June 15, 1215: King John of England signs the Magna Carta at Runnymede

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Henry II of England, John Lackland, King John of England, Lord of Ireland, Magna Carta, Rebel Barons, Runnymede

John (December 2504, 1166 – October 19, 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216.

John was the youngest of the four surviving sons of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was nicknamed John Lackland because he was not expected to inherit significant lands.

John lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philippe II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century.

The baronial revolt at the end of John’s reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom.

John held a council in London in January 1215 to discuss potential reforms and sponsored discussions in Oxford between his agents and the rebels during the spring. He appears to have been playing for time until Pope Innocent III could send letters giving him explicit papal support.

This was particularly important for John, as a way of pressuring the barons but also as a way of controlling Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the meantime, John began to recruit fresh mercenary forces from Poitou, although some were later sent back to avoid giving the impression that John was escalating the conflict. The King announced his intent to become a crusader, a move which gave him additional political protection under church law.

Letters of support from the Pope arrived in April but by then the rebel barons had organised. They congregated at Northampton in May and renounced their feudal ties to John, appointing Robert fitz Walter as their military leader. This self-proclaimed “Army of God” marched on London, taking the capital as well as Lincoln and Exeter. John’s efforts to appear moderate and conciliatory had been largely successful, but once the rebels held London they attracted a fresh wave of defectors from John’s royalist faction. John instructed Langton to organise peace talks with the rebel barons.

John met the rebel leaders at Runnymede, near Windsor Castle, on June 15, 1215. Langton’s efforts at mediation created a charter capturing the proposed peace agreement; it was later renamed Magna Carta, or “Great Charter”.

The charter went beyond simply addressing specific baronial complaints, and formed a wider proposal for political reform, albeit one focusing on the rights of free men, not serfs and unfree labour. It promised the protection of church rights, protection from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, new taxation only with baronial consent and limitations on scutage and other feudal payments. A council of twenty-five barons would be created to monitor and ensure John’s future adherence to the charter, whilst the rebel army would stand down and London would be surrendered to the King.

Neither John nor the rebel barons seriously attempted to implement the peace accord. The rebel barons suspected that the proposed baronial council would be unacceptable to John and that he would challenge the legality of the charter; they packed the baronial council with their own hardliners and refused to demobilise their forces or surrender London as agreed.

Despite his promises to the contrary, John appealed to Pope Innocent III for help, observing that the charter compromised the Pope’s rights under the 1213 agreement that had appointed him John’s feudal lord. Innocent obliged; he declared the charter “not only shameful and demeaning, but illegal and unjust” and excommunicated the rebel barons. The failure of the agreement led rapidly to the First Barons’ War.

April 6, 1199: Death of Richard I the Lionheart, King of England

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and Count of Poitiers, and Nantes, and overlord of Brittany, Anjou, Aquitaine and Gascony, Berengaria of Navarre, Duke of Normandy, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II of England, King of England, Lord of Cyprus, Maine, Richard I, the Lionheart

Richard I (September 8, 1157 – April 6, 1199) was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, and Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period.

Richard was born, probably at Beaumont Palace, in Oxford, England, son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As a younger son of King Henry II, he was not expected to ascend the throne.

Henry II and Eleanor’s eldest son William IX, Count of Poitiers, died before Richard’s birth. He was a younger brother of Henry the Young King and Matilda, Duchess of Saxony. He was also an elder brother of Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany; Queen Eleanor of Castile; Queen Joan of Sicily; and John, Count of Mortain, who succeeded him as king.

Richard was the younger maternal half-brother of Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, and Alix, Countess of Blois. Richard is often depicted as having been the favourite son of his mother. His father was Angevin-Norman and great-grandson of William I the Conqueror, King of England and Duke of Normandy.

Richard is known as Richard Cœur de Lion (Norman French: Le quor de lion) or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior. The troubadour Bertran de Born also called him Richard Oc-e-Non (Occitan for Yes and No), possibly from a reputation for terseness.

Richard I, the Lionheart, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, and Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and overlord of Brittany.

By the age of 16, Richard had taken command of his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father. Richard was an important Christian commander during the Third Crusade, leading the campaign after the departure of Philippe II of France and achieving considerable victories against his Muslim counterpart, Saladin, although he finalised a peace treaty and ended the campaign without retaking Jerusalem.

Richard probably spoke both French and Occitan. He was born in England, where he spent his childhood; before becoming king, however, he lived most of his adult life in the Duchy of Aquitaine, in the southwest of France.

Early in the 1160s there had been suggestions Richard should marry Alys, Countess of the Vexin, fourth daughter of Louis VII of France and Constance of Castile. The Marriage was meant to sooth the rivalry between the kings of England and France.

Louis VII obstructed the marriage. A peace treaty was secured in January 1169 and Richard’s betrothal to Alys was confirmed.

Following his accession, he spent very little time, perhaps as little as six months, in England. Most of his life as king was spent on Crusade, in captivity, or actively defending his lands in France. Rather than regarding his kingdom as a responsibility requiring his presence as ruler, he has been perceived as preferring to use it merely as a source of revenue to support his armies. Nevertheless, he was seen as a pious hero by his subjects.

Before leaving Cyprus on crusade, Richard married Berengaria of Navarre, Richard first grew close to her at a tournament held in her native Navarre.

Berengaria was the eldest daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre and Sancha of Castile. As is the case with many of the medieval English queens, relatively little is known of her life.

Traditionally known as “the only English queen never to set foot in the country”, she may in fact have visited England after her husband’s death, but did not do so before, nor did she see much of Richard during her marriage.

The wedding was held in Limassol on May 12, 1191 at the Chapel of St George and was attended by Richard’s sister Joan, whom he had brought from Sicily. The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and splendour, many feasts and entertainments, and public parades and celebrations followed commemorating the event.

Berengaria of Navarre from History Reimagined

When Richard married Berengaria he was still officially betrothed to Alys, and he pushed for the match in order to obtain the Kingdom of Navarre as a fief, as Aquitaine had been for his father.

Further, Richard’s mother, Eleanor, championed the match, as Navarre bordered Aquitaine, thereby securing the southern border of her ancestral lands.

Richard took his new wife on crusade with him briefly, though they returned separately. Berengaria had almost as much difficulty in making the journey home as her husband did.

After his release from German captivity, he had been imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Richard showed some regret for his earlier conduct, but he was not reunited with his wife. The marriage remained childless.

In March 1199, Richard was in Limousin suppressing a revolt by Viscount Aimar V of Limoges. Although it was Lent, he “devastated the Viscount’s land with fire and sword”. He besieged the tiny, virtually unarmed castle of Châlus-Chabrol. Some chroniclers claimed that this was because a local peasant had uncovered a treasure trove of Roman gold.

