Part III
7
William Marshal returned from the Holy Land in either late 1185 or early 1186, and presented himself before Henry II in Normandy. The Old King held to his promise and appointed William to the royal household. Having spent long years in the entourage of a king with no realm to rule, Marshal now found himself, on the brink of his fortieth year, at the very heart of the Angevin world. William’s days of grand martial display on the tournament field were over. His duty now was to offer direct service to Henry II, commanding troops in the field and fighting when necessary, proffering sage counsel and steadfast support. This immensely privileged position placed Marshal at the side of the most powerful man in Europe, bringing with it a new level of influence and access to crown favour.
The appointment soon brought rewards in the form of land and title, and enabled William to start building up his own inner circle of loyal personal retainers and knights. Marshal’s status also meant that he had to maintain a near-constant presence at the royal court. William’s former lord, the Young King Henry, had enjoyed an extravagant life style, but had also felt the nagging burden of his debts. The regal splendour of the Old King’s court left his late son’s profligacy in the shade. Henry II lived in majesty, surrounded by hundreds of fawning courtiers, each thirsting for advancement. As a hardened warrior, William Marshal had risen to the top of Europe’s tournament circuit. The question was whether he could now adapt to this new environment, navigating his way through the rarefied atmosphere of the Angevin court?
THE ANGEVIN ROYAL COURT
Henry II’s court was a grand travelling circus. Confronted by the challenge of governing a sprawling Angevin Empire that straddled the Channel, the Old King had chosen not to proclaim any one city as his capital. Instead he became the archetypal itinerant monarch, forever touring his domains, administering crown justice in his ‘court’ and manifesting royal might throughout the provinces. Without a stable seat of power, it became customary for virtually the entire machinery of government to follow in his wake as he criss-crossed the realm. Thus the court became bloated with an army of officials, clerks, servants, retainers and barons – the largest institution of its kind in Europe. This heaving entourage could fill fifty ships when it crossed from England to France. One courtier likened it to a ‘hundred-handed giant’, declaring that ‘no such court like it has been heard of in the past or is to be feared again in the future’.
William had gained some experience of the Angevin court from his time with the Young King, but the sheer scale and chaotic hustle of this throng must have been bewildering. Marshal was also exposed to the opulence of Henry II’s crown residences, where he could enjoy comforts unimagined by the masses. The ancient seat of royal power in England was Winchester and its palace housed the king’s inner-sanctum – his ‘Painted Chamber’ – where the Old King would recline upon his state bed to receive distinguished visitors. It was said that one wall of this room had been painted, in mocking reference to Henry’s wayward sons, with a fresco depicting a great eagle being ripped to pieces by its four offspring.
The newer royal palace at Westminster, then on the outskirts of London, was challenging for pre-eminence. Its centrepiece was the massive Great Hall constructed at the end of the eleventh century – at 240 feet in length, easily the largest hall in north-western Europe. Most of the royal complex at Westminster burned down in a fire in 1834, but the Great Hall remains standing to this day and its looming expanse is still overwhelming. Henry II maintained a string of other palaces across his domains. His preferred residence in Normandy was the royal estate at Quévilly, across the Seine from Rouen, complete with its own private hunting park. Elsewhere, the palace at Clarendon, in Wiltshire, consisted of a series of private royal apartments surrounding a central stone and flint-walled hall, its roof held aloft by Purbeck marble pillars and its walls covered in plaster dyed blue with powdered lapis lazuli, sourced from as far afield as Afghanistan.
The twelfth century marked the start of a decisive shift across Europe towards the use of stone, rather than wood, in building and construction. This brought numerous advantages, not least the ability to create fireplaces and chimneys that were much more efficient and effective than central fires and open roofs. But stone structures literally cost hundreds of times more than their wooden precursors, and only the king and a handful of his wealthiest magnates could countenance such expense. Financial records show, for example, that the late twelfth-century timber hunting lodge built at Kinver in central England cost just over £24. By contrast, Henry II’s majestic stone tower at Orford (on England’s east coast), complete with a private royal bedchamber and an en-suite privy, cost £1,000. Most staggering of all was the mighty stone keep at Dover Castle – known as the Great Tower – that boasted its own advanced plumbing system, with lead pipes drawing fresh water from a well dug hundreds of feet into the chalk below. Its construction was just being completed when William joined the Old King’s household, for a total cost of some £6,500.
Within these luxurious settings, Marshal was treated to the finest foods, drinks and entertainments. Some of the more exotic fare – such as crane, swan and peacock – required a refined palate, and the scale of consumption was mind-boggling. Royal accounts show that in 1180 the court went through 1,000 pounds of almonds in London alone. William and his fellow courtiers also drank vast quantities of beer and wine, with the latter being transported in giant 252-gallon wooden casks. One contemporary remarked that English wine ‘could only be drunk with your eyes closed and your teeth clenched’, so it was fortunate that Henry’s Aquitanean estates gave him access to the celebrated vineyards of Bordeaux and Poitou.
The itinerant Angevin court attracted minstrels, musicians and story tellers, happy to regale the crowds with mannered tales of chivalric prowess, drawn from the myth-historic world of King Arthur and his knights. Less earnest amusements were also on offer. One courtier noted that Henry II’s entourage was followed by a disreputable gaggle of hangers-on, ranging from harlots, dicers and confidence tricksters, to barbers and clowns. A famous jester, known as Roland the Farter, earned particular renown because he was able to jump in the air, whistle and pass wind at the same time. In England and Normandy at least, court prostitutes were carefully regulated, and Ranulf of Broc and Baldric FitzGilbert held the office of ‘marshal of the whores’ in these two localities.
William’s life at court was also unusual in that it regularly continued well into the night and the hours of darkness. In the twelfth century most people had to confine the bulk of their activities to the daylight hours as wax or tallow candles were simply too expensive to burn on a daily basis. The Angevin court consumed an extraordinary quantity of candles, and each member of the royal household received a fixed allowance. Walter Map was playing on this theme of nocturnal activity when he described Henry II’s courtiers as the ‘creatures of the night’, alluding to what he regarded as their more unsavoury habits and damning them as men ‘who leave nothing untouched and untried’.
