December 1, 1135: Death of Henry I, King of the English

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Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, Edith of Scotland, Empress Matilda, Geoffrey Plantaganet, Henry Beauclerc, Henry I of England, King of the English, Matilda of Scotland, Robert Curthose, William Adelin, William Clito, William the Conqueror

Henry I (c. 1068 – 1 December 1135), also known as Henry Beauclerc, was King of the English from 1100 to his death in 1135. He was the fourth son of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders. Henry was probably born in England in 1068, in either the summer or the last weeks of the year, possibly in the town of Selby in Yorkshire. Henry was educated in Latin and the liberal arts.

On William the Conqueror’s death in 1087, Henry’s elder brothers Robert Curthose and William Rufus inherited Normandy and England, respectively, but Henry was left landless. He purchased the County of Cotentin in western Normandy from Robert, but his brothers deposed him in 1091. He gradually rebuilt his power base in the Cotentin and allied himself with William against Robert.

Present at the place where his brother King William II died in a hunting accident in 1100, Henry seized the English throne, promising at his coronation to correct many of William’s less popular policies. This gave Henry a claim of suzerainty over Wales and Scotland, and acquired the Duchy of Normandy, a complex entity with troubled borders.

Soon after coming to the throne Henry sought the hand of Edith of Scotland for marriage.

Born in 1080, in Dunfermline, Scotland, Edith was the daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland and Margaret of Wessex. Margaret of Wessex, was an English princess born in the Kingdom of Hungary to the expatriate English Prince Edward the Exile and Agatha of unknown parentage.

Edith was therefore a descendant of both the Scottish and the Anglo-Saxon royal families, great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside and descended from Alfred the Great.

Edith was educated at a convent in southern England, where her aunt Christina was abbess, and forced her to wear a veil. In 1093, Edith was engaged to an English nobleman until her father and her brother Edward were killed in the Battle of Alnwick (1093).

After proving she had not taken religious vows, Edith and Henry were married on November 11, 1100 at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury. At he end of the ceremony, Edith was crowned and took the reginal name of “Matilda”, a hallowed Norman name.

Henry and Matilda and they had two surviving children, William Adelin and Matilda, who first became the wife of Heinrich V, Holy Roman Emperor and her second husband was Geoffrey Plantaganet, Count of Anjou. King Henry I also had many illegitimate children by his many mistresses.

The borders between England and Scotland were still uncertain during Henry’s reign, with Anglo-Norman influence pushing northwards through Cumbria, but his relationship with King David I of Scotland was generally good, partially due to Henry’s marriage to his sister.

Robert Curthose, who invaded in 1101, disputed Henry’s control of England; this military campaign ended in a negotiated settlement that confirmed Henry as king. The peace was short-lived, and Henry invaded the Duchy of Normandy in 1105 and 1106, finally defeating Robert at the Battle of Tinchebray.

Henry kept Robert imprisoned for the rest of his life. Henry’s control of Normandy was challenged by Louis VI, King of the Franks, Baldwin VII of Flanders and Fulk V of Anjou, who promoted the rival claims of Robert’s son, William Clito, and supported a major rebellion in the Duchy between 1116 and 1119. Following Henry’s victory at the Battle of Brémule, a favourable peace settlement was agreed with Louis in 1120.

Considered by contemporaries to be a harsh but effective ruler, Henry skillfully manipulated the barons in England and Normandy. In England, he drew on the existing Anglo-Saxon system of justice, local government and taxation, but also strengthened it with additional institutions, including the royal exchequer and itinerant justices.

Normandy was also governed through a growing system of justices and an exchequer. Many of the officials who ran Henry’s system were “new men” of obscure backgrounds, rather than from families of high status, who rose through the ranks as administrators.

Henry encouraged ecclesiastical reform, but became embroiled in a serious dispute in 1101 with Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, which was resolved through a compromise solution in 1105. He supported the Cluniac order and played a major role in the selection of the senior clergy in England and Normandy.

Henry’s son William drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120, throwing the royal succession into doubt. Henry took a second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, in the hope of having another son, but their marriage was childless. In response to this, he declared his daughter Matilda his heir and married her to Geoffrey of Anjou.