On March 26, 1199, Richard was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt, and the wound turned gangrenous. Richard asked to have the crossbowman brought before him; called alternatively Pierre (or Peter) Basile, John Sabroz, Dudo, and Bertrand de Gourdon (from the town of Gourdon) by chroniclers, the man turned out (according to some sources, but not all) to be a boy.

He said Richard had killed his father and two brothers, and that he had killed Richard in revenge. He expected to be executed, but as a final act of mercy Richard forgave him, saying “Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day”, before he ordered the boy to be freed and sent away with 100 shillings.

Richard died on April 6, 1199 in the arms of his mother, and thus “ended his earthly day.” Because of the nature of Richard’s death, it was later referred to as “the Lion by the Ant was slain”. According to one chronicler, Richard’s last act of chivalry proved fruitless when the infamous mercenary captain Mercadier had the boy who shot the king flayed alive and hanged as soon as Richard died.

Richard’s heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy, his entrails in Châlus (where he died), and the rest of his body at the feet of his father at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou.

In 2012, scientists analysed the remains of Richard’s heart and found that it had been embalmed with various substances, including frankincense, a symbolically important substance because it had been present both at the birth and embalming of the Christ.

Henry Sandford, Bishop of Rochester (1226–1235), announced that he had seen a vision of Richard ascending to Heaven in March 1232 (along with Stephen Langton, the former archbishop of Canterbury), the King having presumably spent 33 years in purgatory as expiation for his sins.

Richard produced no legitimate heirs and acknowledged only one illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac. He was succeeded by his brother John as King of England and Duke of Normandy.

His French territories, with the exception of Rouen, initially rejected John as a successor, preferring his nephew Arthur. The lack of any direct heirs from Richard was the first step in the dissolution of the Angevin Empire.

King Richard I remains one of the few kings of England remembered more commonly by his epithet, Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart, than his regnal number, and is an enduring iconic figure both in England and in France.

King Richard I was known as a valiant, competent military leader and individual fighter who was courageous and generous. At the same time, he was considered prone to the sins of lust, pride, greed and, above all, excessive cruelty. Ralph of Coggeshall, summarising Richard’s career, deplores that the King was one of “the immense cohort of sinners.”

April 1203: Death of Arthur I, Duke of Brittany

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Arthur of Brittany, Constance of Brittany, Geoffrey of England, Henry II of England, Philippe II of France, Treaty of Le Goulet

Arthur I (March 29, 1187 – presumably April 1203) was 4th Earl of Richmond and Duke of Brittany between 1196 and 1203.

Early life
Arthur was born in 1187, the son of Duchess Constance of Brittany and Duke Geoffrey II of Brittany, who died before he was born. As an infant, Arthur was second in line to the succession of his paternal grandfather King Henry II of England, after his uncle Richard. King Henry died when Arthur was 2 years old, and Richard I became the new king in his place.

In the 1160s, Henry II began to alter his policy of indirect rule in Brittany and to exert more direct control. Henry had been at war with Conan IV, Duke of Brittany. Local Breton nobles rebelled against Conan, so Conan sought Henry II’s help.

In 1164, Henry intervened to seize lands along the border of Brittany and Normandy and, in 1166, he invaded Brittany to punish the local barons. Henry then forced Duke Conan IV to abdicate as duke and to give Brittany to his five-year-old daughter, Constance, who was handed over and betrothed to Henry’s son Geoffrey. This arrangement was quite unusual in terms of medieval law, as Conan might have had sons who could have legitimately inherited the duchy.

Geoffrey and Constance eventually married, in July 1181, and Geoffrey became Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
Via the law Jure uxoris (a Latin phrase meaning “by right of (his) wife”) describes a title of nobility used by a man because his wife holds the office or title suo jure (“in her own right”). Similarly, the husband of an heiress could become the legal possessor of her lands.

In 1190 Arthur was designated heir to the throne of England and its French territory by his uncle, Richard I, the intent being that Arthur would succeed Richard in preference to Richard’s younger brother John. Nothing is recorded of Arthur after his incarceration in Rouen Castle in 1203, and while his precise fate is unknown, it is generally believed he was killed by John.

While Richard was away on the Third Crusade, Arthur’s mother Constance sought to make the Duchy of Brittany more independent. On November 11, 1190, Arthur was named as Richard’s heir presumptive and was betrothed to a daughter of King Tancred of Sicily as part of their treaty. However, Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VI conquered the Kingdom of Sicily in 1194, so the betrothal of Arthur came to nothing.

A marriage plan, originally aiming to establish an alliance between King Richard and King Philippe II of France to marry Arthur’s elder sister Eleanor to Philippe’s son Louis also failed.

In 1196, Constance had the young Arthur proclaimed Duke of Brittany and her co-ruler as a child of nine years. The same year, Richard summoned Arthur, as well as Arthur’s mother, Constance, to Normandy, but Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, stepfather of Arthur, abducted Constance. Richard marched to Brittany to rescue Arthur, who was then secretly carried to France to be brought up with Louis.

When Richard died on April 6, 1199, on his deathbed he proclaimed his brother John as his heir, fearing Arthur was too young to look after the throne. Arthur was only twelve years old at the time and under the influence of the French king.

Arthur of Brittany pays homage to King Philippe II of France

John immediately claimed the throne of England, but much of the French nobility were resentful at recognising him as their overlord. They preferred Arthur, who declared himself vassal of Philippe II.

Philippe II recognised Arthur’s right to Anjou, Maine, and Poitou. Upon Richard’s death Arthur led a force to Anjou and Maine. From April 18, he styled himself as Duke of Brittany, Count of Anjou and Earl of Richmond.

On September 18, John persuaded the seneschal of Anjou, William des Roches, to defect, claiming Arthur would be a Capetian puppet. Four days later William took Arthur and Constance prisoners to Le Mans. Viscount Aimery, the seneschal appointed by John, took Arthur and Constance and fled the court to Angers, and later the court of Philippe II.

Treaty of Le Goulet

The Treaty of Le Goulet was signed by the kings John of England and Philippe II of France in May 1200 and meant to settle once and for all the claims the Norman kings of England had as Norman dukes on French lands, including, at least for a time, Brittany.

Under the terms of the treaty, Philippe II recognised John as King of England as heir of his brother Richard I and thus formally abandoned any support for Arthur. John, meanwhile, recognised Philippe II as the suzerain of continental possessions of the Angevin Empire.

Philippe II had previously recognised John as suzerain of Anjou and the Duchy of Brittany, but with this he extorted 20,000 marks sterling in payment for recognition of John’s sovereignty of Brittany.