The courtly life
The Angevin court offered William manifold luxuries, delights and enticements, but it was also a place of danger and insecurity – a viper’s nest of gossip, intrigue and duplicity, where a single misstep or ill-chosen word could threaten ruin. Indeed, one courtier likened it to a Hell, littered with ‘the foul trailings of worms [and] serpents, and all manner of creeping things’. The prize, yearned after by all, was access to the king – to his ear and favour – because royal patronage could transform one’s fortunes. The example set by Thomas Becket in the 1150s proved that Henry II had it in his gift to turn a relative unknown, of middling or even low birth, into one of the richest and most powerful figures in the realm. In theory, at least, the court was highly stratified, with only the elite inner circle – of which Marshal was now on the fringe – permitted regular contact with the Old King. But the alarming feature of Angevin court was its unpredictability. Its sheer size, constant mobility and ever-changing personnel made it, in the words of Walter Map, a ‘perilous whirl . . . fluctuating and variable’, in which it was simply impossible to remember everyone’s name and station.
William Marshal’s task in 1186 was to mark the most important players – the great magnates and clergymen, the leading clerks and officers – and to move with exceptional caution. At knightly tournaments he had been expected to conform to the emerging code of chivalry. Now, success depended on his ability to interpret and absorb the unwritten rules of the court; to be able to follow the precepts of ‘courtesie’ (‘courtesy’, or quite literally ‘how to behave at court’). Those found in the upper echelons of the Angevin court were generally either of knightly or clerical background. As a member of the warrior class, William did have some natural advantages. His acknowledged status as a preudhomme – a man of virtue, worthy of respect – weighed in his favour and, at times of military conflict, he could continue to reaffirm his value to the king through feats of arms. This would prove to be particularly significant during the turmoil of the Old King’s final years.
Even so, most leading courtiers were prized first and foremost not for their physical prowess, but their measured advice and trusted guidance on matters of state. To earn Henry’s respect and gain his ear, Marshal needed to prove his worth as a counsellor and confidante. The ideals of ‘courtesie’ current in the 1180s meant that, to achieve this goal, William had, above all, to be impassive; capable of maintaining an icy, ironclad grip on his feelings. Excessive public displays of emotion (especially anger) were frowned upon as indicators of an intemperate and unbalanced personality, and any advice proffered by such a figure might be easily discredited as hasty or unwise. Rivals for the king’s affection often sought to goad the unwary through insults – some veiled, others blatant – in the hope of provoking an enraged outburst. Not surprisingly, many hot-blooded knights, born to the battlefield, struggled to achieve this mannered control.
William had experience of mixing with men of power – as a tournament champion he had been on speaking terms with the likes of Philip of Flanders and Theobald of Blois since the late 1170s – and the scandal of 1182 had given him a bitter taste of courtly machinations, but nothing can have prepared him for the scale and complexity of the challenge he now faced. Nonetheless, over time he learnt to navigate the quagmire of courtly customs and politics, and proved to be a remarkably successful courtier. He possessed a rare ability to thrive both in war and at court. Marshal seems to have gradually developed a form of emotional armour, allowing him to present an imperturbable public face. This glacial calm would serve him well in the latter stages of his career.
William also appears to have diffused the tension of ‘courtly’ confrontations by recounting disarming anecdotes from his past. This was where the oft-repeated tales of his time as a child hostage, or his various tournament triumphs, came into their own. Each carefully crafted story affirmed Marshal’s laudable qualities: his ability to charm King Stephen in 1152 or to earn the triumphal spear at the Pleurs tournament around 1177. But at the same time any hint of prideful boasting was countered by notes of humour and self-deprecation: the young boy spurned by his father or the champion found with his head on a blacksmith’s anvil. In relative terms these were simple, but effective, stories – hardly the masterpieces of veiled subterfuge employed by men such as the likes of Walter Map, where everything was implied and nothing said openly.
It would be naive to assume that William’s conduct as a courtier was thoroughly admirable. In truth, it was probably impossible to climb through the ranks as he did without a degree of obsequious duplicity and scheming ambition. To thrive in the shark-pool of the Angevin court one had to manage an array of shifting alliances, and engage in a delicate dance of nuanced flattery and guarded insinuation. As his career advanced, William would take great care not to make powerful enemies and to avoid alienating those who might further his interests in the future. Indeed, one of Richard the Lionheart’s favourites, the plain-speaking William Longchamp, would later accuse Marshal of just such conniving equivocation. Nonetheless, at moments of crisis, when the hardest choices had to be made, William would prove to be a remarkably loyal retainer and servant of the crown. Ultimately, it was perhaps his well-earned reputation for unfailing fidelity that brought Marshal to the notice of successive monarchs.
The psychological strain of holding a mask of placid ‘courtly’ composure, while constantly weighing the intentions of rivals, must have been immense. There was perhaps some relief to be had from finding former associates at court; men who had followed a similar path from the Young King’s military entourage to Henry’s household, such as Robert Tresgoz, Gerard Talbot and Baldwin of Béthune. Marshal certainly cultivated close friendships with a handful of trusted confidants like Baldwin. He also forged an important alliance with another rising figure in the Angevin court, Geoffrey FitzPeter. Like William, Geoffrey was the younger son of a minor West Country crown official, but he had pursued the clerical, rather than knightly career path, and was fast achieving distinction as an administrator and bureaucrat. However, it was perhaps only in the company of his own inner circle – his mesnie (military retinue) – that Marshal could actually drop his guard, and as the years passed, this must have served to deepen his relationship with, and dependence upon, these retainers.
WITH THE KING’S FAVOUR
As William Marshal found his bearings within the Angevin court, gratifying evidence of Henry II’s favour was soon forthcoming. During his thirteen years of service in the Young King Henry’s entourage, William’s hopes of gaining advancement through title and land had been constantly thwarted. His own fortune and fame had depended, in large part, upon continued success on the tournament circuit, but these chivalric contests could be dangerous and unpredictable. They were a young man’s game and Marshal was now entering his forties.
Luckily for William, the Old King was not merely a monarch in name. He wielded real power and could shower his favourites with gifts. Nonetheless, even an august ruler of Henry’s stature could not simply dole out estates and honours on a whim. In 1066, when William the Conqueror’s Norman forces ransacked England and dispatched the vast majority of its Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, virtually the entire realm had reverted to the crown. In the first wave of Norman settlement and colonisation, these newly seized territories could then be parcelled out as King William saw fit, along with an array of titles and offices. When the pickings were this rich it was easy to satisfy ambitions, and the Conqueror was able to retain a vast quantity of land for himself and still have more than enough left over to transform his leading retainers into great magnates.
