personality. Weeks had passed and Marshal was all but ‘cured of the wounds which had given him such great pains’. He seems to have become more familiar with his captors and was allowed some freedom to move about the camp. On this particular night, some of the Lusignan warriors were passing the evening playing ‘la pere geteient’ – a simple game in which each man tried to throw a heavy stone as far as possible. William could not resist asking for a turn, but although his effort supposedly won the contest, it also caused his wounds to ‘burst open again’, leaving him in excruciating agony and delaying his recovery.
For William, this whole period must have been a nightmare of bleak uncertainty; his mind darkened by a growing suspicion that he had been forgotten and discarded by his Angevin overlords. But then, abruptly, Marshal’s fortunes improved beyond all expectation. News arrived that Queen Eleanor was willing to pay a ransom in return for his release. No surviving evidence explains this sudden decision: perhaps William had caught Eleanor’s eye during the first stage of the Aquitanian campaign, or it may be that she had heard of his heroics during the roadside ambush. For whatever reason, William was now freed into her care and, better still, once fully healed he was offered a place in the queen’s own military retinue. This was a spectacular transformation – the forsaken captive had become knight to one of the most eminent women in the world. William soon found himself dressed in fine clothes and newly armed, furnished with horses and money. As Marshal’s biographer put it, he could hardly believe his luck, reckoning he was now ‘in the gold’.
TO SERVE THE YOUNG KING
Almost nothing is known of the next two years of William Marshal’s life. The History suggested that ‘he moved about through many lands’ seeking ‘fame and fortune’, but it is also clear that he remained a member of Eleanor’s household. Perhaps William did attend tournaments in this period, but in all likelihood he stayed in Aquitaine, helping to impose Angevin authority in the region.* By the time of his release, Earl Patrick’s body had been buried with great honour in the church of St Hilary in Poitiers, but the feud with the Lusignans had not been laid to rest with him. Fighting continued across Aquitaine until the summer of 1169, but Poitou and the surrounding provinces were eventually subdued, though Geoffrey and Guy of Lusignan remained free.
One thing is certain: by 1170, Marshal had cemented his reputation with Queen Eleanor as a valiant and skilful warrior and was regarded as a trusted member of her entourage. He may well have come to the notice of her husband, King Henry II himself. William now had the favour of the Angevin royal family. In the space of just four years, he had gone from being a penniless knight, shunned by the Tancarville household, to an esteemed warrior serving Europe’s most powerful dynasty.
The full scale of William’s mercurial ascent became clear when he accompanied Eleanor of Aquitaine back to England in the summer of 1170. The queen had travelled to London to attend the coronation of her son, Henry, on 14 June in Westminster Abbey – an event that would shape Angevin history and change the course of William Marshal’s own career. Henry II was determined to avoid both the uncertainty that had followed his grandfather King Henry I’s death and a return to the ruinous days of civil war witnessed during King Stephen’s reign. The succession plans for the new Angevin dynasty were to be clear and indisputable, and the king’s eldest surviving son and namesake stood at the very heart of these designs. In 1170 the young Henry was just fifteen years old, but already tall and incredibly handsome. Contemporaries admired his broad shoulders, long elegant neck, pale freckled skin, striking blue eyes and golden red hair. It was as if a great mythical hero of the ancient world had been brought to life; one who possessed Paris’ good looks, Hector’s bravery and the unrivalled martial skill of Achilles – at least, that was the view espoused by one of Henry II’s fawning courtiers.
Henry the Young King
This dashing prince became one of the central figures of William Marshal’s life and, for the next decade and more, the pair would be virtually inseparable. Henry had been groomed for power from an early age. At first, his father, Henry II, was content to use him more as a pawn in the great rivalry with Capetian France. To secure an advantageous truce with King Louis VII in 1160 guaranteeing Angevin rights to the disputed territory of the Norman Vexin, King Henry married his son – then barely just five years old – to Louis’ daughter Marguerite (a product of Louis’ second marriage to Constanza of Castile). Marguerite was even younger than the boy Henry – two years old at most and little more than a baby. The wedding was a scandal, being in direct contravention of Church law, and it was later joked not only that Marguerite had been presented in a cot, but that both children wailed through the ceremony.
Nonetheless, as the years passed, Henry II began to prioritise his son’s education – sending him to be schooled for a time in Thomas Becket’s household – and to involve him in acts of governance. In January 1164, young Henry (then eight) attended a great assembly of magnates and churchmen at Clarendon. The meeting confirmed a document listing the ‘customs and privileges of the crown’ (what became known as the ‘Constitutions of Clarendon’) and care was taken to record that this controversial legislation had been drawn up ‘in the presence of Lord Henry, and of this father, the lord king’. By this time, Henry was already entertaining the idea of having his eldest son crowned and anointed while he himself lived, so that the boy’s status as heir could not be disputed. Indeed, financial records show money being spent in 1162 to prepare a special diminutive crown and set of royal regalia. However, after Thomas Becket’s alienation from King Henry, the scheme had to be put on hold because the rite of coronation had long been deemed the archbishop of Canterbury’s prerogative.
The clearest expression of Henry II’s master plan for the Angevin Empire came in January 1169 at a grand peace conference with King Louis VII, convened at Montmirail, to the east of Le Mans. In a wide-ranging treaty, King Henry specified without equivocation that his eldest son would succeed him as king of England, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou. Provisions were also made for two of Henry II’s other sons: Richard, the next eldest, was to inherit the duchy of Aquitaine, his mother Eleanor’s homeland, while Geoffrey was designated as heir to the duchy of Brittany. In return for Louis’ confirmation of these arrangements, the Angevins paid him homage for their Continental French lands and Henry agreed to another marriage alliance with the Capetians, this time involving young Richard’s betrothal to another of Louis’ daughters, Alice.
It seemed after Montmirail that the Angevin house had been put in order, though some questions remained. No territory had been allocated to Henry II’s youngest son John, then barely two years of age, earning him the nickname ‘Lackland’, and the intended balance of power between Henry’s heirs was also unclear. Even so, the king appeared to have shown commendable care and foresight. By this stage he had also started marrying off his daughters to secure valued political alliances. In 1168 Matilda wed Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, cousin of the German emperor – even though she was twelve and he almost forty. Plans were also afoot to finalise the younger Eleanor’s betrothal to the Iberian King Alfonso VIII of Castile.