Battle against John of England

After the signing of the Treaty of Le Goulet, and feeling offended by Philippe II, Arthur fled to John, his uncle, and was treated kindly, at least initially. However, he later became suspicious of John and fled back to Angers. Some unidentified source said that in April 1202, Arthur was again betrothed, this time to Marie of France, a daughter of Philippe II and Agnes of Andechs-Merania.

After his return to France, and with the support of Philippe II, Arthur embarked on a campaign in Normandy against John in 1202. Poitou revolted in support of Arthur. The Duke of Brittany besieged his grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, John’s mother, in the Château de Mirebeau. John marched on Mirebeau, taking Arthur by surprise on July 31, 1202. Arthur was captured by John’s barons on August 1, and imprisoned in the Château de Falaise in Falaise, Normandy.

Imprisonment and disappearance

Arthur was guarded by Hubert de Burgh at the Chateau de Falaise. According to contemporaneous chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, John ordered two of his servants to blind and castrate the duke. De Burgh could not bring himself to let Arthur be mutilated.

Fearful of John, de Burgh leaked news that Arthur had died of natural causes. This news infuriated Brittany, who suspected that Arthur had been murdered. The following year Arthur was transferred to Rouen, under the charge of William de Braose. Arthur vanished in April 1203, in the background of several military victories by Philippe II of France against King John.

Arthur’s disappearance gave rise to various stories. One account was that Arthur’s gaolers feared to harm him, and so he was murdered by John directly and his body dumped in the Seine. The Margam Annals provide the following account of Arthur’s death:

After King John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time, at length, in the castle of Rouen, after dinner on the Thursday before Easter, when he was drunk and possessed by the devil [‘ebrius et daemonio plenus’], he slew him with his own hand, and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the Seine. It was discovered by a fisherman in his net, and being dragged to the bank and recognized, was taken for secret burial, in fear of the tyrant, to the priory of Bec called Notre Dame de Pres.

William de Braose is also rumoured to have murdered Arthur. After the young man’s disappearance, he rose high in John’s favour receiving new lands and titles in the Welsh Marches. Many years after Arthur’s disappearance, and just prior to a conflict with King John, de Braose’s wife Maud de Braose accused the king of murdering Arthur.

Not only the Bretons, but even Philippe II, were ignorant of what actually happened, and whether Arthur was alive or dead. Whatever his fate, Arthur left no known issue. William promised to direct the attack of Mirebeau on condition he was consulted on the fate of Arthur, but John broke the promise, causing him to leave John along with Aimeri of Thouars and siege Angers.

Succession

The mystery surrounding Arthur’s death complicated his succession. This succession was presumably influenced by both King John and King Philippe II. There were no male heirs to the ducal crown and so his succession as duke was constrained to several choices among his sisters.

Arthur’s sister Eleanor, the ‘Fair Maid of Brittany’, was also King John’s prisoner. Eleanor also presented a complicating factor, if not a threat, to John’s succession plans as King of England.

While permitted by John to succeed Richmond and claim her rights to Brittany, she remained imprisoned for the rest of her life, through the reign of John’s actual successor, his son Henry III of England.

While imprisoned, she never married and had no issue. Her imprisonment and the fact that she was located in England made it impossible for her to reign as hereditary Duchess of Brittany.

Arthur I was succeeded by his half-sister, Alix of Thouars, the daughter of Constance and her third husband Guy of Thouars.

April 1, 1204: Death of Eleanor of Aquitaine

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Angevin Empire, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II of England, Louis VII of France, Pope Eugene III, The Third Crusade, William IX of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122 – 1 April 1204)

Eleanor (or Aliénor) was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse de l’Isle Bouchard, who was William IX’s longtime mistress as well as Eleanor’s maternal grandmother. Her parents’ marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather William IX. Her father was renowned in early 12th-century Europe for having a glittering ducal court.

A romanticized portrait of Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor’s year of birth is not known precisely: a late 13th-century genealogy of her family listing her as 13 years old in the spring of 1137 provides the best evidence that Eleanor was perhaps born as late as 1124.

On the other hand, some chronicles mention a fidelity oath of some lords of Aquitaine on the occasion of Eleanor’s fourteenth birthday in 1136. This, and her known age of 82 at her death make 1122 the most likely year of her birth.

Her parents almost certainly married in 1121. Her birthplace may have been Poitiers, Bordeaux, or Nieul-sur-l’Autise, where her mother and brother died when Eleanor was 6 or 8.

As the heir of the House of Poitiers, rulers in southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was patron of literary figures such as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, and Bernart de Ventadorn. She was also known to have led armies several times in her life and was a key leading figure of the unsuccessful Second Crusade.

She became Duchess of Aquitaine upon her father’s death in April 1137, and three months later she married Louis, son of her guardian King Louis VI of France. A few weeks later, Prince Louis became the French king, Louis VII of France.

King Louis VII of France

Eleanor and Louis had two daughters, Marie and Alix. As Queen of France, Eleanor participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Soon afterwards, she sought an annulment of her marriage, but her request was rejected by Pope Eugene III.

Eventually, Louis agreed to an annulment, as 15 years of marriage had not produced a son. The marriage was annulled on March 21, 1152 on the grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree. Their daughters were declared legitimate, custody was awarded to Louis, and Eleanor’s lands were restored to her.

As soon as the annulment was granted, Eleanor became engaged to her third cousin Henry, Duke of Normandy. The couple married on Whitsun, May 18, 1152. In 1154 Henry became King Henry II of England and Eleanor became Queen of England as his Consort. Because of Jure uxoris (a Latin phrase meaning “by right of (his) wife”) Henry II became Duke of Aquitaine and ruler of all his wife’s lands. Joining these lands with England and Normandy to create the vast Angevin Empire.

King Henry II of England

Eleanor and Henry II had five sons and three daughters. However, Henry II and Eleanor eventually became estranged. Henry imprisoned her in 1173 for supporting the revolt of their eldest son, Henry the Young King, against him.

Eleanor was not released until July 6, 1189, when her husband died and their third son ascended the throne as King Richard I the Lionheart.

As queen dowager, Eleanor acted as regent while Richard went on the Third Crusade. She lived well into the reign of her youngest son, King John of England, Lord of Ireland.

December 4, 1214. Death of William I The Lion, King of Scots

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Earldom of Northumbria, Ermengarde de Beaumont, Henry II of England, King of Scots, Malcolm IV of Scotland, Pope Alexander III, William I of Scotland, William the Lion

William I the Lion (c. 1142 – December 4, 1214) reigned as King of Scots from 1165 to 1214 (49 years). He had the second-longest reign in Scottish history before the Act of Union with England in 1707. James VI (reigned 1567–1625) would have the longest.