The relationship between Henry and the couple became strained, and fighting broke out along the border with Anjou. Henry died on December 1, 1135 after a week of illness. Despite his plans for Matilda, the king was succeeded by his nephew Stephen of Blois, resulting in a period of civil war known as the Anarchy.

The Angevin Empire. Part III.

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Angevin Empire, Count of Anjou, Empress Matilda, Fulk the Younger, Geoffrey V of Anjou, King Henry I of England, King of Jerusalem, Louis VII of France, Pope Adrian IV, Robert of Gloucester, The Anarchy, The White Ship, William Adelin

Formation of the Angevin Empire

Background

The Counts of Anjou had been vying for power in northwestern France since the 10th century. The counts were recurrent enemies of the dukes of Normandy and of Brittany and often the French king. Fulk IV, Count of Anjou, claimed rule over Touraine, Maine and Nantes; however, of these only Touraine proved to be effectively ruled, as the construction of the castles of Chinon, Loches and Loudun exemplify.

Fulk IV married his son and namesake, called “Fulk the Younger” (who would later become King of Jerusalem), to Ermengarde, heiress of the province of Maine, thus unifying it with Anjou through personal union. While the dynasty of the Angevins was successfully consolidating their power in France, their rivals, the Normans, had conquered England in the 11th century. Meanwhile, in the rest of France, the Poitevin Ramnulfids had become Dukes of Aquitaine and of Gascony, and the Count of Blois, Stephen, the father of the next king of England, Stephen, became the Count of Champagne. France was being split between only a few noble families.

The Anarchy and the question of the Norman succession

In 1106, Henry I of England had defeated his brother Robert Curthose and angered Robert’s son, William Clito, who was Count of Flanders from 1127. Henry used his paternal inheritance to take the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of England and then tried to establish an alliance with Anjou by marrying his only legitimate son, William, to Fulk the Younger’s daughter, Matilda. However, William Adelin died in the White Ship disaster in 1120. This lead to a period of time known as The Anarchy.

The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1135 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a succession crisis precipitated by the accidental death by drowning of William Adelin, the only legitimate son of Henry I, in the sinking of the White Ship in 1120.

Henry I’s attempts to install his daughter, the Empress Matilda, as his successor were unsuccessful and on Henry’s death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne with the help of Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois, the Bishop of Winchester. Stephen’s early reign was marked by fierce fighting with English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester.

Neither side was able to achieve a decisive advantage during the first years of the war; the Empress came to control the south-west of England and much of the Thames Valley, while Stephen remained in control of the south-east.

The war dragged on for many more years. Empress Matilda’s husband, Geoffrey V of Anjou, conquered Normandy, but in England neither side could achieve victory. Rebel barons began to acquire ever greater power in northern England and in East Anglia, with widespread devastation in the regions of major fighting. In 1148 the Empress returned to Normandy, leaving the campaigning in England to her young son Henry FitzEmpress. In 1152 Stephen and Matilda of Boulogne, queen consort and Stephen’s wife, unsuccessfully attempted to have their eldest son, Eustace, recognised by the Catholic Church as the next king of England. By the early 1150s the barons and the Church mostly wanted a long-term peace.

When Henry FitzEmpress re-invaded England in 1153, neither faction’s forces were keen to fight. After limited campaigning and the siege of Wallingford, Stephen and Henry agreed a negotiated peace, the Treaty of Wallingford, in which Stephen recognised Henry as his heir.

Chroniclers described the period as one in which “Christ and his saints were asleep” while the term “the Anarchy” was coined by Victorian historians because of the widespread chaos, although modern historians have questioned the accuracy of the term and of some contemporary accounts.

Upon Stephen’s death on October 25, 1154, Henry FitzEmpress became King Henry II of England, the first Angevin king of England, beginning a long period of reconstruction. Subsequently, the question was again raised of Henry’s oath to cede Anjou to his brother Geoffrey. Henry received a dispensation from Pope Adrian IV under the pretext the oath had been forced upon him, and he proposed compensations to Geoffrey at Rouen in 1156. Geoffrey refused and returned to Anjou to rebel against his brother. Geoffrey may have had a strong claim, but his position was weak. Louis VII would not interfere since Henry paid homage to him for his continental possessions. Henry crushed Geoffrey’s revolt, and Geoffrey had to be satisfied with an annual pension. The Angevin Empire had now been formed.