More than a century had passed since those heady days. Patterns of landholding, lordship and entitlement had become established and then ingrained, while the king’s own estates had been slowly whittled away. Laws and customs had evolved to protect many of the nobility’s rights, though there was a constant tension between the interests of the crown and the expectations of his aristocracy. By the later twelfth century, in most cases, land and title could not be stripped and redistributed without good cause. There had been opportunities for fresh conquests in Wales and Ireland, and some remained, but for the most part, kings wishing to reward loyalty and allegiance had either to work on the margins through legal channels, or to forfeit a portion of their own royal lands.
It was this latter approach that Henry II employed in 1186 when granting William Marshal his first estate at Cartmel in north-west England – a handsome parcel of Lancashire land, set between the majestic shores of Lake Windermere (at the foot of the Lake District) and the windswept-coast at Morecambe Bay to the south. This was a modest enough start, but it brought William an annual income of £32 and gave him a firm foundation from which to build. Around this same time, the Old King made use of another significant royal prerogative to bring Marshal further reward. It was traditional for young male and female noble-born heirs to become wards of the crown if their lands were held directly from the king. Henry II had it in his gift to confer guardianship of such wards as he saw fit, and two were now bestowed upon William.
The first of these brought Marshal wardship of Heloise of Lancaster. Since her father’s death in 1184, she had been heiress of Kendal, one of the major lordships in northern England, with lands stretching across Westmoreland, Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire and control of a number of castles. Given that Kendal lay just fifteen miles north-east of Cartmel, there was an obvious connection with William’s new estate. In formal terms, Marshal had a duty as her guardian to protect Heloise’s interests and to care for her person, and the History was keen to emphasise that he discharged this role, keeping the ‘lady of Lancaster, [a woman of] great elegance . . . from dishonour for a long time’. At a practical level, however, this wardship was a valuable gift. So long as Heloise remained unwed, William could control and exploit her lands for his own benefit. As guardian, it was also his responsibility to arrange her marriage and this meant that he could either wed her himself or use the promise of her hand to secure other advantages.
This might seem like a desperately seedy and mercenary arrangement, but in many ways it suited all parties. Heloise obviously had little say in her future, but she was at least shielded from harm and could expect to retain a direct claim to her family lands, while Henry II was able to discharge his responsibility for the lordship of Kendal and reward his new household knight. Of course, the main beneficiary was William. He now had the promise of significant advancement, but also the opportunity to shape his own future. Marshal could have jumped at the opportunity that now stood before him, marrying Heloise, uniting his Cartmel estate with the Kendal lands and assuming the role of a noteworthy northern baron. That seems to have been the Old King’s expectation. As it was, William proved content to bide his time. So long as the lady of Lancaster remained living and healthy the option of a marriage remained, but he decided for now to leave the door open to other, even rosier, prospects.
Marshal’s second ward was a young lad, around fifteen years of age, named John of Earley. In many respects, John’s background was strikingly similar to William’s own, being the orphaned son of a minor West Country nobleman (the late royal chamberlain William of Earley). John was given into Marshal’s care to receive a military education and, in the first instance, to serve as his squire. The two forged an exceptionally close bond and, as the years passed, Earley became one of William’s most trusted retainers and closest friends. Indeed, John’s personal recollections and eyewitness testimony would later prove to be crucial sources of information when the History of William Marshal came to be written. From 1186 onwards, John of Earley’s fidelity and near-constant presence became a prominent feature of William’s life.
John of Earley was also one of the cornerstones of the mesnie that Marshal now began to assemble around him. Two other prominent knights entered William’s entourage in this period – William Waleran and Geoffrey FitzRobert. Both were from Wiltshire, one of the counties of Marshal’s childhood, and together they would enjoy long and successful careers at William’s side. Marshal had begun a slow, but significant transformation. He had lived the bulk of his life as a knight in service, but he was now becoming a lord in his own right, with knights who looked to him for protection and promotion. The burden of responsibility had begun to settle.
Luckily for William, and his new knights, his career was flourishing. He was climbing the social ladder, though as yet he had not come close to its highest rungs. The History suggested that, from 1186 onwards, Henry II ‘showed great affection towards’ Marshal and appointed him ‘his chief advisor’, but this was a significant overstatement of William’s position and importance. As a leading household knight, Marshal was part of the Old King’s inner circle at court and he quickly became a notable commander in the field and a source of counsel on matters of martial strategy and military planning. But in the day-to-day business of governance and power politics, William still stood on the periphery. A range of documentary evidence from the Angevin court indicates that in eminence, Marshal still ranked well below men like Ranulf Glanville – justiciar of England (the man charged with governing the kingdom in Henry’s absence) – and the great magnate William Mandeville, earl of Essex.
By the later 1180s, William Marshal clearly aspired to reach the level of these men. He decided not to marry Heloise of Lancaster, though he ‘acted as a most courtly guardian’, she remained, in the History’s polite terms, merely ‘his dear friend’. This suggests that William was both confident of his ability to rise higher in the king’s favour, and exceptionally ambitious. A small fragment of an otherwise unknown royal letter written in 1188, and only rediscovered at the end of the twentieth century, offers a momentary, but nonetheless remarkable, glimpse of Marshal’s impatient hunger for advancement and the methods he was willing to employ in its pursuit. By this stage, the Old King was hard-pressed by an ongoing conflict with the Capetian French and preparing to wage a major campaign on the Continent. He duly sent a missive to William Marshal entreating him to ‘come to me fully equipped as soon as may be, with as many knights as you can get, to support me in my war’. Henry then acknowledged, with extraordinary candour, that ‘you have frequently complained to me that I have bestowed on you only a small fee’, and went on to promise Marshal the great castle of Châteauroux in Berry ‘with all its lordship and whatever belongs to it’ by way of recompense.
This text indicates that William was not above demanding due reward for his service, indeed it suggests that he routinely grumbled, wheedled and perhaps whined to the Old King in order to get his way. Given the fierce competition for crown largesse, it may well be that this type of incessant petitioning was commonplace among courtiers, but this evidence still reinforces the strong impression that Marshal’s conduct did not always conform to modern fantasies of lofty chivalric behaviour.
THE OLD KING FALTERS
In some respects, William was also fortunate to arrive in Henry II’s court at a time of burgeoning confrontation, when an especially high premium was placed on martial skill. The Old King was now in his mid-fifties and starting to show intermittent signs of the debilitating illness that would ultimately rob him of his life. Yet he remained stubbornly determined to preserve his grip over the Angevin Empire and content to manipulate his children if he believed it would advance his dynasty’s best interests. The balance of power within the royal family had been reset during William Marshal’s absence in the Holy Land. With Young King Henry’s death in 1183, Richard the Lion heart – the count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine – suddenly became Henry II’s eldest surviving son and primary heir. Queen Eleanor remained in captivity in England, though the conditions of her confinement had loosened briefly in late 1184 and early 1185, when she was permitted to attend the Christmas Court at Windsor and then make a fleeting visit to Normandy.