Early life

William was born c. 1142, during the reign of his grandfather King David I of Scotland. His parents were the King’s son Henry and Ada de Warenne. William was around 10 years old when his father died in 1152, making his elder brother Malcolm the heir apparent to their grandfather. From his father William inherited the Earldom of Northumbria. David I died the next year, and William became heir presumptive to the new king, Malcolm IV. In 1157, William lost the Earldom of Northumbria to Henry II of England.

Reign

Malcolm IV did not live for long, and upon his death on 9 December 1165, at age 24, William ascended the throne. The new monarch was crowned on 24 December 1165. In contrast to his deeply religious, frail brother, William was powerfully built, redheaded, and headstrong. He was an effective monarch whose reign was marred by his ill-fated attempts to regain control of his paternal inheritance of Northumbria from the Anglo-Normans.

After his accession to the throne William spent some time at the court of Henry II, then, quarrelling with Henry, he arranged in 1168 the first definite treaty of alliance between France and Scotland. William was then a key player in the Revolt of 1173–74 against Henry II, which was led by Henry’s sons with some short-lived assistance from Louis VII.

In 1174, at the Battle of Alnwick, during a raid in support of the revolt, William recklessly charged the English troops himself, shouting, “Now we shall see which of us are good knights!” He was unhorsed and captured by Henry’s troops led by Ranulf de Glanvill and taken in chains to Newcastle, then Northampton, and then transferred to Falaise in Normandy.

Henry then sent an army to Scotland and occupied it. As ransom and to regain his kingdom, William had to acknowledge Henry as his feudal superior and agree to pay for the cost of the English army’s occupation of Scotland by taxing the Scots. The cost was equal to 40,000 Scottish Merks (£26,000).

The church of Scotland was also subjected to that of England. William acknowledged this by signing the Treaty of Falaise, and was then allowed to return to Scotland. In 1175 he swore fealty to Henry II at York Castle.
The humiliation of the Treaty of Falaise triggered a revolt in Galloway which lasted until 1186, and prompted construction of a castle at Dumfries.

In 1179, meanwhile, William and his brother David personally led a force northwards into Easter Ross, establishing two further castles, north of the Beauly and Cromarty Firths; one on the Black Isle at Ederdour; and the other at Dunkeath, near the mouth of the Cromarty Firth opposite Cromarty. The aim was to discourage the Norse Earls of Orkney from expanding beyond Caithness.

A further rising in 1181 involved Donald Meic Uilleim, descendant of King Duncan II. Donald briefly took over Ross; not until his death (1187) was William able to reclaim Donald’s stronghold of Inverness. Further royal expeditions were required in 1197 and 1202 to fully neutralise the Orcadian threat.

William also quarrelled with Pope Alexander III, and arose out of a double choice for the vacant bishopric of St Andrews. The king put forward his chaplain, Hugh, while the pope supported the archdeacon, John Scotus, who had been canonically elected. A hostile interchange followed, then after the death of Alexander in 1181 his successor, Lucius III, consented to a compromise by which Hugh got the bishopric and John became bishop of Dunkeld.

In 1188 William secured a papal bull which declared that the Church of Scotland was directly subject only to Rome, thus rejecting the claims to supremacy put forward by the English archbishop.

The Treaty of Falaise remained in force for the next fifteen years. Then the English king Richard the Lionheart, needing money to take part in the Third Crusade, agreed to terminate it in return for 10,000 silver marks (£6,500), on December 5, 1189.

William then was able to address the turbulent chiefs in the outlying parts of his kingdom. His authority was recognized in Galloway which, hitherto, had been practically independent; he put an end to a formidable insurrection in Moray and Inverness; and a series of campaigns brought the far north, Caithness and Sutherland, under the power of the crown.
William attempted to purchase Northumbria from Richard in 1194, as he had a strong claim over it.

However, his offer of 15,000 marks (£9,750) was rejected due to wanting the castles within the lands, which Richard was not willing to give. In 1200, William did homage to Richard’s successor John, apparently to save face.

Despite the Scots regaining their independence, Anglo-Scottish relations remained tense during the first decade of the 13th century. In August 1209 King John decided to flex the English muscles by marching a large army to Norham (near Berwick), in order to exploit the flagging leadership of the ageing Scottish monarch. As well as promising a large sum of money, the ailing William agreed to his elder daughters marrying English nobles and, when the treaty was renewed in 1212, John apparently gained the hand of William’s only surviving legitimate son, and heir, Alexander, for his eldest daughter, Joan.

Despite continued dependence on English goodwill, William’s reign showed much achievement. He threw himself into government with energy and diligently followed the lines laid down by his grandfather, David I. Anglo-French settlements and feudalization were extended, new burghs founded, criminal law clarified, the responsibilities of justices and sheriffs widened, and trade grew.

Traditionally, William is credited with founding Arbroath Abbey, the site of the later Declaration of Arbroath. The bishopric of Argyll was established (c. 1192) in the same year as papal confirmation of the Scottish church by Pope Celestine III.

William died of natural causes in Stirling in 1214 and lies buried in Arbroath Abbey. His son, Alexander II, succeeded him as king, reigning from 1214 to 1249.

William was not known as “the Lion” during his own lifetime, and the title did not relate to his tenacious character or his military prowess. It was attached to him because of his flag or standard, a red lion rampant with a forked tail (queue fourchée) on a yellow background. This (with the substitution of a ‘double tressure fleury counter-fleury’ border instead of an orle) went on to become the Royal Banner of Scotland, still used today but quartered with those of England and of Ireland. It became attached to him because the chronicler John of Fordun called him the “Lion of Justice”.

Marriage and issue

Due to the terms of the Treaty of Falaise, Henry II had the right to choose William’s bride. As a result, William married Ermengarde de Beaumont, a great-granddaughter of King Henry I of England, at Woodstock Palace in 1186. Edinburgh Castle was her dowry. The marriage was not very successful, and it was many years before she bore him an heir. William and Ermengarde’s children were:

Margaret of Scotland, Countess of Kent (1193–1259), married Hubert de Burgh, 1st Earl of Kent.

Isabella of Scotland, Countess of Norfolk (1195–1263), married Roger Bigod, 4th Earl of Norfolk.

Alexander II of Scotland (1198–1249).

Marjorie (1200 – 17 November 1244), married Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke.

Out of wedlock, William I had numerous illegitimate children, their descendants being among those who would lay claim to the Scottish crown.

The Angevin Empire. Part II.