Through all this, Henry II was the arch dynastic architect, forever juggling, scheming and manipulating to advance the current interests and the future stability of his mighty Angevin realm. The royal seal set upon this design was to be young Henry’s coronation in the summer of 1170. If the king had harboured any lingering doubts about the wisdom of this definitive act of pre-designation, they were pushed to one side after a close brush with death, when the royal fleet was caught by a howling March storm in the Channel. Four hundred courtiers drowned in this catastrophe – among them the king’s personal physician Ralph of Beaumont. The ceremony was set for mid-June, so Queen Eleanor came north to attend, with William Marshal and the rest of her retinue in tow. Henry II circumvented the ongoing issue of Thomas Becket’s absence and exile by convincing Roger, the archbishop of York, to preside over the ritual. Realising that this break with tradition would probably elicit papal condemnation, the king ordered England’s ports to be shut, forestalling any message of objection from Rome.
On 14 June young Henry was crowned and anointed as king of England in Westminster Abbey, before his father and mother, and an assembly of the realm’s greatest barons and nobles. William Marshal may well have been present as part of Eleanor’s household, and his biography later recalled the ‘rich pageantry’ of the day. The only significant absentee was Henry’s young wife, Marguerite of France, who had remained in Normandy. Some contemporaries thought that her exclusion was accidental – the result of unfavourable winds, or an unintended consequence of the Channel ports’ closure. More likely, it was a calculated move, designed to leave an opening for future political machinations, perhaps even for the eventual annulment of the marriage. This certainly appears to have been King Louis VII’s interpretation, for he was said to have been furious to learn that the ceremony had been held without his daughter.
A new English monarch had been proclaimed: Henry the Young King; the man destined to become Henry III. The practice of preemptive coronation was common elsewhere in Europe and customary among the Capetians. It established an heir’s inalienable right to succession. But this was its first use in England since the ninth century, and it was not without its problems. There were now two anointed Angevin monarchs; two human beings who had been transformed by a sacred Christian ritual and thus held the same office. It was obvious to all in June 1170 that the teenage Young King was the junior partner – the associate monarch – waiting in the wings, but that situation could not be expected to hold indefinitely.
For now, Henry II was ready to put his son to work. The Old King (as contemporaries began calling him, even though he was barely forty) was set to return to France, eyeing a reconciliation with Thomas Becket, and he wanted Young Henry to hold the reins of power in his absence. A special royal seal-die was created for the new monarch. This was one of the medieval world’s most critical instruments of government – a carefully engraved mould, designed to leave a unique, authenticating imprint on the wax seals attached to crown documents. Most English royal seals had two sides (thus requiring a two-part die) and typically showed a monarch both seated in state, and on the reverse, astride a horse, thus evoking the interlocking ideals of king and warrior. Young Henry’s seal had only one side and, unusually, depicted him without a sword in his hand – one of the key symbols of regnal authority. Henry II might be leaving his son with a seal-die of his own, but it was one that offered a graphic affirmation of the Young King’s limited, associate status.
King Henry II also took care to surround his son with trusted counsellors. Those tasked to watch over the Young King’s governance of England were all known familiars of the Angevin regime; men like William of St John, Hugh of Gundeville and Ranulf FitzStephen. But Henry II also made one additional appointment. William Marshal was chosen to serve as the Young King’s tutor-in-arms and a leading member of the new monarch’s mesnie. This was a significant opportunity, not the same as joining Henry II’s entourage itself, but another step closer to the centre of power. Marshal was now to serve at the right hand of England’s next king; the glittering young royal described by the History as ‘the finest of all the princes on earth, be they pagan or Christian’.
William was perhaps twenty-three-years old; the Young King, his new lord and pupil, eight years his junior. The age gap was not so wide, but Henry was just emerging from his youth, while Marshal carried himself as a seasoned warrior. He had seen battle and death, fought in grand tournaments and earned a certain degree of renown. As such, he was judged a suitable mentor for Young Henry – a figure who could act as his teacher, friend and confidant.
To whom did William owe this marked honour? On the evidence preserved in the History of William Marshal, the decision seems to have been Henry II’s. The biographer recorded that ‘the king put [William] in the company of his son’, adding that Henry II ‘promised to do the Marshal much good in return for his care and instruction’ of the Young King. The History even noted that William graciously decided not to haggle over terms of service at this point. However, the biography also made it clear that Marshal came to London with the queen, and her hand in this affair must be suspected. Historians have long argued that Eleanor was already obsessively concerned with Aquitaine and the career of her younger son Richard, but this view is strongly informed by hindsight. In 1170 the queen had every reason to maintain close contact with, and potential influence over, her eldest son, the heir designate to the Angevin heartlands. The appointment of her household knight, William Marshal, as the Young King’s military tutor offered just such a connection. Only time would tell where Marshal’s loyalties really lay.
King Henry II duly left Young Henry with William Marshal in England and crossed over to Normandy before the end of June. In the course of the summer the king met with Thomas Becket and, in official terms at least, their bitter quarrel was finally put to rest, though barely submerged tensions remained. The Angevin realm appeared at last to be at peace. Then, around 10 August, the Old King fell ill with a persistent fever and was confined to bed near Domfront in southwest Normandy. Perhaps years of incessant travel and the strain of managing his vast realm had finally caught up with him, and though a new doctor had surely been appointed to his household, Henry may now have missed the ministrations of the late Ralph of Beaumont, his former personal physician. As weeks passed, the king’s condition deteriorated, and he seems to have made a heartfelt appeal to the Virgin Mary, hoping for a miraculous cure. It seemed that his careful provisions for the Angevin succession had been made not a moment too soon. Fearing that he was close to death, the Old King issued detailed instructions for his burial, and drew up a final will confirming the Treaty of Montmirail and Young Henry’s rights to England, Normandy, Anjou and Maine. News of the king’s grave infirmity crossed the Channel, only to be followed in September by rumours that Henry II had died. The Angevin world held its breath. It seemed that a new young king was about to come to power, and William Marshal would be at his side.