Richard’s major rival looked for a time to be the Old King’s son, Geoffrey, count of Brittany. But, in August 1186, he fell from his horse during the grand mêlée of a French tournament and was badly trampled by the horses of his own household knights. Severely wounded, Geoffrey died later in Paris, leaving behind a wife who was already two-months pregnant. She eventually gave birth to Geoffrey’s only male heir, Arthur. This left Henry’s and Eleanor’s youngest son, John, who was now entering his twenties, as the only adult challenger for power.
Fate had thus conspired to place Richard in a similar predicament to that long endured by his elder brother Young Henry. He had become the new restless heir in waiting, thwarted by his father and threatened by his sibling. By the late 1180s, the Lionheart’s priority was to secure an unequivocal confirmation that he would inherit the English crown. But Richard was also determined to hold on to the prized province of Aquitaine, having poured years of his life into subduing the duchy. Unfortunately, the Old King was still smarting from Young Henry’s two rebellions and had not the slightest intention of anointing another heir during his own lifetime. His policy was to withhold power and equivocate on the issue of the succession in the belief that the resultant mixture of hunger and anxiety would compel loyalty. Just as he had with Young Henry, the Old King expected Richard to wait obediently in the wings, and he was only too happy to drop hints that John should be handed Aquitaine, or perhaps even groomed for the crown, if that kept the Lionheart in his place.
But in falling back upon this familiar strategy, King Henry had miscalculated. The world had moved on, even if his thinking had not. No longer the virile young monarch, Henry was likely to struggle to defeat a major uprising. Richard was also a more ruthless and experienced opponent than his elder brother. Above all, the Old King underestimated Philip Augustus, the Capetian king of France. The rather skittish, feeble teenager of 1180 had grown into his crown and was fast maturing into a lethal adversary. Like Henry II, Philip understood that efficient governance could fill the royal coffers, giving him the wealth to challenge Angevin dominance in France, and he also shared the Old King’s gift for political machination. Not for nothing would one contemporary describe him as ‘wily and as cunning as a fox’. To Philip, the power held by the upstart lordlings from Anjou was an unconscionable insult to the ancient royal majesty of his Capetian house. Their possession of the Norman Vexin and their influence over the contested region of Berry to the south-west were particularly galling. He was determined to reassert the might of the French monarchy, and willing to break promises, betray friendships and wage bloody wars to achieve this goal.
King Philip recognised that Richard the Lionheart’s frustrations might be turned to his own advantage. He was also intent upon resolving the issue of his half-sister Alice’s status. She had been betrothed to Richard in 1169 and taken into Angevin custody, yet no marriage had taken place and it was strongly rumoured that the French princess had become Henry II’s lover. In all probability, Philip’s concern over her fate was not driven by filial affection, but the cold realities of dynastic politics. Alice’s marriage to Richard would bring a dowry that might enable Philip to leverage access to the Vexin. The union could also produce heirs and thus bring the Capetians a stake in the Angevin realm.
Angevin-Capetian rivalry (1187–88)
King Philip made his first serious attempt to test Henry II’s resolve in 1187, launching a major incursion into Berry – the semi-independent territory that dangled invitingly between Aquitaine and the southern reaches of the French kingdom. The campaign scored an early success when the frontier fortress of Issoudun submitted to French authority, but the great prize of this region was the powerful lordship of Châteauroux. Its young heiress, Denise, had been Henry II’s ward ever since her father died leaving no male heir in 1176, and the great castle of Châteauroux and all its dependants remained in Angevin hands.
Philip laid siege to Châteauroux with a substantial force in the early summer of 1187, but was repulsed by its garrison. That June, the Old King and Richard hurriedly joined forces to launch a counter-attack and, as the Angevin and Capetian armies moved into position, it looked for once as if a major pitched battle was unavoidable. Nothing is known of William Marshal’s movements at this point, though in all likelihood he was present in the Old King’s military retinue. Envoys shuttled between the two camps and Richard seems to have played a significant role in brokering a last-minute peace deal with Philip. On 23 June a two-year truce was finalised and both sides withdrew. However, the Lionheart then shocked his father by suddenly switching sides, riding back to Paris with Philip in a very public demonstration of friendship. It seems that the two men had plotted a temporary rapprochement of their own, finding that it served both their interests to unnerve the Old King. The message implied by Richard’s display of affection for the French monarch was obvious. If deprived of Aquitaine or his wider inheritance, the Lionheart would follow the example set by Young Henry in 1172, by breaking with his father and siding with the Capetian enemy. Henry II seems to have been wholly unprepared for this treachery and immediately sent a stream of messengers to his son, begging him to return. Richard was eventually drawn back into the Angevin fold, but it was apparent that in future his loyalty would only be secured at a price.
It was at this precise moment, with the balance of power between Henry II, Richard and King Philip delicately poised, that Latin Christendom was struck by disaster. Just two weeks after the confrontation at Châteauroux was averted, Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, was lured into battle in Palestine. His army was annihilated by Saladin at the Horns of Hattin on 4 July 1187 and, three months later, Jerusalem fell into Muslim hands. This calamity sent a shockwave through Western Europe and, with the preaching of a massive new crusade to avenge these injuries and reclaim the Holy Land, thousands of knights took up arms. According to the History of William Marshal ‘the number of those taking the cross was so great . . . that there was no man convinced of his worth who did not abandon wife and children to become a crusader.’