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Administration, Count of Maine, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Normandy, Government, Henry II of England, John of England, Kingdom of Scotland, Kings of france, Lords of Ireland, Principality of Wales, Richard I of England

Administration and government

At its largest extent, the Angevin Empire consisted of the Kingdom of England, the Lordship of Ireland, the Duchies of Normandy (which included the Channel Islands), Gascony and Aquitaine as well as of the Counties of Anjou, Poitou, Maine, Touraine, Saintonge, La Marche, Périgord, Limousin, Nantes and Quercy.

While the Duchies and Counties were held with various levels of vassalage to the king of France, the Plantagenets held various levels of control over the Duchies of Brittany and Cornwall, the Welsh princedoms, the county of Toulouse, and the Kingdom of Scotland, although those regions were not formal parts of the empire.

Auvergne was also in the empire for part of the reigns of Henry II and Richard, in their capacity as Dukes of Aquitaine. Henry II and Richard I pushed further claims over the County of Berry but these were not completely fulfilled and the county was lost completely by the time of the accession of John in 1199.

The frontiers of the empire were sometimes well known and therefore easy to mark, such as the dykes constructed between the royal demesne of the King of France and the Duchy of Normandy. In other places these borders were not so clear, particularly the eastern border of Aquitaine, where there was often a difference between the frontier Henry II, and later Richard I, claimed, and the frontier where their effective power ended.

Scotland was an independent kingdom, but after a disastrous campaign led by King William I the Lion, English garrisons were established in the castles of Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick in southern Scotland as defined in the Treaty of Falaise.

Administration and government

One characteristic of the Angevin Empire was its “polycratic” nature, a term taken from a political pamphlet written by a subject of the Angevin Empire: the Policraticus by John of Salisbury. This meant that, rather than the empire being controlled fully by the ruling monarch, he would delegate power to specially appointed subjects in different areas.

Britain

England was under the firmest control of all the lands in the Angevin Empire, due to the age of many of the offices that governed the country and the traditions and customs that were in place. England was divided in shires with sheriffs in each enforcing the common law. A justiciar was appointed by the king to stand in his absence when he was on the continent. As the kings of England were more often in France than England they used writs more frequently than the Anglo-Saxon kings, which actually proved beneficial to England.

Under William I’s rule, Anglo-Saxon nobles had been largely replaced by Anglo-Norman ones who couldn’t own large expanses of contiguous lands, because their lands were split between England and France. This made it much harder for them to revolt against the king and defend all of their lands at once. Earls held a status similar to that of the continental counts, but there were no dukes at this time, only ducal titles that the kings of England held.

The Principality of Wales obtained good terms provided it paid homage to the Plantagenets and recognised them as lords. However, it remained almost self-ruling. It supplied the Plantagenets with infantry and longbowmen.

Ireland

Ireland was ruled by the Lord of Ireland who had a hard time imposing his rule at first. Dublin and Leinster were Angevin strongholds while Cork, Limerick and parts of eastern Ulster were taken by Anglo-Norman nobles.

The Lordship of Ireland sometimes referred to retroactively as Norman Ireland, was the part of Ireland ruled by the King of England (styled as “Lord of Ireland”) and controlled by loyal Anglo-Norman lords between 1177 and 1542. The lordship was created following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169–1171. It was a papal fief, granted to the Plantagenet kings of England by the Holy See, via Laudabiliter. As the lord of Ireland was also the king of England, he was represented locally by a governor, variously known as justiciar, lieutenant, or lord deputy.

France

France in 1180. The Angevin kings of England held all the red territories.
All the continental domains that the Angevin kings ruled were governed by a seneschal at the top of the hierarchical system, with lesser government officials such as baillis, vicomtes, and prévôts. However, all counties and duchies would differ to an extent.

Greater Anjou is a modern term to describe the area consisting of Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Vendôme, and Saintonge. Here, prévôts, the seneschal of Anjou, and other seneschals governed. They were based at Tours, Chinon, Baugé, Beaufort, Brissac, Angers, Saumur, Loudun, Loches, Langeais and Montbazon.

However, the constituent counties, such as Maine, were often administered by the officials of the local lords, rather than their Angevin suzerains. Maine was at first largely self-ruling and lacked administration until the Angevin kings made efforts to improve administration by installing new officials, such as the seneschal of Le Mans. These reforms came too late for the Angevins however, and only the Capetians saw the beneficial effects of this reform after they annexed the area.

Aquitaine differed in the level of administration in its different constituent regions. Gascony was a very loosely administrated region. Officials were stationed mostly in Entre-Deux-Mers, Bayonne, Dax, but some were found on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and also on the river Garonne up to Agen. The rest of Gascony was not administered, despite being such a large area compared to other smaller, well-administered provinces.

This difficulty when it came to administering the region wasn’t new – it had been just as difficult for the previous Poitevin dukes to cement their authority over this area. A similar state of affairs was found in the eastern provinces of Périgord and Limousin, where there was not much of a royal administrative system and practically no officials were stationed. Indeed, there were lords that ruled these regions as if they were “sovereign princes” and they had extra powers, such as the ability to mint their own coins, something English lords had been unable to do for decades.

These officials were introduced during the 12th century in Normandy and cause an organisation of the duchy similar to the sheriffs in England. Ducal authority was the strongest on the frontier near the Capetian royal demesne.

Toulouse was held through weak vassalage by the Count of Toulouse but it was rare for him to comply with Angevin rule. Only Quercy was directly administrated by the Angevins after Henry II’s conquest in 1159, but it did remain a contested area.

Brittany, a region where nobles were traditionally very independent, was under Angevin control during Henry II and Richard I’s reigns. The county of Nantes was under the firmest control. The Angevins often involved themselves in Breton affairs, such as when Henry II installed the archbishop of Dol and arranged Duke Conan IV of Brittany’s marriage to Margaret of Huntingdon (1144/45 – 1201).

Here is some family background on Margaret that you may find interesting. Margaret was a Scottish princess, the daughter of Henry of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon and Northumbria, and Ada de Warenne. She was the sister of Scottish kings Malcolm IV and William I.

Margaret’s father, Henry of Scotland (1114 — 1152), was heir apparent to the Kingdom of Alba. He was also the 3rd Earl of Northumberland and the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon. He was the son of King David I of Scotland and Queen Maud, 2nd Countess of Huntingdon.

Margaret’s mother, Maud was the daughter of Waltheof, the Anglo-Saxon Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, and his French wife Judith of Lens. Her father was the last of the major Anglo-Saxon earls to remain powerful after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, and the son of Siward, Earl of Northumbria. Her mother was the niece of William the Conqueror, which makes Maud his grand-niece. Through her ancestors the Counts of Boulogne, she was also a descendant of Alfred the Great and Charles the Bald and a cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon.