AN UNQUIET HEIR
Henry the Young King came tantalisingly close to power that autumn. Waiting anxiously in London through mid-September, Henry and the entourage of clerics and knights like William Marshal around him, must all have been quietly preparing for his accession – for the moment when the reign of King Henry III would begin in earnest. But in the end, news of the Old King’s recovery arrived and the moment of danger and opportunity passed. Given that Young Henry was only fifteen and possessed very limited experience of rule, these tidings were perhaps greeted, first and foremost, with a sense of relief. After all, the Young King still had a long and golden future ahead of him; his day would come.
Though Henry II ultimately survived this illness, the experience evidently left him shaken. Having despaired of his life, the king immediately set out on a 300-mile pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Rocamadour, in Aquitaine. This remote cult site housed a famous effigy, the Black Madonna – thought to be a particularly powerful focus of the saint’s presence. It was also the supposed burial site of Mary’s own household servant Amator (who, legend told, had travelled from Palestine to France, living out his days as a hermit in the local cliff-side caves). In spite of his convalescent state, the Old King made the long, arduous journey to venerate the Virgin and show gratitude for his recovery, distributing alms to the poor as he went. Perhaps he even followed local custom of ascending the steep flights of steps leading to the cliff-top shrine on his knees. With his act of devotion complete, Henry returned to the business of state.
Young Henry was to remain in his father’s shadow, as heir to the realm and associate king, for years to come. Historians have traditionally offered a withering assessment of Young Henry’s career after the summer of 1170. He is typically portrayed as a handsome but feckless dandy – the extravagant playboy who, once denied the chance to rule in his own right, submerged himself in the dissolute cult of chivalry, with William Marshal as his guide. Though published as long ago as 1973, Professor Lewis Warren’s seminal biography of King Henry II has retained its influence, and Warren’s appraisal of the Young King in this work was thoroughly damning. Henry was dismissed as ‘shallow, vain, careless, empty-headed, incompetent, improvident and irresponsible’ – quite a list of failings. This estimation has held in almost all quarters of academic perception and (if he is remembered at all) in popular imagination, and as a result Young Henry remains a misunderstood and often overlooked figure to this day. He is England’s forgotten king.
But a closer and more impartial study of Henry’s life, and his association with William Marshal, reveals that the accepted view is overly simplistic – at times even misrepresentative – and deeply shaded by hindsight. In fact, the best contemporary evidence indicates that the Young King was an able and politically engaged member of the Angevin dynasty, and throughout this period he seems to have worked in close concert with William Marshal. To begin with, in the early 1170s, Henry helped his father to steady the realm during two years of intense crisis by governing England in the Old King’s absence.
Having recovered from his grave illness in the autumn of 1170, Henry II must have imagined that the worst was over, but this crisis was soon overshadowed. Towards the end of that year Thomas Becket, the long-exiled archbishop of Canterbury, returned to England. Some weeks later, four knights attending the Old King’s Christmas Court in Normandy overheard their monarch angrily decrying Becket’s continued disobedience. Misinterpreting these angry words as a signal for direct action, they crossed the Channel and made for Canterbury. Perhaps their first intention was to arrest the archbishop, but once they had Becket cornered inside the great cathedral by the altar, heated words were exchanged. With their swords already drawn, the enraged knights began hacking at the defenceless prelate and Thomas died beneath a furious cascade of blows that left his brains strewn across the floor.
The scandal of this horrific murder caused outrage across Europe and marked a defining moment in Henry II’s reign. Not surprisingly, the Roman Church responded to the slaying of one of its leading prelates with vituperative condemnation. The emergence of a powerful international cult dedicated to Archbishop Thomas was more remarkable. In life Becket had been a divisive figure; in death he was revered as a pious martyr. Reports of miracles associated with his resting place in Canterbury were soon legion, and by early 1173 he had been formally canonised as a saint. The Old King survived this storm through a mixture of apologetic diplomacy and absenteeism – setting off to conquer Ireland, while closing the ports behind him so that no orders of excommunication could be delivered. By 1172 a measure of calm had returned and, in May that year, Henry submitted to the formal judgement of a papal legate in Normandy and performed a public penance.
All of this meant that Henry II did not return to England until the summer of 1172 and, throughout this extended period, the Young King ruled in his stead without apparent difficulty. There is some evidence that he was already struggling to live within his means, given that he had no independent wealth or income of his own. The History of William Marshal recalled that in these years, while William was tutoring Henry in the art of combat, the Young King was ‘spending lavishly’, but observed that this was only to be expected from ‘a king and a son of a king’. In late 1171 Henry crossed to Normandy to hold his own Christmas Court near Bayeux for the first time. One contemporary noted that the Young King was ‘anxious that the festival should be celebrated with great magnificence’ – this was his chance to display the largesse expected of any lord of knights, let alone a crown monarch. A ‘multitude’ attended this opulent gathering; so many that when William of St John jokingly declared that only those named William could dine beside him, 110 men were still left in the room, Marshal presumably among them.
On King Louis VII’s insistence, Young Henry underwent a second coronation in August 1172, this time with his young wife Marguerite of France in attendance, and Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen presiding over the solemn ritual performed in Winchester Cathedral. Despite the fact that they had already been married for more than a decade, it was probably only from this point onwards that Henry actually began to live with his wife. His status as king had now been proclaimed twice, yet he still had no lands of his own, and with the Old King’s health and political position rejuvenated, Henry had little prospect of inheriting the realm in the near future. The disjuncture between his royal title and actual position began to grate.
The Young King has often been represented as a rather petulant figure in this period – the impatient, disobedient teenager, unwilling to wait his proper turn. But this ignores the mounting financial and social pressures that Henry had to shoulder as he approached his eighteenth year and full adulthood. He now had a wife and queen of his own to support, and although Marguerite had been allocated valuable dower lands and a hefty cash dowry, these remained in the hands of the Old King, beyond Henry’s grasp. Even contemporaries who usually favoured Henry II acknowledged that the Young King ‘took it badly that his father did not wish to assign him any territory where he could dwell with his queen’. Young Henry also had to think of his household knights – the men who naturally anticipated reward for their loyal service.