Amid this groundswell of crusading enthusiasm, it proved impossible for the great crown monarchs of the West to ignore the call to holy war. Richard took the cross at Tours in November 1187 – the first major lord to do so north of the Alps – and both Henry II and Philip Augustus followed suit in January 1188, after an impassioned sermon by the new archbishop of Tyre, recently arrived from Palestine. Jerusalem’s fall and the launching of the Third Crusade served merely to complicate the interplay between the Angevins and Capetians. The Lionheart’s apparent enthusiasm for the expedition alarmed both the Old King and Philip, because Richard’s precipitous departure might overturn Henry’s plans for the succession and leave the issue of Alice’s marriage unresolved. Meanwhile, Richard himself was unsettled by the fact that his younger brother John had made no move to take the cross – surely a sign that he hoped to seize power in the Lionheart’s absence. The papacy strictly prohibited any attacks on a crusader’s lands while he was fighting in the East, but neither Henry II, nor Philip Augustus, trusted the other to respect this law. Their mutual suspicion was so entrenched that detailed plans had to be laid for a simultaneous departure, because neither king would leave Europe without their rival in tow. The resultant delays meant that it would be three years before the main Angevin and Capetian crusading contingents reached the Levant. Other crusaders set out with greater speed. The Poitevin lord, Geoffrey of Lusignan, left France in the autumn of 1188 and went on to earn renown fighting in the crusade’s first titanic confrontation – the great siege of Acre. Europe’s elder statesman, the mighty German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa began an overland march at the head of a massive army in May 1189 and many expected him to seize overall leadership of the campaign.
Any hope that the Angevins and Capetians might set aside their differences in the interests of the holy war were shattered in June 1188, when King Philip broke the supposed two-year truce, launching a second invasion of Berry that this time brought the surrender of Châteauroux. Around the same time, Capetian forces prosecuted a series of destructive raids into Norman territory. The History of William Marshal described this as ‘war on a vast scale’, decrying the fact that ‘the land was laid waste and shamefully damaged’. Richard moved to defend the major fortresses of neighbouring Touraine, such as Loches, while launching punitive raids of his own into Berry, but the bulk of the region was now in French hands. At the news of this French aggression, Henry II ‘summoned a huge army’, including thousands of Welsh mercenaries. It was at this point that William Marshal received his call to arms and the promise of Châteauroux once it was retaken. Together with the king, he crossed to Normandy on 11 July and took up a defensive position in the northern duchy, prompting Philip Augustus to pull back to the French heartlands.
The Old King seems once again to have been caught flat-footed by the Capetian offensive, because rather than responding with an immediate attack of his own, he dispatched a diplomatic mission to the French court. The party was led by the eminent archbishop of Rouen, Walter of Coutances, but also included William Marshal. In reality, the deputation looks to have been little more than a stalling tactic, designed to give Henry time to muster his armies. Once in the presence of the Capetian king, Archbishop Walter bluntly demanded reparations for the damage recently inflicted on Angevin territory, and Philip unsurprisingly demurred, declaring his intention to hold Berry and recover the whole of the Norman Vexin. Nothing may have come from the embassy, but it marked Marshal’s first deployment as a high-level envoy, further signalling his rising status.
William also appears to have played a leading role in devising Angevin military strategy that summer. Both sides in the conflict had already employed the tactic of mounted raiding or chevauchées, with which Marshal had first become familiar in Poitou back in 1168. In spite of the History’s voluble criticism of the Capetians’ recent use of these ravaging assaults, the biographer now happily recorded that William advised the Old King to launch a sudden, devastating incursion into French territory, suggesting that, caught unawares, the Capetians would ‘suffer greater damage’. According to the History, Henry responded enthusiastically: ‘“By God’s eyes!” said the King “You are an excellent man and have advised me very well; it will be done exactly as you say.”’ On 30 August, the Angevin forces crossed into French territory near Pacy-sur-Eure and marched south-east. The biographer noted that their ‘hearts were set on causing great destruction [and] they made no secret of burning the whole countryside as far as Mantes’. The Old King rode further south to Bréval, where he ‘burned and destroyed everything he came to and never held back for anything’, taking ‘fine, handsome booty’ as he went. When he heard of the assault Philip Augustus was said to have been ‘full of grief’.
This form of scorched-earth warfare, targeting enemy resources, might have been commonplace in the twelfth century, but it still left terrible scars on the rural landscape and local population. Perhaps most chillingly of all, it is clear that these raids were not random acts of chaotic rampage. Instead, William and his peers had turned the chevauchée and its associated forms of assault into methodical campaigns of destruction and calculated brutality. Count Philip of Flanders was said to have offered the following advice: ‘Destroy your foes and lay waste their country, by fire and burning let all be set alight, that nothing be left for them, either in wood or meadow, of which in the morning they could have a meal.’ Contemporary sources also detailed the techniques involved, noting the use of scouts and scavengers to ransack settlements and seize ‘money, cattle, mules [and] sheep’, while specialist ‘incendiaries’ or ‘fire-starters’ torched villages and farmsteads, leaving ‘the terrified inhabitants [to either be] burned or led away with their hands tied’. Incursions of this type were specifically designed to inspire dread and panic, and were said to send ‘a surge of fear [sweeping] over the countryside’.
Marshal went on to prosecute a second ravaging expedition along the eastern frontier of Touraine, near the fortress of Montmirail, and on this occasion the History recalled that the Old King instructed William to ‘burn and destroy the entire region, sparing nothing’. The biographer then gleefully described how Marshal and his men marched through landscape ‘burning, robbing and plundering as they went’. Scant effort was made to justify these atrocities, though the History did make the remarkable suggestion that this raid might be considered ‘a great act of chivalry’ if it brought the enemy to his knees, because peace might then be restored. William and his contemporaries evidently felt little or no compunction about this grim feature of medieval warfare.
In spite of the ferocious tactics employed on both sides, the campaigning through the late summer and early autumn proved inconclusive. Henry II withdrew to Le Mans in Maine and began to experience more frequent bouts of illness, with some form of tumour developing in his groin. As winter approached, the fighting petered out and the Old King, Richard and Philip Augustus sought to settle their differences through a series of diplomatic exchanges and gatherings. The Capetian king used this period to re-establish contact with Richard, and seems to have stirred up the Lionheart’s discontent and suspicions, urging him to turn on his father. The rift might still have been repaired, had Henry made a decisive move to declare Richard his heir in England, but the Old King was plagued by doubts about his intentions and now began to regard young John as his one faithful son.
This rupture at the heart of the royal family would have far-reaching consequences. Had Henry and his offspring stood shoulder to shoulder, King Philip’s dreams of reasserting Capetian authority would surely have been foiled. As it was, the fissures within the Angevin dynasty gave the French king a crucial opening – one that, in the words of the History, would prove ‘injurious to all the heirs to the realm of England’. The decisive break came on 18 November 1188, at an assembly at Bonsmoulins (in southern Normandy). William Marshal travelled to this peace conference with Henry II and witnessed the Old King’s dismay when Richard and Philip arrived together. This public display of their renewed amity confirmed Henry’s worst fears and ‘he knew then for certain that he had been betrayed’. On that day, the Lionheart went down on his knees before King Philip and paid him homage for Normandy, Aquitaine, Anjou, Maine and Berry – an act of ritual subservience that confirmed their alliance. Denied power by his father, Richard was now willing to unite with the enemy and seize the Angevin realm by force.
