CHAPTER 13
Following his conquest of the Vale of Glamorgan, Sir Robert Fitzhammon took over Cardiff Castle and used it as one of his principle residences. He was close friends with Prince Henry, who, in 1100, following the death of his elder brother, William II (‘Rufus’), was crowned King of England as Henry I. Some ten years earlier Henry had formed a relationship with Nest, the daughter of the late Rhys ap Tewdwr, Prince of Dyfed. With her father dead and her family dispossessed of their lands, it was perhaps out of necessity that she became his mistress. Later, with Henry’s blessing, she married Gerald of Windsor, the Sheriff of Pembroke Castle. She bore him three sons and a daughter, the latter being the mother of the author and monk Gerald of Wales.
By all accounts stunningly beautiful, Nest had other lovers and gave birth to quite a number of illegitimate children, including Henry’s eldest son, Robert Fitzroy. Otherwise known as ‘Robert the Consul’, he was born soon after the conquest of Glamorgan and was subsequently raised by Sir Robert Fitzhammon. In due course and according to plan, he married his stepfather’s only daughter, Mabel; after Fitzhammon’s death (in 1107) he inherited, in right of his wife, the titles Earl of Gloucester and Lord of Glamorgan.
Robert the Consul is important to our investigation, as he was the principle dedicatee of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s book The History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey awarded him this honour for a very good reason: through his mother he was partly of royal Welsh blood. Thus, by making him the chief dedicatee of his book about the ancient kings of Britain, Geoffrey was reminding him that even if he was illegitimate, these were his ancestors and, therefore, his own blood counted for something. Also, as Lord of Glamorgan, he had near absolute power in the parts of Wales that he controlled. Furthermore, as the dead King’s eldest son and a powerful baron in his own right, he was in a perfect position to usurp the throne, taking it by force if necessary.
If Geoffrey had hoped that Robert Fitzroy would make a play for the crown himself, he was to be disappointed. In the Civil War that followed Henry’s death, he opted instead for the role of kingmaker. Fiercely loyal, he preferred to support the claims of the Empress Mathilde, the legitimate daughter of Henry I and therefore his own half-sister. Nevertheless, there was a sudden explosion of interest in all things Arthurian that took place after the publication of Geoffrey’s book, and this was partly due to Robert the Consul taking an interest in his maternal ancestry.
Within a few weeks of Henry’s death on 1 December 1135, Stephen of Boulogne succeeded in getting himself crowned at Westminster. Stephen was a popular figure at court and, tall and handsome, he had been Henry’s favourite nephew.
But Mathilde was not about to accept his fait accompli without a fight, for she too was powerful and had a much better claim. Now married to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou (a province of Northern France), her first husband had been the Emperor of Germany and she was used to getting her own way. She believed passionately that the throne of England was rightfully hers and was not afraid to fight for it. As a result, the country was plunged into a bloody civil war that raged, off and on, for nearly 20 years. During this conflict, Robert the Consul was staunchly supportive of his sister’s cause. For as long as he lived, she had a good chance of gaining the throne and, indeed, very nearly did. His death in 1147 took away that opportunity and, reluctantly, she returned to France.
The ambitions of the House of Anjou now lay with Mathilde’s own son, Henry of Le Mans. Eventually it was agreed that Stephen should remain king for as long as he lived, but that he should be succeeded by Mathilde’s son. Therefore, in 1154, one of England’s greatest if not always most popular ruler was crowned as King Henry II. Now, I found this piece of history interesting because it implied an unexpected link between South Wales and the writing in French of the first Arthurian romances.
In 1152, not yet King but having already succeeded to the title Duke of Normandy, Henry II had married Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was one of the most extraordinary ladies of the Middle Ages and every bit his equal. Ten years older than him – she was 30, while he was only 20 when they got married – she had a somewhat chequered past. At age 15, upon the death of her father, she had inherited the Duchy of Acquitaine and County of Poitiers, two very wealthy territories in the southwest of France. As this made her an extremely eligible heiress, there was no surprise that she was quickly married off to Prince Louis, the Dauphin of France. This marriage took place on 25 July 1137, but was overshadowed almost immediately by the death of Louis’ father on 1 August. On Christmas Day, the Dauphin was crowned as Louis VII and Eleanor of Acquitaine found herself Queen of France.