After his first coronation in 1170, Henry gathered a close-knit group of retainers around him. Five knights formed the core of the Young King’s mesnie from this period onwards: three were originally from Normandy – Adam of Yquebeuf, Gerard Talbot and Robert Tresgoz; two from England – Simon Marsh and, of course, William Marshal. By the cultural norms of the day, a man in Henry’s position was expected to offer these supporters protection, advancement and ultimately land; any failure or inability to do so could be seen as a cause of shame, dishonour and impotence. Knights in this period, Marshal included, routinely nagged their lords for favours, seeking everything from property to the hand of wealthy heiresses. This was all an accepted part of climbing the social ladder. But for now the Young King had little to give.
On the whole, these pressures remained hidden in the History of William Marshal, but other contemporary sources suggest that, by the end of 1172, some of Young Henry’s retainers were encouraging him to take action. One chronicler noted that ‘certain persons began whispering’ to Henry that he ought ‘to rule jointly with his father’ or even ‘rule alone, for having been crowned, the reign of his father had effectively been brought to an end’. It is impossible to know whether William Marshal joined this ‘whispering’ campaign, but word that some knights in Young King’s mesnie were fomenting intrigue certainly reached Henry II, because around this time he intervened, removing the warrior Hasculf of St Hilaire ‘and other young knights’ from his son’s ‘counsel and household’.
The Old King had no intention of sharing real power with his son. As far as his father was concerned, Young Henry was a king in name alone; a figurehead to be paraded and, if necessary, manipulated. He would be paid a generous (though not inexhaustible) allowance – thousands of pounds per year – but not given actual, independent authority. The lad was expected to wait in the wings obediently and indefinitely. This approach to the business of rule was a hallmark of the Old King’s reign.
Henry II was a phenomenally skilful monarch and politician, but he was also a compulsive hoarder when it came to power, reluctant to let a single ounce of authority to slip from his grasp. Perhaps this was sheer greed, or maybe Henry simply thought it inconceivable that another could bear the Herculean task of governing the empire. Certainly, for the majority of his career, he acted like a chess player sitting before a vast board, determined to direct every single piece with his own hand. When pressed, the Old King might turn to a ‘trusted’ subordinate: Young Henry ruled England in his stead after the crisis of 1170; his younger sons, Richard and Geoffrey, would be expected to oversee Aquitaine and Brittany as the decade progressed. But Henry II remained stubbornly unwilling to cede unfettered authority over England or any part of the Angevin heartlands of Normandy and Anjou. In 1150, when Henry II was just sixteen, his own father – Geoffrey Plantagenet – had seen fit to grant him full rights to the duchy of Normandy. Now, twenty years later, the Old King could not bring himself to do the same for his eldest son.
Walter Map, one of Henry II’s courtiers, later argued that the Old King had been taught by his formidable mother Empress Matilda to instil loyalty through the harsh denial of favour. She was said to have told him that ‘an unruly hawk’ could only be tamed if kept hungry. The secret, she believed, was to repeatedly offer the creature meat, but always snatch the reward away at the last second. By this means, the bird of prey would become ‘keener and more obedient and attentive’. The danger of course, as Map knew only too well, was that a starving hawk might turn on his master.
The road to rebellion
The first signs of a gathering storm could be detected by late 1172. In November, Young Henry and Queen Marguerite travelled to Paris to meet with her father King Louis VII of France, and he was said to have treated both as his children. The Young King and his wife then held their own Christmas Court, with William Marshal and the rest of his household, at Bonneville in northern Normandy, while Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine met at the great Angevin fortress of Chinon more than 200 miles to the south. In all likelihood, Young Henry was already preparing to challenge his father’s authority, perhaps even scheming with his Capetian father-in-law. The Old King must have had some sense of his son’s festering discontent, but he failed to predict the explosion that was about to rip the Angevin realm asunder.
Henry II summoned his wife and four sons to a meeting on 25 February 1173 at Limoges, capital of the Limousin region in central Aquitaine. Leading dignitaries from southern France and Iberia, including the count of Toulouse and the king of Aragon, were also brought together. The Old King intended this grand Angevin gathering to serve as an affirmation of dynastic superiority and regional dominance. Instead, it sparked the greatest rebellion of his reign. The problems began when Henry II proudly announced to the assembly that he had secured a propitious marriage alliance for his youngest son John, then just five years old. The boy was to be betrothed to a daughter of the French magnate Humbert, count of Maurienne, and gifted possession of three of the most important castles in Anjou – Chinon, Loudon and Mirebeau. This was a crafty manoeuvre. With John obviously in no position to administer these fortresses in person, they would revert to the Old King himself and be kept from the clutches of Young Henry, the nominal ‘count of Anjou’, for years to come. His eldest son was bound to be displeased, but the Old King must have calculated that Henry would be forced to swallow his anger in this public setting. He was mistaken.
Young Henry made a clear display of outrage, resolutely declaring that this plan offended his rights as count of Anjou and would never be accepted. What is more, he demanded that his father now hand over full possession of either Anjou, Normandy or England itself. The Old King’s bluff had been called, and the grave rift between father and son was suddenly clear for all to see. Both men were left fuming and unable to speak to one another ‘in a peaceable manner’. That evening, however, Henry II discovered that a greater game was in play. During a private audience, the count of Toulouse informed him that two of his other sons, Richard and Geoffrey, and, unthinkably, even his wife Queen Eleanor, were rumoured to be plotting his overthrow. A conspiracy had evidently been brewing for weeks, perhaps even months – one that threatened to shatter the Old King’s beloved empire.
Henry II took immediate action. He seems to have discounted the story of Eleanor’s connivance because he left Richard and Geoffrey in her care – after all, as chroniclers would later attest, no queen in the annals of history had ever betrayed her husband in such a treacherous manner. But Young Henry was another matter. His meeting with Louis of France back in November now took on a different complexion. The Old King hurriedly set out for the north, taking Henry and Marguerite with him, and discreetly ordered that his castles be readied for war. The Young King must have had his military household with him at this point, William Marshal included, but it is unclear whether Henry was in any way compelled to accompany his father. According to one local chronicler, Henry II pretended to be embarking on a hunting excursion, but given that the party then travelled almost 150 miles, this excuse cannot have held for long. In all likelihood, the Young King was simply informed that he would be escorting the king, for as yet, no decisive breach had occurred.