The Old King had been roundly outmanoeuvred. He had been the scourge of international affairs for more than thirty years – a scheming mastermind, able to read his opponents and plot their downfall. Now, weakened by ill health and advancing age, he seemed paralysed by shock and fury; backed into a corner from which he could see no escape. Henry’s brusque refusal to confirm the Lionheart as heir to the English crown in the wake of Bonsmoulins made a direct confrontation all but inevitable. In these foreboding days of winter, the Old King turned to his inner circle, calling ‘Marshal and the others whom he loved and trusted the most [and asking] them for their advice in the matter’. As a result of this meeting, William was sent on an urgent mission to follow Richard and recall him to his father’s side, so that their feud might finally be settled. The Lionheart had been brought to heel in the summer of 1187 and the vain hope was that open conflict might yet be averted. William tracked Richard as far as Amboise (east of Tours), but discovered that the Lionheart had been up half the preceding night urgently preparing more than 200 letters calling his supporters across the Angevin realm to arms. With the wheels of war in motion, Marshal ‘sent word to the king [of this] cruel act of treachery’.
The Old King’s isolation
Henry II retreated into the Angevin heartlands of Maine and Anjou through the winter and early spring, seething with rage, but immobilised by illness. Sensing the Old King’s weakness, many of his supporters began to melt away. A number of notable barons absented themselves from Henry’s Christmas Court at Saumur in December 1188, and in the New Year Henry tried to flush out any turncoats by issuing a general summons to his nobles, instructing them to come ‘without delay and to offer no pretext for not doing so’. Ranulf Glanville (justiciar of England) remained loyal, but fearful of leaving the kingdom unprotected, sent his well-regarded clerk and deputy Hubert Walter in his stead. Others simply ignored the request.
With each passing week, the list of Henry’s friends and supporters grew shorter. His youngest son John stood firm alongside a diminishing circle of barons, as did the king’s military household. Marshal remained by Henry’s side through Lent, witnessing his slow decline, moving with the fractured remnants of the royal court between the mighty fortress of Chinon and the city of Le Mans. At one point, William was sent on another embassy to Paris, this time to see if a wedge could be driven between Philip Augustus and Richard by offering to agree a separate peace with the Capetian king on terms of his naming. When Marshal arrived in the city, however, he found that the Lionheart’s ‘wise and crafty’ representatives, including the ‘artful’ William Longchamp, were already closeted with the French monarch, and had to return empty-handed.
With the onset of spring, Henry began to prepare for an invasion, strengthening the defences of Le Mans and placing his remaining troops on a war footing. By this stage, those retainers who continued to show unfaltering loyalty were fast rising in the Old King’s esteem and favour. William had moved from the edge of Henry’s inner circle, to stand among a handful of men like William Mandeville, still trusted to offer counsel and lead troops in the field. The king chose to reward this fidelity. The previous summer, Marshal had been promised Châteauroux, but that castle remained in French hands. In its place, Henry offered William another crown ward, one whose wealth and prospects left Lady Heloise of Lancaster in the shade. This eminent heiress was Isabel of Clare, ‘a worthy and beautiful girl’, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the late Earl Richard Strongbow of Striguil. Her hand in marriage would bring Marshal a powerful lordship, with lands on the Welsh March (border), and title to other territories in west Wales, Normandy and Ireland. He would become, at a stroke, a great baron of England.
The Old King’s pledge makes it clear that he now placed a high value on William’s service. There can be no doubt that Marshal’s star had risen at a formidable rate in the three years since he returned from the Holy Land, partly through his own qualities, but also because the tumult of this period had given him ample opportunity to shine. Nonetheless, a nagging question remains. Was this royal gift simply an unbidden act of gratitude from an ailing king, or the mercenary price specified by Marshal in return for his continued allegiance? Henry’s 1188 letter proved that William was not above pleading for, and perhaps even demanding, recompense; and there can be no doubt that he aspired to join the upper ranks of England’s aristocracy. Nonetheless, it would have been obvious to Marshal, even in the first months of 1189, that the Old King’s power was faltering, his reign drawing to a close. William must have known that he was fighting on the losing side of this conflict; that the promise of Isabel of Clare’s hand might well prove worthless once a new monarch came to power, with Henry’s pledge disregarded and the heiress reapportioned. Perhaps Marshal was gambling on the embattled Old King’s ability to struggle on long enough for an actual wedding to be arranged, but if so, this was a rather forlorn hope. Had self-interest been paramount then the obvious choice would have been to abandon Henry, as so many others had, and seek promotion from either Richard or Philip Augustus. As it was, Marshal remained at Henry’s side.
By early summer the Old King had recovered enough strength to consider attending yet another peace conference. With the Third Crusade about to begin, the papacy was distraught at the prospect of further war in France when, it believed, all eyes should be on the Holy Land. A papal legate thus arranged a meeting for early June 1189 between Henry, Richard and Philip near La Ferté-Bernard (some twenty-five miles north-east of Le Mans, on the border of Maine), hoping to orchestrate a reconciliation. It turned out to be a predictably bad-tempered affair. ‘Both sides came fully armed on horseback’, according to the History, and the chronicler Ralph of Diss admitted that after hours of pointless quarrelling ‘they withdrew as enemies’.
It seems likely that Philip and Richard never had any expectation or intention of reaching an accord, but agreed to the meeting merely to draw the Old King out into the open. Instead of peacefully retreating eastwards out of Maine as custom required, they launched an immediate offensive, sending thousands of troops pouring into Angevin territory. La Ferté-Bernard fell in short order, only to be followed by a series of other strongholds, many of which seem to have willingly surrendered to the Lionheart. Henry II was said to have been ‘furious about losing his lands’, but now had no option but to beat a hasty path to Le Mans, the great city of Maine.
Le Mans is most famous today for its twenty-four-hour car race, but at the heart of this bustling modern city lies a well-preserved medieval quarter – now known as the ‘Cité Plantagenet’. Much of this picturesque warren of cobbled streets and huddled, timber-framed buildings dates from the later Middle Ages. But two remnants of the Le Mans to which Henry and William retreated in June 1189 are still in evidence, and they help to explain why the Old King chose this city as the site of his last stand.