Margaret’s second husband was Humphrey de Bohun, hereditary Constable of England. Following her second marriage, Margaret styled herself as the Countess of Hereford.

April 7, 1141: Empress Matilda claims the English Throne

Tags

Empress Matilda, Henry II of England, Henry V Holy Roman Emperor, Holy Roman Empire, Malcolm III of Scotland, Stephen of Blois, The Anarchy, William Ætheling

Empress Matilda (c. February 7, 1102 – September 10, 1167), also known as the Empress Maude, was one of the claimants to the English throne during the civil war known as the Anarchy. Empress Matilda was the daughter of King Henry I of England by first wife Matilda of Scotland, daughter of Malcolm III, King of Scots.

Henry I’s two eldest surviving children were William Ætheling and Matilda. William Ætheling (1103 – 1120), commonly called Adelin, sometimes Adelinus, or Adelingus or other Latinised Norman-French variants of Ætheling. William was married to Matilda of Anjou the eldest daughter of Count Fulk V of Anjou. The couple were married when William Ætheling was 16 and Matilda of Anjou was only 8. Needless to say, that when William drowned in the English channel in 1120, a year after their marriage, when his ship, The White Ship, sank, there were no children from the union. Henry I did remarry the next year. His new bride was Adeliza of Louvain, who was 18 while Henry was 53, but no children were born of this union.

The other legitimate child of Henry to survive was Matilda who had married Holy Roman Emperor Hienrich V. That union gave Matilda the title of Empress and it is as Empress Matilda she is most known by. There were no children of this union and the Emperor died in 1125. Matilda remarried in 1128, Geoffery, Count of Anjou (who had the nickname Plantaganet) a prince which the powerful barons did not trust. This union provided Matilda with three healthy sons, Henry, Geoffery & William.

With William Ætheling dead, the succession to the English throne was thrown into doubt. Rules of succession were uncertain in western Europe at the time; in some parts of France, male primogeniture was becoming more popular, in which the eldest son would inherit a title. It was also traditional for the king of France to crown his successor while he was still alive, making the intended line of succession relatively clear.

This was not the case in England, where the best a noble could do was to identify what Professor Eleanor Searle has termed a pool of legitimate heirs, leaving them to challenge and dispute the inheritance after his death. The problem was further complicated by the sequence of unstable Anglo-Norman successions over the previous sixty years.

William the Conqueror had invaded England, his sons William Rufus and Robert Curthose had fought a war between them to establish their inheritance, and Henry had only acquired control of Normandy by force. There had been no peaceful, uncontested successions.

Initially, Henry put his hopes in fathering another son. William and Matilda’s mother—Matilda of Scotland—had died in 1118, and so Henry took a new wife, Adeliza of Louvain. Henry and Adeliza did not conceive any children, and the future of the dynasty appeared at risk. Henry may have begun to look among his nephews for a possible heir.

Henry may have considered his sister Adela’s son Stephen of Blois as a possible option and, perhaps in preparation for this, he arranged a beneficial marriage for Stephen to Empress Matilda’s wealthy maternal cousin Countess Matilda I of Boulogne. Count Theobald IV of Blois, another nephew and close ally, possibly also felt that he was in favour with Henry.

William Clito, the only son of Robert Curthose, was King Louis VI of France’s preferred choice, but William was in open rebellion against Henry and was therefore unsuitable. Henry might have also considered his own illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester, as a possible candidate, but English tradition and custom would have looked unfavourably on this. Henry’s plans shifted when Empress Matilda’s husband, Emperor Henry, died in 1125

Henry I desired that his daughter would succeed him and had the Barons of the relm swear and oath to that aim. When Henry died on December 1, 1135 Matilda was in Normandy pregnant with her third child and her cousin, Stephen of Blois usurped the throne from her. Stephen had support from the Barons and was swiftly crowned King of England.

Although Stephen held the crown Matilda did not just sit quietly. For almost the entierty of the reign of king Stephen there was civil war, which some historians call “the Anarchy,” which was settled shortly before his death in 1154.

In part II I will examine how the Empress Matilda almost became England’s first Queen Regnant on April 7, 1141.

April 6, 1199: Death of King Richard I of England

Tags

Angevin Empire, Berengaria of Navarre, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II of England, House of Plantagenet, Richard I of England, The Lion Heart

Richard I (September 8, 1157 – April 6, 1199) was King of England from 1189 until his death. He was the second king of the House of Plantagenet. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period. He was the third of five sons of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine and seemed unlikely to become king, but all of his brothers except the youngest, John, predeceased their father. Richard is known as Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior.

Richard was born on September 8, 1157, probably at Beaumont Palace, in Oxford, England, son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was a younger brother of Henry the Young King and Matilda, Duchess of Saxony. As a younger son of King Henry II, he was not expected to ascend the throne. He was also an elder brother of Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany; Queen Eleanor of Castile; Queen Joan of Sicily; and John, Count of Mortain, who succeeded him as king.

By the age of 16, Richard had taken command of his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father. Richard was a central Christian commander during the Third Crusade, leading the campaign after the departure of Philippe II of France and achieving considerable victories against his Muslim counterpart, Saladin, although he did not retake Jerusalem from Saladin.

Richard probably spoke both French and Occitan. He was born in England, where he spent his childhood; before becoming king, however, he lived most of his adult life in the Duchy of Aquitaine, in the southwest of France. Following his accession, he spent very little time, perhaps as little as six months, in England.

Most of his life as king was spent on Crusade, in captivity, or actively defending his lands in France. Rather than regarding his kingdom as a responsibility requiring his presence as ruler, he has been perceived as preferring to use it merely as a source of revenue to support his armies. Nevertheless, he was seen as a pious hero by his subjects. He remains one of the few kings of England remembered more commonly by his epithet than his regnal number, and is an enduring iconic figure both in England and in France.

Marriage

Before leaving Cyprus on crusade, Richard married Berengaria of Navarre the first-born daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre and Sancha of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII, King of León and Castile and his wife Berengaria of Barcelona.

Richard first grew close to her at a tournament held in her native Navarre. The wedding was held in Limassol on May 12, 1191 at the Chapel of St George and was attended by Richard’s sister Joan, whom he had brought from Sicily. The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and splendour, many feasts and entertainments, and public parades and celebrations followed commemorating the event. Richard took his new wife on crusade with him briefly, though they returned separately. Berengaria had almost as much difficulty in making the journey home as her husband did, and she did not see England until after his death. After his release from German captivity, Richard showed some regret for his earlier conduct, but he was not reunited with his wife. The marriage remained childless.