Young Henry finally made his move at Chinon, stealing from the castle in the dead of night, accompanied only by his ‘privata familia’ (the very closest members of his household), including William Marshal. In the chaotic rush of this sudden escape Marguerite was left behind, and amid the confusion, even some of the Young King’s most trusted servants did not realise, at first, what was happening, though it might be assumed that leading knights, like Marshal, were party to the flight. Once away from Chinon and racing through the night, it became obvious that Henry intended to openly rebel against his father, and every one of his followers had a choice to make. Where did their loyalties lie: with the Young King, their lord; or with his father, Henry II, the great Angevin monarch? The wrong decision could spell the end of a retainer’s career, perhaps even his life. Richard Barre, the bearer of Young Henry’s royal seal, turned around immediately and returned to Chinon, taking the seal with him. Rather humiliatingly, the household staff responsible for Henry’s baggage (including his clothes) did the same, but when they presented themselves before the Old King he sent them straight back to his son, along with a gift of ‘silver cups, horses and rich cloth’. Young Henry might now be an adversary, but he was still an Angevin with a royal dignity to preserve. Needless to say, his seal was not returned.
After these departures the Young King demanded a formal oath of allegiance from his remaining followers. Having some sense what was to come, he was determined to surround himself only with those of proven fidelity. Some, like his steward William Blund, refused to swear and were allowed to return unharmed to Chinon. Most, like William Marshal, remained. They now set out with Henry to meet with Louis of France some 180 miles away, on the outskirts of Paris. As far as the Young King was concerned, these men had affirmed their steadfast devotion; but in Henry II’s eyes they were now guilty of the most heinous crime of treason against the crown. A formal list of these ‘diabolical’ traitors was later drawn up and the five leading members of Young Henry’s mesnie were all named. This roll call of dishonour survives to this day – copied by the great twelfth-century historian Roger of Howden, into his account of King Henry II’s reign. So it was that the great William Marshal made his first known appearance in a contemporary chronicle, and the man who would one day become England’s peerless knight was named an enemy of the state.
‘A WAR WITHOUT LOVE’
King Henry II may have sensed that some form of confrontation with his eldest son was all but inevitable even before the meeting at Limoges began. But he could not possibly have guessed that Young Henry’s rebellion would spark a massive uprising that would see his authority challenged in almost every province of the Angevin Empire. In the immediate aftermath of the Young King’s flight from Chinon, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey travelled to the Ile-de-France to join him, and Eleanor’s complicity in the whole affair was revealed. The queen appears to have made a calculated decision to challenge her husband’s authority, but her motives remain uncertain. Some have suggested that she was spurred to action by feverish jealousy over Henry II’s infidelities, most notably his affair with the beautiful English woman ‘Fair’ Rosamund Clifford – later legends even suggested that Eleanor had Rosamund assassinated in 1176. But this explanation probably owes more to chivalric fiction than reality. Now in her fifties, the queen may have been worried about being excluded, but not from Henry’s bedchamber. Like her husband, Eleanor was a political animal; one seemingly determined not to be sidelined as she aged. Her primary concerns in 1173 were probably to cement her own position in Aquitaine and to advance her sons’ careers, especially those of Young Henry and Richard.
In the spring of 1173 the ‘rebels’ gathered at a great assembly in Paris organised by King Louis VII. The Young King was proclaimed Henry III, England’s rightful ruler, and using a new royal seal helpfully provided by the French monarch, he set about binding a number of powerful allies to his cause. Documents were drawn up promising rich rewards of lands and income to the likes of Young Henry’s cousin Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders – one of the most powerful magnates in northern France, who at the age of thirty-one, was fast earning a reputation as a fearsome warrior and a canny political operator. Philip’s brother, Count Matthew of Boulogne, was similarly drawn into the conflict, as were the count of Blois and King William of Scotland. The Young King was building a powerful alliance, but to what purpose, and at whose behest?
Most historians have suggested that either Eleanor or Louis VII orchestrated the entire affair, discounting out of hand the possibility that Young Henry – the ‘feckless’ playboy – might have been the architect of his own fate, even though he was now eighteen. It is true, of course, that Henry’s visit to Paris in November 1172, and his connection to Louis through Marguerite, all pointed to the Capetian king as an active ally. Louis was, at the very least, a co-conspirator in the rebellion, but that did not make him its instigator. The queen’s influence is perhaps even more intriguing, given that she may have retained an agent within the Young King’s entourage – none other than William Marshal, her former household knight. But frustratingly, Marshal’s precise role in these events remains unknown. As a leading member of Young Henry’s mesnie, William must have been an influential voice and perhaps encouraged this bold move to action. On balance, Young Henry appears to have played a significant role in planning and then executing the confrontation with his father. Certainly, he is unlikely to have been a mere puppet manipulated by others.
Young Henry sought more than a mere token of land or increased allowance when he challenged his father. His goal was nothing less than the overthrow of the Old King’s regime and the seizure of his Angevin heartlands, and this attempted coup enjoyed remarkably widespread support. The Young King and his allies incited insurrection across the realm – such that Henry II soon faced attacks along the Scottish border, unrest within England itself and revolt in Aquitaine – while they focused their own resources on an invasion of Normandy. By the summer of 1173 the entire realm was in the grip of a destructive civil war and it seemed that the dark days of King Stephen’s reign were about to be repeated.
Contemporaries characterised this bitter, internecine struggle as ‘a war without love’. But some eyewitnesses were also aware of its underlying causes and sympathised with Young Henry’s predicament. The cleric Jordan of Fantosme, then living in southern England, noted perceptively that ‘a king without a realm is at a loss for something to do; at such a loss was the noble and gracious Young King’. In spite of being broadly supportive of Henry II’s position in his chronicle, Jordan actually laid much of the blame for the conflict at the Old King’s feet. After describing Young Henry’s coronation, he addressed a direct complaint to Henry II, stating that: ‘After this crowning and this transfer of power you took away from your son some of his authority, you thwarted his wishes so that he could not exercise power. Therein lay the seeds of a pitiless war.’