The first is the towering cathedral of St Julien, begun in the eleventh century and dedicated by Henry himself in 1158. This was the burial place of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry’s father, and it stands as a potent reminder of the intimate associations between Le Mans and the Angevin dynasty. This was the city of the Old King’s own birth and childhood, a bastion of his family’s pride. It was also a redoubtable, perhaps even impregnable fortress, enclosed within a towering circuit of ancient Roman walls. One long stretch of these mighty, red-stone fortifications remains in place, replete with a succession of looming towers, a well-defended gate and a deep moat. Standing at the foot of these battlements it is easy to understand why Henry sought sanctuary in Le Mans, and in 1189 he could also fall back on the formidable stone keep that lay within. In addition, the city enjoyed a strong degree of natural protection in the twelfth century, being located in the fork between two rivers: the broad Sarthe and its tributary, the Huisne, flowing in from the east. Only the latter could be crossed with ease, via its one major bridge, and Le Mans’ south-eastern walls were further guarded by a marshy ravine.
The Old King had taken further steps to reinforce Le Mans that spring: digging a series of deep ditches to form an outer perimeter, driving sharp stakes into the riverbed at any possible fords of the Huisne and even pulling down some of the houses that had sprung up between the city walls and the two rivers. All of this helped to engender a strong sense of security when Henry, William Marshal and the rest of the Angevin army arrived near dusk on 10 June. According to one contemporary, the Old King even went so far as to promise the citizens of Le Mans that he would never abandon the city.
The defence of Le Mans in 1189
Once safely installed in Le Mans, Henry II summoned William and instructed him to conduct a tour of the outer defences at first light. As dawn broke the next day, Marshal rode out at the head of a small, lightly armoured scouting party. The rolling landscape south of the city was cloaked in a dense fog, so it was difficult to see any great distance as they crossed the River Huisne. Before long, however, they spotted a group of French scouts picking their way northwards. One of William’s fellow knights, Robert of Souville, urged an immediate return to the city to raise the alarm, but Marshal refused, unsure of whether the enemy force they had seen represented an advance guard or merely a long-range patrol. Determined to get a better view, he rode to the crest of a low hill and it was only then, as the fog slowly lifted, that ‘the whole army of the king of France’ came into view ‘riding in vast numbers’ alongside Richard the Lionheart’s forces. They were no more than half a mile away and heading ‘straight for Le Mans’.
William raced back to the Old King and the decision was taken to cut down the bridge over the Huisne. Philip and the Lionheart made camp to the south of the river, just out of arrow shot, and the rest of the day passed in a tense stand-off, as both sides readied themselves for the battle to come. Henry seems to have been convinced at this point that the impassable waters of the Huisne would thwart any major enemy assault, though the precautionary decision was taken to torch the remaining buildings south and west of the city walls should the river somehow be crossed. Marshal was less certain of their security. At daybreak on 12 June he insisted on donning full armour with the assistance of his squire, John of Earley, while a number of others – the Old King included – remained un-armoured.
Marshal was detailed to hold the main southern gate, while Henry made the day’s first patrol alongside his youngest son John, and a party of knights including Robert Tresgoz, Gerard Talbot and Baldwin of Béthune. Once down by the Huisne, they discovered the French vanguard milling around on the southern banks, examining the wreckage of the bridge that had been ‘broken to pieces’ and scanning the slow-moving river for any possible crossing point. According to the History: ‘Nobody imagined that there was a ford there, but they tested the waters with their lances and discovered the best ford in the world.’ Ten mounted knights immediately ploughed into the river, drove forward and launched themselves up the opposite bank. Caught completely by surprise, the warriors in the Old King’s troop charged forward to stem their advance, but with more French knights now streaming across the Huisne they were soon driven back and forced to lead Henry to safety.
With the Huisne breached, it now fell to William Marshal to hold the southern gate, as the Capetian forces streamed through the jumbled streets of Le Mans’ outer suburb. As ‘the French rode up to him to launch a fierce attack’, a vicious skirmish erupted, not unlike that he had fought at Neufchâtel more than twenty years earlier. Rallying what Angevin knights he could, Marshal tried to hold his ground, but the mêlée surged back and forth. In the midst of this ‘hard-fought onslaught’, one of the Old King’s knights, Hugh of Malannoy, was driven, man and horse, into the ravine south of the city. William also came face-to-face with a leading member of Richard the Lionheart’s retinue, Andrew of Chauvigny, ‘a man renowned for his deeds of great valour’. Marshal tried to employ his old tournament trick, seizing Andrew’s bridle and dragging him towards the gate and possible captivity, but Chauvigny managed to wrestle free, though he broke his arm in the process.
By this stage the suburbs had been torched and with flames spreading fast through the crowed houses, the sense of chaos only intensified. At some point a general retreat was sounded, and William drew back within the southern gate, but elsewhere Philip’s and Richard’s troops were able to pour in before entrances were barred. To make matters worse, strong winds were whipping up the fires of the burning suburbs, and the raging conflagration eventually spread to the city itself. With smoke pouring into the streets and enemy forces now at large inside Le Mans, bedlam reigned.
Henry II, Marshal and William Mandeville seem to have regrouped in the north of the city, probably not far from the Cathedral of St Julien. Any thought of retreating within the keep was quickly rejected. In spite of the Old King’s grand proclamation just two days earlier, a decision was made to relinquish the city and ride hard for the north in the hope of escape. The History glossed over the details of this bitter setback, noting only that the remaining Angevins left ‘as one body’, but other chroniclers like Roger of Howden indicated that in the course of this harried flight, Henry left many household servants and knights behind, and hundreds of his Welsh mercenaries were hunted down and butchered.
The remaining members of the royal household now formed a close bodyguard around the Old King – the last line of protection ‘against death or capture’ – determined to see their monarch and his son John to safety. They had covered some two to three miles when it became apparent that another party of knights was in hot pursuit, racing along the road behind and closing fast. Marshal and another household warrior, William des Roches (literally William ‘of the Rocks’), reined in and turned to bar their path, only to find none other than Richard the Lionheart bearing down upon them. As des Roches moved to intercept one of the duke’s knights, William charged forward to confront Richard himself. The great tournament champion was about to meet the Lionheart in single combat.
Only the History of William Marshal described this encounter in close terms, though the broad details of its account were confirmed in other contemporary sources. One thing seems certain. This was to be no fair fight. So intent had Richard been upon hunting down his father, that he had begun his chase wearing only a doublet and light helm. This added speed to his pursuit, but left him dreadfully exposed to attack. Worse still, the Lionheart was armed with only a sword. Marshal, by contrast, had a shield and lance. The biographer described how:
[William] spurred straight on to meet the advancing [Duke] Richard. When the [duke] saw him coming he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘God’s legs, Marshal! Don’t kill me. That would be a wicked thing to do, since you find me here completely unarmed.’