Death

In March of 1199, Richard was in Limousin suppressing a revolt by Viscount Aimar V of Limoges. Although it was Lent, he “devastated the Viscount’s land with fire and sword”. He besieged the puny, virtually unarmed castle of Châlus-Chabrol. Some chroniclers claimed that this was because a local peasant had uncovered a treasure trove of Roman gold.

On March 25, 1199, Richard was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow, and the wound turned gangrenous. Richard asked to have the crossbowman brought before him; called alternatively Pierre (or Peter) Basile, John Sabroz, Dudo, and Bertrand de Gourdon (from the town of Gourdon) by chroniclers, the man turned out (according to some sources, but not all) to be a boy.

He said Richard had killed his father and two brothers, and that he had killed Richard in revenge. He expected to be executed, but as a final act of mercy Richard forgave him, saying “Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day”, before he ordered the boy to be freed and sent away with 100 shillings. It is unclear whether the pardon was upheld following his death. According to one chronicler, Richard’s last act of chivalry proved fruitless when the infamous mercenary captain Mercadier had the crossbowman flayed alive and hanged as soon as Richard died.

Richard died on April 6, 1199 in the arms of his mother, and thus “ended his earthly day”. Because of the nature of Richard’s death, it was later referred to as “the Lion by the Ant was slain”. Richard produced no legitimate heirs and acknowledged only one illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac. As a result, he was succeeded by his brother John as king. However, his French territories initially rejected John as a successor, preferring his nephew Arthur, whose claim was by modern standards better than John’s. The lack of any direct heirs from Richard was the first step in the dissolution of the Angevin Empire.

May 18, 1152 – The future Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. Conclusion

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II of England, King of England, King of France, King of the English, King of the Franks, King Stephen of England, Louis VII of France, royal wedding

After the marriage between Eleanor and Louis VII, Eleanor traveled to Poitiers, two lords —Theobald V, Count of Blois, and Geoffrey, Count of Nantes, brother of Henry Curtmantle, now called, Henry II, Duke of Normandy — tried to kidnap and marry her to claim her lands. Despite the annulment with Louis VII, Eleanor remained Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right making her a very wealthy, powerful and desirable woman.

Henry II, King of the English, Duke of Normandy

As soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to Henry II, Duke of Normandy and future King of the English, asking him to come at once to marry her. On May 18, 1152 (Whit Sunday), eight weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry “without the pomp and ceremony that befitted their rank.”

Eleanor was related to Henry even more closely than she had been to Louis VII: they were cousins to the third degree through their common ancestor Ermengarde of Anjou, wife of Robert I, Duke of Burgundy and Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais, and they were also descended from King Robert II of the Franks. A marriage between Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Marie had earlier been declared impossible due to their status as third cousins once removed. It was rumored by some that Eleanor had had an affair with Henry’s own father, Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, who had advised his son to avoid any involvement with her.

The marriage instantly reignited Henry’s tensions with Louis VII: it was considered an insult, it ran counter to feudal practice and it threatened the inheritance of Louis and Eleanor’s two daughters, Marie and Alix, who might otherwise have had claims to Aquitaine on Eleanor’s death. With his new lands, Aquitaine and Normandy combined, Henry now possessed a much larger proportion of France than Louis. Louis organised a coalition against Henry.

Fighting immediately broke out again along the Normandy borders, where Henry of Champagne and Robert captured the town of Neufmarché-sur-Epte. Louis’s forces moved to attack Aquitaine. King Stephen of the English responded by placing Wallingford Castle, a key fortress loyal to Henry along the Thames Valley, under siege, possibly in an attempt to force a successful end to the English conflict while Henry was still fighting for his territories in France. Henry moved quickly in response, avoiding an open battle with Louis in Aquitaine and stabilising the Norman border, pillaging the Vexin and then striking south into Anjou against Geoffrey, capturing one of his main castles (Montsoreau). Louis fell ill and withdrew from the campaign, and Geoffrey was forced to come to terms with Henry.

Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine

In November 1152 the King Stephen and Duke Henry II of Normandy ratified the terms of a permanent peace. Stephen announced the Treaty of Winchester in Winchester Cathedral: he recognised Henry as his adopted son and successor, in return for Henry paying homage to him; Stephen promised to listen to Henry’s advice, but retained all his royal powers; Stephen’s son William would pay homage to Henry and renounce his claim to the throne, in exchange for promises of the security of his lands; key royal castles would be held on Henry’s behalf by guarantors whilst Stephen would have access to Henry’s castles; and the numerous foreign mercenaries would be demobilised and sent home. Henry and Stephen sealed the treaty with a kiss of peace in the cathedral. The peace remained precarious, and Stephen’s son William remained a possible future rival to Henry. Rumors of a plot to kill Henry were circulating and, possibly as a consequence, Henry decided to return to Normandy for a period.

On October 25, 1154, King Stephen died and Henry became king of the English. Eleanor was crowned queen by the archbishop of Canterbury on December 19, 1154. She may not have been anointed on this occasion, however, because she had already been anointed in 1137. Over the next 13 years, she bore Henry five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. John Speed, in his 1611 work History of Great Britain, mentions the possibility that Eleanor had a son named Philip, who died young. His sources no longer exist, and he alone mentions this birth.

Eleanor’s marriage to Henry was reputed to be tumultuous and argumentative, although sufficiently cooperative to produce at least eight pregnancies. Henry was by no means faithful to his wife and had a reputation for philandering. Henry fathered other, illegitimate children throughout the marriage. Eleanor appears to have taken an ambivalent attitude towards these affairs. Geoffrey of York, for example, was an illegitimate son of Henry, but acknowledged by Henry as his child and raised at Westminster in the care of the queen.

May 18, 1152 – The future Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. Part II.

Tags

Anullment, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda, Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry I of England, Henry II of England, Louis VI of France, Louis VII of France, Pope Eugene III, The Second Crusade

The marriage between the Empress Matilda and Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou proved difficult, as the couple did not particularly like each other. There was a further dispute over Matilda’s dowry; she was granted various castles in Normandy by King Henry I, but it was not specified when the couple would actually take possession of them. It is also unknown whether King Henry intended Geoffrey to have any future claim on England or Normandy, and he was probably keeping Geoffrey’s status deliberately uncertain.

Soon after the marriage, Matilda and Geoffrey separated Matilda returned to Normandy. King Henry appears to have blamed Geoffrey for the separation, but the couple were finally reconciled in 1131. Henry summoned Matilda from Normandy, and she arrived in England that August. It was decided that Matilda would return to Geoffrey at a meeting of the King’s great council in September. The council also gave another collective oath of allegiance to recognize Matilda as Henry’s heir.