Very little is known of William Marshal’s conduct in this conflict beyond the fact that he remained loyal to the Young King. The author of the History seems to have been determined to offer a balanced – but also remarkably vague – account of the rebellion, and perhaps he was reflecting Marshal’s own equivocation as he looked back on this treacherous struggle. The biography mourned the fact that ‘many noblemen died’ in the conflict, stating that the land was ‘ravaged by the war’ and that ‘on both sides there were excesses’. The physical damage to the landscape during this ‘savage’ conflagration left ‘many a castle and many a town . . . razed to the ground’, and the scars were obviously evident many decades later, because the History noted that ‘in many places there are still the remains of what the war left’.
Neither the Young King, nor Henry II, was explicitly blamed for the war in the History of William Marshal, with the latter described as ‘very wise and courtly’. This was the same agile avoidance of criticism witnessed in the account of young William’s time as King Stephen’s hostage in 1152. Just as he had done then, the biographer laid the blame upon the losengiers (deceivers) who offered evil counsel to both father and son. The History indicated that there was a difference of opinion within the Young King’s inner circle, with some advising Henry ‘to turn against his father and use force to reduce him’, while others cautioned that ‘it would be very wrong to act in this way’. Marshal’s own opinion was never explicitly stated. Perhaps this meant that William stood as a voice of reason and reconciliation in this period; or it may well be that this was merely the sanitised version of events that he chose to recall. In the course of the war, Marshal was surely called upon to fight in the front line and to offer military counsel, but he remained inexpert in certain aspects of martial conduct – most notably siege-craft – and this raised the importance of others with more experience of command, like Philip of Flanders and King Louis VII.
The History of William Marshal described only one significant deed in any detail during the rebellion – at the height of the conflict, William supposedly knighted the Young King. Prior to this, the History made no mention of the fact that Henry had not attained knightly status, and its claim has to be doubted. It would have been very unusual for the young royal not to undergo a dubbing ceremony before his coronation, and a well-placed contemporary recorded that Henry was indeed knighted by his father’s hand in June 1170. The 1173 ‘knighting’ in the History seems to have been constructed both to inflate Marshal’s reputation and to subtly impute that William ennobled the Young King in the midst of an otherwise dishonourable conflict. Henry’s retinue supposedly encouraged him to be dubbed, because his lack of knightly status was ‘not to everyone’s liking’, adding that ‘we would all be a more effective force if you had a sword girded on’. William’s biographer then hammered home his hero’s standing and renown. Even though there were high-ranking ‘counts and barons’ present, Henry allegedly chose Marshal to perform the ritual because he was ‘the best knight who ever was or will be’ – a significant overstatement of his reputation and achievements at this stage. As a result, William ‘gladly girded on his sword and kissed him, whereupon he became a knight’. In his biographer’s opinion, Marshal had just transformed the Young King’s status, even though he himself ‘had not one strip of land to his name or anything else, just his chivalry’.
The great rebellion
The Young King and his allies made their first move in June 1173, launching a coordinated invasion of Normandy. Aiming to capture the ducal capital of Rouen through a pincer movement, King Louis of France led an attack towards the border fortress of Verneuil from the south, while Young Henry advanced from the north-east at the head of a large coalition force, including his brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, and the counts of Flanders and Boulogne. By this point William Marshal’s former patron, the lord of Tancarville, chamberlain of Normandy, had also sided with the Young King, bringing one hundred knights to the cause.
Young Henry enjoyed initial success, seizing the castle of Aumale on Normandy’s eastern frontier almost immediately (probably as a result of its commander switching sides) and then marched on to besiege Neufchâtel-en-Bray. This was a strange reversal for William Marshal. Seven years earlier, he had fought his first military engagement at this town, battling alongside the lord of Tancarville to defend Normandy from invasion. Now, as William returned in the company of his old master and beside the Young King, he had become the invader.
Marshal had certainly seen at least one siege in his life to date, having been present as a hostage when King Stephen sought to capture Newbury Castle in 1152, but the investment of Neufchâtel was probably his first direct experience of this form of military engagement. Like the mounted raid, or chevauchée, the siege was an essential feature of medieval warfare. In William’s world, castles were almost ubiquitous. The ruling elite used strongholds to maintain strategic, economic and administrative control of territory, and virtually every town or city was, to one degree or another, fortified by walls or a citadel. Disputed regions, like the borderlands of Normandy, were guarded by a dense network of forts, and most of these were constructed of stone by the mid-twelfth century. As a result, most territorial wars revolved around hard-fought contests for control of castles, and William Marshal would himself engage in countless sieges (both as aggressor and defender) in the course of his long career.
Two strategies were open to William and Young Henry when they arrived with their allies at Neufchâtel in the summer of 1173. As Marshal knew only too well from first-hand experience, the town contained a stout stone fortress, surrounded by suburbs, which would not be easily overcome. Neufchâtel could have been subjected to an encirclement siege: surrounded by a tight cordon and cut off from resupply, such that its garrison would eventually be starved or intimidated into submission. This was an exceptionally effective technique – though it often boiled down to a bleak, and sometimes savage, test of will – but it was time-consuming and potentially hazardous for an attacking force, who might easily find themselves isolated or confronted by a relieving army.
Needing to push on at speed towards Rouen, the Young King’s army adopted an assault-based strategy at Neufchâtel. Facing the castle’s formidable defences, the allies deployed a number of siege-engines (probably fairly rudimentary stone-throwing weapons, capable of propelling ten- to twenty-pound projectiles) and unleashed a fierce aerial bombardment. These volleys might inflict some damage on the walls, potentially causing a breach, but they also provided valuable cover under which direct attacks using battering rams and scaling ladders could be launched. Fighting in one of these offensives was a risky affair – garrisons used every available means to stem an attack, from unleashing scouring volleys of arrows and crossbow bolts, to pouring boiling pitch and burning sand down on advancing troops. William and Young Henry emerged from this first siege unscathed, but Count Matthew of Boulogne was less fortunate. In the midst of a frontal assault, he took an arrow in the knee and, when the wound became infected, he was left struggling for his life.