The Angevin Empire: Part I.

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Angevin Empire, Count of Anjou, Duchy of Aquitaine, Duchy of Normandy, House of Anjou, House of Pl, King Henry II of England, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of France

The Angevin Empire describes the possessions of the Angevin kings of England who held lands in England and France during the 12th and 13th centuries. Its rulers were Henry II (ruled 1154–1189), Richard I (r. 1189–1199), and John (r. 1199–1216). The Angevin Empire is an early example of a composite state.

A composite monarchy (or composite state) is a historical category, introduced by H. G. Koenigsberger in 1975 and popularised by Sir John H. Elliott, that describes early modern states consisting of several countries under one ruler, sometimes designated as a personal union, who governs his territories as if they were separate kingdoms, in accordance with local traditions and legal structures. The composite state became the most common type of state in the early modern era in Europe. Koenigsberger divides composite states into two classes: those, like the Spanish Empire, that consisted of countries separated by either other states or by the sea, and those, like Poland–Lithuania, that were contiguous.

The Angevins of the House of Plantagenet ruled over an area covering roughly half of France, all of England, and parts of Ireland and Wales, and had further influence over much of the remaining British Isles. The empire was established by Henry II, as King of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou (from which the Angevins derive their name), as well as Duke of Aquitaine by right of his wife, and multiple subsidiary titles. Although their title of highest rank came from the Kingdom of England, the Angevins held court primarily on the continent at Angers in Anjou, and Chinon in Touraine.

The influence and power of the House of Anjou brought them into conflict with the kings of France of the House of Capet, to whom they also owed feudal homage for their French possessions, bringing in a period of rivalry between the dynasties. Despite the extent of Angevin rule, Henry’s son, John, was defeated in the Anglo-French War (1213–1214) by Philip II of France following the Battle of Bouvines. John lost control of most of his continental possessions, apart from Gascony in southern Aquitaine. This defeat set the scene for further conflicts between England and France, leading up to the Hundred Years’ War.

The term Angevin Empire is a neologism* defining the lands of the House of Plantagenet: Henry II and his sons Richard I and John. Another son, Geoffrey, ruled Brittany and established a separate line there. As far as historians know, there was no contemporary term for the region under Angevin control; however, descriptions such as “our kingdom and everything subject to our rule whatever it may be” were used. The term Angevin Empire was coined by Kate Norgate in her 1887 publication, England under the Angevin Kings. In France, the term espace Plantagenet (French for “Plantagenet area”) is sometimes used to describe the fiefdoms the Plantagenets had acquired.

The use of the term Empire has engendered controversy among some historians over whether the term is accurate for the actual state of affairs at the time. The area was a collection of the lands inherited and acquired by Henry, and so it is unclear whether these dominions shared any common identity and so should be labelled with the term Empire.

Some historians argue that the term should be reserved solely for the Holy Roman Empire, the only Western European political structure actually named an empire at that time, although Alfonso VII of León and Castile had taken the title “Emperor of all Spain” in 1135. Other historians argue that Henry II’s empire was neither powerful, centralised, nor large enough to be seriously called an empire. Furthermore, the Plantagenets never claimed any sort of imperial title as implied by the term Angevin Empire.

However, even if the Plantagenets themselves did not claim an imperial title, some chroniclers, often working for Henry II himself, did use the term empire to describe this assemblage of lands. The highest title was “king of England”; the other titles of dukes and counts of different areas held in France were completely and totally independent from the royal title, and not subject to any English royal law. Because of this, some historians prefer the term commonwealth to empire, emphasising that the Angevin Empire was more of an assemblage of seven fully independent, sovereign states loosely bound to each other, only united in the person of the king of England.

* A neologism is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not yet been fully accepted into mainstream language.