Matilda gave birth to her first son in March 1133 at Le Mans, the future Henry II. King Henry was delighted by the news and came to see her at Rouen. At Pentecost 1134, their second son Geoffrey was born in Rouen, but the childbirth was extremely difficult and Matilda appeared close to death. Matilda made arrangements for her will and argued with her father about where she should be buried. Matilda preferred Bec Abbey.

King Henry I died on December 1, 1135, and his corpse was taken to Rouen accompanied by the barons, where it was embalmed; his entrails were buried locally at the priory of Notre-Dame du Pré, and the preserved body was taken on to England, where it was interred at Reading Abbey.

Despite Henry’s efforts, to secure the succession to the throne for Matilda with the Barons, the succession was disputed. In July 1136 Matilda gave birth to her third son William at Argentan.

The news of Henry’s death had reached Stephen of Blois, conveniently placed in Boulogne, and he left for England, accompanied by his military household. Robert of Gloucester had garrisoned the ports of Dover and Canterbury and some accounts suggest that they refused Stephen access when he first arrived.

Henry I, King of the English

Nonetheless Stephen reached the edge of London by December 8, and over the next week he began to seize power in England. The crowds in London proclaimed Stephen the new King of the English, believing that he would grant the city new rights and privileges in return, and his brother, Henry of Blois, the Bishop of Winchester, delivered the support of the Church to Stephen.

Stephen had sworn to support Matilda in 1127, but Henry of Blois convincingly argued that the late King had been wrong to insist that his court take the oath, and suggested that the King had changed his mind on his deathbed. Stephen’s coronation was held a week later at Westminster Abbey on December 26.

A civil war between the factions of King Stephen and Empress Matilda dominated the majority of King Stephen’s reign.

Count Geoffrey of Anjou died in September 1151, and Geoffrey’s eldest son, Henry Curtmantle, postponed his plans to return to England, as he first needed to ensure that his succession, particularly in Anjou, was secure. At around this time he was also probably secretly planning his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, then still the wife of King Louis VII of the Franks.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122 – April 1, 1204) was queen consort of the Franks (1137–1152) and the English (1154–1189) and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right (1137–1204). As a member of the Ramnulfids (House of Poitiers) rulers in southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe during the High Middle Ages.

Eleanor’s year of birth is not known precisely: a late 13th-century genealogy of her family listing her as 13 years old in the spring of 1137 provides the best evidence that Eleanor was perhaps born as late as 1124. On the other hand, some chronicles mention a fidelity oath of some lords of Aquitaine on the occasion of Eleanor’s fourteenth birthday in 1136. This, and her known age of 82 at her death make 1122 more likely the year of birth.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor (or Aliénor) was the oldest of three children of Guillém X, Duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering ducal court was renowned in early 12th-century Europe, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangereuse de l’Isle Bouchard, who was Guillém IX’s longtime mistress as well as Eleanor’s maternal grandmother. Her parents’ marriage had been arranged by Dangereuse with her paternal grandfather Guillém IX.

The King of the Franks, known as Louis VI the Fat, was also gravely ill at that time, suffering from a bout of dysentery from which he appeared unlikely to recover. Yet despite his impending death, Louis VI’s mind remained clear. His eldest surviving son, Louis the Younger,, had originally been destined for monastic life, but had become the heir apparent when the firstborn, Philippe, died in a riding accident in 1131.

The death of Guillém X of Aquitaine, one of the king’s most powerful vassals, made available the most desirable duchy in France. While presenting a solemn and dignified face to the grieving Aquitainian messengers, Louis VI exulted when they departed. Rather than act as guardian to the duchess and duchy, he decided to marry the duchess to his 17-year-old heir and bring Aquitaine under the control of the French crown, thereby greatly increasing the power and prominence of France and its ruling family, the House of Capet.

Within hours, the king had arranged for his son Louis the Younger to be married to Eleanor, with Abbot Suger in charge of the wedding arrangements. Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights, along with Abbot Suger, Theobald II, Count of Champagne, and Count Ralph.

On July 25, 1137, Eleanor and Louis VII were married in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the archbishop of Bordeaux.nImmediately after the wedding, the couple were enthroned as reigning Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine. It was agreed that the land would remain independent of France until Eleanor’s oldest son became both King of the Franks and Duke of Aquitaine. Thus, her holdings would not be merged with France until the next generation.

The pairing of the monkish Louis VII and the high-spirited Eleanor was doomed to failure; she reportedly once declared that she had thought to marry a king, only to find she had married a monk. There was a marked difference between the frosty, reserved culture of the northern court in the Íle de France, where Louis had been raised, and the rich, free-wheeling court life of the Aquitaine with which Eleanor was familiar. Louis VII and Eleanor had two daughters, Marie and Alix.

In the autumn of 1145 Louis was still burned with guilt over the Massacre at Vitry and wished to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sins. Massacre at Vitry was when 1,300 people burned alive in a church by forces of King Louis VII of the Franks. Also in the autumn 1145, Pope Eugene III r. 1145-1153) requested that Louis lead a Crusade to the Middle East to rescue the Frankish states there from disaster.

Louis VII, King of the Franks

Accordingly, Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going on a crusade. The Second Crusade (1147–1150) was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusade (1096–1099) by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1098. While it was the first Crusader state to be founded, it was also the first to fall.

Eleanor also formally took up the cross symbolic of the Second Crusade during a sermon preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. In addition, she had been corresponding with her uncle Raymond, Prince of Antioch, who was seeking further protection from the French crown against the Saracens.

However, even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming estranged, and their differences were only exacerbated while they were abroad. They went to see Pope Eugene III in Tusculum, where he had been driven five months before by a revolt of the Commune of Rome.

Pope Eugene III did not, as Eleanor had hoped, grant an annulment. Instead, he attempted to reconcile Eleanor and Louis, confirming the legality of their marriage. He proclaimed that no word could be spoken against it, and that it might not be dissolved under any pretext. Eventually, he manipulated events so that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a bed specially prepared by the Pope. Thus was conceived their second child —not a son, but another daughter, Alix of France.

Without a male heir the marriage was now doomed. Facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for annulment, Louis bowed to the inevitable. On March 11, 1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage. Hugues de Toucy, archbishop of Sens, presided, and Louis and Eleanor were both present, as were the archbishop of Bordeaux and Rouen. Archbishop Samson of Reims acted for Eleanor.

On March 21, the four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugene, granted an annulment on grounds of consanguinity within the fourth degree; Eleanor was Louis VII’s third cousin once removed, and shared common ancestry with King Robert II of the Franks. Despite the annulment their two daughters were, however, declared legitimate.

Eleanor remained the Duchess of Aquitaine and was considered beautiful, lively and controversial.