While the fighting continued above ground, a secondary battle was being waged beneath the surface. The allies sent in sappers to undermine Neufchâtel’s battlements, and these siege specialists proceeded to dig tunnels beneath the walls, carefully buttressing their excavations with wooden supports as they went. Once complete, these mines would be packed full of branches and kindling, set alight and left to collapse, thus bringing down the wall above, though on this occasion it appears that no tunnels were actually fired. Facing the combined onslaught of sapping and frontal attacks, Neufchâtel’s garrison decided that further resistance was futile and duly capitulated. This significant success was soured, however, when Matthew of Boulogne succumbed to his injury. His death sent a shockwave through the Flemish contingent and left his brother Philip of Flanders too grief-struck to continue with the war. When he withdrew, Young Henry’s advance faltered. This setback was compounded by King Louis’ marked lack of success to the south, where his army was driven from Verneuil and forced into humiliating flight. The first phase of the rebellion had ended in failure.
Throughout the war, King Henry II proved himself to be a canny and adroit commander. Facing a swelling tide of unrest, and confronted by enemies on many fronts, he remained calm and cautious. Trusting that those barons and castellans still faithful to the crown could hold the provinces, the Old King staunchly refused to be drawn into precipitous action. Like any medieval military leader, Henry was exceptionally wary of pitched battles, because these open confrontations were highly unpredictable. Most twelfth-century generals avoided full-scale clashes of this type unless they enjoyed absolutely overwhelming numerical superiority, and as a result, battles were remarkably rare in this era. Indeed, through all his long years of campaigning, William Marshal would only fight in one engagement that could be properly classed as a battle, and even that was set within the context of a siege.
In 1173, King Henry II committed his forces only when an overwhelming threat presented itself and stayed back from the front line whenever possible. Instead, he used his well-stocked treasury to employ some 20,000 ruthless Brabançon (Flemish) mercenaries to fight in his name. Henry recognised that his capture would be catastrophic. The fear was not execution – such an act of cold-blooded regicide would have been virtually unimaginable – but the removal from power through enforced ‘retirement’. Some seventy years earlier, Henry II’s great-uncle, Robert Curthose, had been plucked from the board in this way and then frittered away the rest of his days in prison. The Old King had no intention of following in his footsteps.
After the abortive invasion of Normandy, the two sides were deadlocked, and attempts at reconciliation that summer foundered. It was probably around this time that Queen Eleanor tried to leave Aquitaine and join her sons. Rumour had it that she disguised herself as a man in an attempt to evade capture, but she was seized nonetheless and taken into custody. With Queen Marguerite also under close guard, Henry II now had two valuable hostages. A lull in the fighting followed, indeed a truce may even have been proclaimed between Christmas and Easter, though if so the Young King seems to have broken it by attempting a daring, but ultimately fruitless midwinter attack on southern Normandy. It was not until the spring of 1174 that hostilities recommenced in earnest.
Young Henry’s rebellion was faltering and his uncle, King Louis, had proved to be a largely ineffective ally. Meanwhile, Henry II and his royalist supporters were making significant headway in Anjou, Maine and Aquitaine. The Young King needed to land a telling blow, but the plan he now concocted with Count Philip of Flanders involved considerable risk. Young Henry was to attempt a full-scale invasion of England itself; almost a repeat of 1066, but this time with landfall made in East Anglia. Royalist strongholds in the north were already under attack from King William of Scotland, and there were others in England who favoured Young Henry’s cause. A fleet was prepared on the Flemish coast and in mid-May the first ships sailed. This advance force of just over 300 men successfully established a beachhead and later seized control of Norwich. Now primed to strike, all the Young King needed was a favourable wind. Henry waited on the coast of Flanders for weeks, and William Marshal must have been beside him during these long days of anxious anticipation. But through June and early July the wind stubbornly refused to change.
By this time the Old King was back in Normandy, and urgent messages of alarm from England had reached him. Henry II now had no choice but to attempt an immediate sailing, regardless of the weather. Taking Eleanor and Marguerite with him, he set out from Barfleur around 7 July 1174. The sea was roughening and the wind was ‘blowing directly against them’ according to one close contemporary; understandably nervous, the crew doubted that a crossing could be made. It was said that Henry stood on the deck ‘in front of everyone’, and ‘lifting his eyes to Heaven’, prayed to God that he might make ‘a safe landing’. Was his story about to end in disaster on the water, just like that of William Ætheling in 1120?
By some accounts it was not until dawn the next day that the coast was spotted. The royal ship had been blown off course, but somehow found its way to Southampton, allowing Henry to disembark unharmed. From there he sped to Canterbury and the new shrine to the martyred Thomas Becket. The motives behind Henry’s sudden pilgrimage that July are difficult to untangle. He was driven in part it would seem, by a heartfelt desire to give thanks for his safe passage and perhaps an authentic sense of remorse for Becket’s murder. But the Old King had also made a calculated decision to mark his arrival in England with an extreme and public act of atonement – one that could leave his subjects in no doubt that their true, pious and God-fearing monarch had returned. So it was that, on 12 June, King Henry II came walking barefoot to Canterbury Cathedral, ‘with streaming tears, groans and cries’, begging for absolution. Stripped to the waist, before a hushed crowd, Henry was beaten with rods by a gaggle of prelates. Once scourged of his sin, the king promised an annual endowment of £40, so that ‘lamps [might] burn perpetually around the martyr’s tomb’ in veneration of St Thomas.
In the immediate aftermath of this visit, news arrived of a startling victory for royalist forces in the north; William of Scotland had been captured near Alnwick and his insurrection crushed. To many this seemed like an act of divine providence. With the pendulum now swinging in his favour, Henry II rapidly quashed the remaining pockets of resistance in England, securing the kingdom. Back on the Continent, the Young King realised that his chance had passed and the invasion was called off. While his father remained preoccupied in England, Young Henry and William Marshal joined Count Philip and King Louis to launch a second invasion of Normandy in late July. If they could seize Rouen then something might still be salvaged from the wreckage of the rebellion. Mustering every remaining ounce of manpower, they laid siege to the great ducal city with a ‘vast and terrible’ army, and began to assemble engines of war. But Rouen was heavily defended, strongly fortified and, lying on the banks of the River Seine, could not be fully encircled. The allies proved unable to tighten the noose and, moving with his legendary speed, Henry II re-crossed the Channel and relieved Rouen on 11 August. The Young King had been outplayed. Torching their siege machines and tents, the rebel armies began a despondent retreat. The war was over.