In that instant, Marshal could have slain Richard, skewering his body with the same lethal force that dispatched Patrick of Salisbury in 1168. Had there been more than a split second to ponder the choice, William might perhaps have reacted differently. As it was, instinct took over. Marshal simply could not bring himself to kill an un-armoured opponent, let alone the heir-apparent to the Angevin realm, King Henry II’s eldest surviving son. Instead, he was said to have shouted in reply: ‘Indeed I won’t. Let the Devil kill you! I shall not be the one to do it’, and at the last moment, lowering his lance fractionally, he drove it into Richard’s mount. With that ‘the horse died instantly; it never took another step forward’ and, as it fell, the Lionheart was thrown to the ground and his pursuit of the king brought to an end.
The Old King made good his escape that day, but his power had been shattered nonetheless. Once at a safe distance, Henry was said to have ridden to a hilltop and looked back on the burning city of Le Mans in shame, cursing God for the ruin of his reign. In the days that followed, Marshal was sent on north to Normandy with a platoon of fifty knights in a half-hearted attempt to rally support for the king, while John seems to have stayed in Maine and Henry himself arced back south towards the security of Anjou’s mighty castle, Chinon. The hopelessness of the Old King’s predicament was only confirmed when Tours – site of the Angevin treasury – fell to Richard and Philip. Now a broken man, Henry’s infirmity returned in force. ‘Sorely troubled by his illness and his pain which grew worse with every passing day’, he took refuge in Chinon and ordered William to return to his side.
The last days of Henry II
Marshal’s moment of decision had arrived. There could be no more lingering hopes of recovery for the Old King, with the Angevin realm crumbling and his royal authority smashed beyond repair. Many who had remained faithful up to this point now abandoned Henry; some went directly to Richard, others merely waited, watching from the wings for a new regime to begin. William was perfectly placed to do the same, far from the king’s side. In 1183, the Young King Henry’s death had been swift and unheralded, leaving Marshal and his fellow household knights little or no time to consider their positions. No one seems to have thought to transfer their allegiance during those grim days at Martel, but there was every reason to do so now, confronted by the Old King’s slow and certain decline. If Marshal laid himself before the feet of the Lionheart and begged forgiveness for their recent encounter, he might yet salvage some reward and secure his future. But to do so, would be to forsake his reputation for honour and loyalty. During the flight from Le Mans he had been forced to act on impulse; now he had to time agonise over his decision.
In the event, William rode to Chinon to stand by his king through his last, desperate days, arriving by the start of July 1189. With no choice but to accept defeat, Henry agreed to a final meeting with Richard and King Philip near Tours on 4 July, so that terms could be settled. The Old King was barely able to sit astride his horse, but Marshal rode with him, and tended to his needs in the hours before the conference began as they waited in a nearby Templar commandery. Henry was in such agonising pain that ‘he could neither suffer it nor endure it’, and wracked by the sense that his ravaged frame was rebelling against him, he apparently told William, ‘I feel I have neither body, heart, nor limb to call my own’, and Marshal could only watch as the king ‘first turned a violent red and then became a livid colour’.
When Henry II finally arrived at the agreed meeting place, the grave extent of his infirmity could not be disguised. The Lionheart looked on, impassive and suspicious of some ruse, but Philip Augustus was genuinely shocked by the sight of his hated rival, now reduced to such abject frailty. The Capetian offered up a cloak so that the Old King might sit upon the ground, but Henry insisted on standing, starring down his opponents even as he conceded their terms. Richard was finally confirmed as Henry II’s successor throughout the Angevin realm and the French monarch was promised a tribute of 20,000 silver marks to seal the peace. The Old King’s one request was that the allies supply him with a list of ‘all those who, deserting him, had gone over to [Philip and Richard]’. As the conference came to an end, Henry was said to have mustered the energy for one final, parting barb. Leaning forward to seal the accord by conferring the ritual kiss of peace upon his son, the Old King whispered, ‘God grant that I may not die until I have had my revenge on you.’*
King Henry was carried back to Chinon on a litter and confined to bed, but he could find no peace. The Old King now became fixated by the desire to make a last account of his supporters. The keeper of the royal seal, Roger Malchael, was sent to Tours to demand the list of turncoats promised by Philip. When Roger returned he was hurriedly ushered into a private audience with Henry, but could hardly bring himself to reveal the bleak truth, saying:
‘My lord, so Jesus Christ help me, the first name written down on this list here is that of your son, count John.’ When King Henry heard that the person he most expected to do right, and who he most loved, was in the act of betraying him, he said nothing more except this: ‘You have said enough.’
This final act of treachery crushed the Old King’s spirits. He soon collapsed into a ‘burning hot’ feverish stupor, and ‘his blood so boiled within him that his complexion became clouded, dark, blue and livid’. Unmanned by agonising pain, he ‘lost his mental faculties, hearing and seeing nothing’, and though he spoke ‘nobody could understand a word of what he said’. On the night of 6 July 1189, with only a handful of servants in attendance, Henry’s will finally gave out. In the words of the History: ‘Death simply burst his heart with her own hands’, and a ‘stream of clotted blood burst forth from his nose and mouth’.
In a last indignity, the household staff detailed to watch him looted his corpse, stealing ‘his clothes, his jewels, his money as much as each of them could take’, and this ‘rabble’ left the great monarch strewn, half out of bed, wearing only his ‘breeches and shirt’. When Henry’s body was later discovered, the whole castle was thrown into commotion. Marshal and the remaining members of the royal household rushed to the room and hurriedly covered their dead king with a cloak, sobered by the sight of this once mighty figure brought to such a wretched end. The chamber was then placed under close guard and clergymen arrived to wrap the Old King in a shroud and sing Mass.
In the days that followed, William helped to carry Henry II’s body to the nearby abbey of Fontevraud, and the corpse was laid out in state to await Richard’s arrival, so that the son might pay his last respects to the father he had forsaken. Marshal stood vigil, his grief mixed with a dreadful unease. A new king would now be proclaimed, a man whom William had unhorsed outside Le Mans and resisted to the bitter end. There could be little doubt that the Lionheart would exact his revenge, stripping Marshal of his status and condemning him to exile or worse. William was about to learn the true cost of loyalty.