At first, although their temperaments were completely different, the marriage seems to have been amicable enough. Eleanor might have scandalized the stuffy clergymen of Northern France with her frivolity, but she bore the King a daughter and there was every expectation that, in due course, there would be a son. Then, in 1145, Louis announced that he was going on a crusade. Always keen on adventure, Eleanor decided to accompany him. She brought with her a contingent of soldiers and ladies from the Duchy of Acquitaine with the expectation that they would recapture the city of Edessa that had fallen to the Turks. The crusade, however, was a disaster both militarily and for their marriage. As they crossed through Anatolia, their forces were cut to pieces by the waiting Turks, and they themselves were lucky to survive.
They eventually made it to Antioch, but here Eleanor’s reputation suffered irreparable damage. The Prince of Antioch was her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers. She wanted to accompany him in an attempt at recapturing the city of Edessa, but Louis was hell-bent on going quickly to the Holy Land itself. The situation was further complicated by rumours of an affair between Eleanor and Raymond, which would have been incest as well as adultery. Against her will, Louis dragged her away to Jerusalem, from where an abortive campaign was launched against Damascus. Disheartened by their failure, the King and Queen, now separated and barely on speaking terms, departed for home on different ships. They were eventually divorced in 1152, which cleared the way for her second marriage, eight weeks later, to the future king of England.
From her first marriage, Eleanor had two daughters, the elder of whom, Marie, later married the Count of Champagne. A highly cultured woman, she remained close to her mother despite the divorce. She also modelled her court at Troyes on Eleanor’s at Angers. Here, she drew to herself a circle of Arthurian enthusiasts, which included the troubadour Chrétien de Troyes. He was to write a series of French Arthurian romances. The first of these, Erec and Enide, was published in about 1170, while the last, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, was left unfinished when Chrétien died in 1190.
During nearly all of this period, Henry II, who as a boy had been close to his uncle Robert the Consul, was the King of England and Eleanor was its Queen. Marie, meanwhile, was very fond of her half-brothers, especially Richard – who, later, was to achieve universal fame and admiration as Richard the Lionheart. As we can see, there is a clear connection between the Welsh bards at the court of Robert the Consul and the troubadours at the court of Marie, Countess of Champagne, that runs via Anjou.
Further confirmation of the importance of Anjou in the development of the Continental Grail tradition is contained in the works of the preeminent German writer on the subject, Wolfram von Eschenbach. In his book Parzifal, which completes the unfinished work of Chrétien de Troyes (Perceval, the Story of the Grail), he informs us that he was told the full story of the grail by a singer called Kyot. He, he says, found the details of Parzifal’s family tree while searching among archives in Anjou. This ‘Kyot’ has been identified as Guiot, a poet and singer of the period in question who did come from Northern France, from the wealthy town of Provins. It is generally recognized, however, that Wolfram’s main source was Chrétien. Where his story differs from the earlier version, it is more likely to have been because he changed it himself, not because he was told of a better version by Kyot. Nevertheless, it is worth noting the connection with the House of Anjou. It was, of course, the family possession of Henry II, the second husband of Marie de Champagne’s mother. If Kyot had gone there searching for confirmation of the Grail legend, then the place to look would have been Henry and Eleanor’s library in Angers. Here, he may well have found ancient genealogies that came originally from Robert the Consul.
What Kyot would certainly have found there (if he didn’t have one already) is a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. This gives a pretty full account of the story of King Arthur and also mentions Peredur (ie Percival) as being present at the plenary court he held in Caerleon. In those pre-Saxon days, Caerleon was one of three Archdioceses in Britain (the other two being London and York). It was also the capital city of Siluria, which included parts of what is now England, as well as the whole of South East Wales. Given these details, Wolfram (via Kyot) could not have been ignorant of the Welsh connection to the Grail legend. The question then is: exactly what was this connection and how did it come about? Once I began to investigate this, it became clear that the sanitization of our history books, mostly done by clerics of the 18th and 19th centuries, has cost us a great deal. The traditional story of the Arthurian kingdom is intricately bound with the coming to Britain of the Holy Grail. This event, as I was to discover, was linked to the invasion of Britain by the Romans in AD 43 and, more specifically, to their impact on the Glamorgan Dynasty.