In the end, Young Henry had been unable to overcome his father’s cool-headed resolve and seemingly inexhaustible resources. As one of the Old King’s supporters smugly declared, the rebels had learnt ‘that it was no easy task to wrest the club from the hand of Hercules’. Had luck been with him, or if Louis of France had proved to be a more dynamic collaborator, then victory might well have been possible. As it was, the Young King was forced to make peace on his father’s terms. At a gathering near Tours, on 30 September 1174, he witnessed a formal treaty finalising the settlement, and so too did William Marshal. Henry II was magnanimous in victory. His eldest son was to receive an allowance of 15,000 Angevin pounds per annum, and rights to two Norman castles (when his father saw fit to release them). Richard and Geoffrey were similarly promised incomes and lands. Most of those who had supported the Young Henry’s cause were permitted to keep their lordships – though unsanctioned castles were destroyed across the realm – and the majority of prisoners were released. The Old King had brought his cubs to heel, and few could doubt that he would now watch them with a far more wary and vigilant eye. Only Queen Eleanor remained unforgiven. Perhaps Henry judged her to have been the spider at the centre of this treacherous conspiracy; it may be that he was simply appalled by her unbidden betrayal. She was taken into close confinement and would spend the next decade and more in captivity in England.
The Young King caged
Young Henry was not imprisoned as such, but nonetheless he was forced to live the next year-and-a-half in the equivalent of an open cage, travelling under his father’s watchful gaze at almost all times. At a succession of formal gatherings, the Young King was made to reaffirm his allegiance, and a renewed oath of fealty for himself and his men given near Bayeux was witnessed by Rotrou, the archbishop of Rouen. On 8 May 1175, father and son crossed over to England and remained within the kingdom for the rest of that year.
William Marshal evidently recalled this period as one of almost restful inactivity, as the History stated that the Young King and his knights now resided in a ‘fine and beautiful place’, and gave themselves over to the recreations of hunting and hawking. William’s biographer maintained that it was only after months of such idleness that Henry and his household became restless. Recognising that ‘a long period of rest is a disgrace to a young man’, the Young King supposedly sought leave from his father ‘to go over the Channel for my sport’ – that is, to begin attending the kind of knightly tournaments that were still banned in England. Historians have generally accepted this account and therefore concluded that, in the wake of the failed rebellion, both Young Henry and William Marshal became detached from the world of high politics and military conflict. By early 1176, both men are supposed to have thrown themselves into the obsessive pursuit of tournament glory, with barely a thought for the real world beyond. In reality, this was at best only half the story.
An array of detailed evidence allows us to track the movements of the Young King’s household within England, and it turns out that, far from putting up their feet in some rural idyll, Henry and his knights travelled hundreds of miles during the course of 1175, zigzagging across the kingdom, usually at the side of the Old King. Young Henry can be placed in London, Oxford, Canterbury, Woodstock, York, Windsor and Winchester, often attending major assemblies with the likes of the Scots, the Irish and papal legates. It is possible that Henry II was deliberately parading his son through England simply to proclaim his own supremacy and flaunt his wayward heir’s new-found docility. But perhaps he was also trying to gauge his son’s allegiance, wondering already whether the Young King’s political and military career might be rejuvenated. Certainly, Henry II was not content to merely release his son into the tournament world, even in 1176.
The Young King did eventually grow restless under this close surveillance. By early 1176 he was suggesting that he and Marguerite might undertake the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in north-western Iberia. But Henry II judged this to be a ruse cooked up by ‘evil hangers on’ to buy Young Henry a measure of freedom, and vetoed the journey. After Easter, however, the Old King relented somewhat. His heir would be permitted to travel south, but only so that he might assist his brother Richard – now the well-established count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine – in quelling another outbreak of provincial unrest. Thus, in the summer of 1176, William Marshal accompanied the Young King on his journey to Poitiers, returning to fight once again in the region that had witnessed Patrick of Salisbury’s ‘murder’ and his own despairing captivity. Much of the focus in 1176 was on suppressing Angoulême, to the south of Poitou, but it was back in the city of Poitiers itself that Young Henry’s hostility to his father bubbled to the surface once more.
Once out of England, and free of Henry II’s constant supervision, the Young King began to expand his household. Over time he drew a number of skilled clerics and administrators into his service, including a relative of the Salisbury and Marshal families, Gervase of Tilbury (who served as his personal chaplain), and the theologian Ralph Niger. At first, however, his primary focus was to recruit knights. The inner circle of his mesnie, like William Marshal and Robert Tresgoz, remained, as always, by his side. But Henry sought new warriors, and he took the defiant step of welcoming in French and Norman knights who were deemed ‘enemies’ of the Old King – presumably men who had been named traitors during the rebellion. Perhaps Henry was simply seeking to reassert his independence, but his father construed this as wilful insubordination.
The Young King must have imagined that he was safe in Poitiers, far from Henry II’s gaze, but he was mistaken. In August, a scandalous discovery was made. A member of Young Henry’s own household, his chancellor Adam, was caught attempting to send a message detailing his lord’s questionable actions back to the Old King in England. Within the context of a medieval mesnie – the intimate fellowship in which iron-cast fidelity was expected – this was a grave act of treachery; one that incriminated both the spy Adam and his master Henry II. The Young King convened a summary court to try his chancellor – on which William Marshal likely sat – and a death sentence was passed. Only the bishop of Poitiers’ imploring intervention saved Adam from the gibbet. Moved to mercy, Henry had the renegade stripped naked and whipped through the city streets, before packing him off to Normandy.
It was probably only from this point onwards, in the late summer of 1176, that Young Henry began increasingly to turn away from the dynastic struggles of the Angevin realm, sickened by his father’s meddling. It would be almost three years before he set foot in England again. That December he held his own Christmas Court in Normandy with Queen Marguerite. By then she was pregnant with their first child, and perhaps this sparked new schemes and ambitions, but they were extinguished when the baby boy died at birth in the summer of 1177. Twice in that same year, the Young King reluctantly followed Henry II’s orders to lead military forays into the region of Berry, east of Poitiers. But his heart was elsewhere. Together with William Marshal, he had turned to the tournament. For now, at least, both men would seek to make their mark on the world of chivalry.