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.

March 4, 1461: Edward IV of England deposed Henry VI of England

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Charles VI of France, Duke of York, Earl of Warwick, House of Lancaster, House of York, King Edward IV of England, King Henry VI of England, Lords of Ireland, Richard Plantagenet

In October 1452, an English advance in Aquitaine retook Bordeaux from the French and was having some success, but by 1453 Bordeaux was lost again leaving Calais as England’s only remaining territory on the continent. Upon hearing of the final loss of Bordeaux in August 1453, Henry VI of England experienced a mental breakdown and became completely unresponsive to everything that was going on around him for more than a year. He even failed to respond to the birth of a son and heir, who was christened Edward.

Henry VI, King of England and Lord of Ireland

Henry may have inherited a psychiatric condition from Charles VI of France, his maternal grandfather, who was affected by intermittent periods of insanity during the last thirty years of his life. During his bout of insanity, Henry was attended by the surgeons Gilbert Kymer and John Marchall. Thomas Morstede had previously been appointed royal surgeon and died in 1450.

Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, (a leading English magnate, a great-grandson of King Edward III through his father, and a great-great-great-grandson of the same king through his mother) meanwhile, had gained a very important ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, one of the most influential magnates and possibly richer than York himself.

York was named regent as Protector of the Realm in 1454. The queen was excluded completely, and Edmund Beaufort was detained in the Tower of London, while many of York’s supporters spread rumours that Edward was not the king’s son, but Beaufort’s. Other than that, York’s months as regent were spent tackling the problem of government overspending.

Around Christmas Day 1454, King Henry VI regained his senses. Disaffected nobles who had grown in power during Henry’s reign, most importantly the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury, took matters into their own hands. They backed the claims of the rival House of York, first to the control of government, and then to the throne itself (from 1460), pointing to York’s better descent from Edward III. It was agreed that York would become Henry’s successor, despite York being older. In 1458, in an attempt to unite the warring factions, Henry staged The Love Day in London.

Thereafter followed a violent struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York. Henry VIII’s was defeated and captured at the Battle of Northampton on July 10, 1460. The Duke of York was killed by Margaret’s forces at the Battle of Wakefield on December 30, 1460, and Henry VI was rescued from imprisonment after the Second Battle of St Albans on February 17, 1461, allowing the Lancastrians to regain custody of Henry VI.

Edward IV, King of England and Lord of Ireland

The Earl of Warwick and the the new Duke of York, Edward, met in London, where Edward was hastily crowned as King Edward IV before leading his army north. By then, however, Henry VI was suffering such a bout of madness that he was apparently laughing and singing while the battle raged. Henry VI was finally defeated at the Battle of Towton on March 29, 1461 but Edward IV failed to capture Henry VI and his queen, Margaret of Anjou, who fled to Scotland. During the first period of Edward IV’s reign, Lancastrian resistance continued mainly under the leadership of Queen Margaret and the few nobles still loyal to her in the northern counties of England and Wales.

On this date in History. October 13, 1399: Coronation of King Henry IV of England and Lord of Ireland.

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Archbishop of Canterbury, coronation, Duke of Lancaster, Henry IV, Henry IV of England, John of Gaunt, Kings and Queens of England, Lords of Ireland, Richard II of England, Usurper

October 13, 1399 coronation of Henry IV and Lord of Ireland

Henry was the son of John of Gaunt (the fourth son of Edward III) and Blanche of Lancaster. John enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of his nephew, King Richard II, whom Henry eventually deposed.

Henry IV founded the Lancaster branch of the House of Plantagenet. He was the first King of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English rather than French. This also marked the first time since the Norman Conquest when the monarch made an address in English.

Coronation of Henry IV

Another interesting bit of information is that the coronation of Henry IV was conducted by Roger Walden, Archbishop of Canterbury. On November 8, 1397 Walden was chosen Archbishop of Canterbury in succession to Thomas Arundel who had been banished from the realm by King Richard II.

On October 13, 1399 he presided over the coronation of Henry IV. However, on October 19, six days later, Walden lost this position when the new king Henry IV restored Arundel to his previous position as Archbishop of Canterbury, and after a short imprisonment he passed into retirement, being, as he himself says, “in the dust and under feet of men.”

Henry VI, King of England & Lord of Ireland is deposed. March 4, 1461.

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Charles VI of Frances, Duke of York, Earl of Warwick, Edward IV of England, Henry V of England, House of Lancaster, House of York, King Henry VI of England, Kings and Queens of England, Lords of Ireland, Plantagenet, Wars of the Roses

Henry VI (December 6, 1421 – May 21, 1471) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, and disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. The only child of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, (daughter of Charles VI of France and younger sister of Isabella of Valois the widow of Richard II). Henry VI succeeded to the English throne at the age of nine months upon his father’s death, on August 31, 1422; he was the youngest person ever to succeed to the English throne. A few weeks later on October 21, 1422 in accordance with the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, he became titular King of France upon his grandfather Charles VI’s death. His mother, Catherine of Valois, was then 20 years old. As Charles VI’s daughter, she was viewed with considerable suspicion by English nobles and was prevented from playing a full role in her son’s upbringing.and succeeded to the French throne on the death of his maternal grandfather Charles VI shortly afterwards. The subject of Henry VI’s claim to the French throne is a topic for another blog entry.

Henry VI inherited the long-running Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), in which Charles VII of the House of Valois who contested his claim to the French throne. The early reign of Henry VI, during which several people were ruling for him, saw the height of English power in France, but subsequent military failures, the desertion of England’s allies, and a faltering economy resulted in the decline of English fortunes in the war. Upon assuming personal rule in 1437, Henry VI found his realm in a difficult position, faced with diplomatic and military reverses in France and divisions among the nobility at home.

In the later years of Henry’s reign, the monarchy became increasingly unpopular, due to a breakdown in law and order, corruption, the distribution of royal land to the king’s court favourites, the troubled state of the crown’s finances, and the steady loss of territories in France.

In the midst of military catastrophes in France and of a general breakdown in law and order in England, the king’s cousin Richard, Duke of York, led an increasingly popular league of disaffected elements aiming to reform the government. He challenged the authority of the unpopular queen Margaret (widely held to be the real hand behind Henry VI’s decisions) and of the king’s clique of councillors, accusing them of misconducting the war in France and misruling the country.

Upon reaching his 21st year in 1442, and thus the legal age of majority, Henry VI saw the question of his marriage gain importance in English politics. The heir presumptive at the time, the King’s uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, (the fourth and youngest son of Henry IV, King of England and his first wife Mary de Bohun, the brother of King Henry V, and the uncle of Henry VI) saw his public image become severely damaged after his wife Eleanor Cobham was arrested and tried under charges of witchcraft in 1441. This scandal seems to have highlighted the need for Henry VI to produce heirs of his own, and public focus began to place itself on the King and potential marriage plans.

The first major proposal was to marry the King to a daughter of John IV, Count of Armagnac, a powerful noble in southwestern France who had been at odds with the Valois crown for a while, and whose lands were located very closely to the English territories in Guyenne. Already on good terms with the English since 1437, Armagnac would benefit from a strong alliance which would protect him from threats by Charles VII, while the English could use his lands as a defensive buffer zone against French attacks. The English took long to make a final decision, however, and when Charles VII invaded Gascony in 1442, the frightened Count of Armagnac seemed to change his mind. The prospect for the marriage and alliance was destroyed when Armagnac’s lands were invaded by Charles VII’s forces in 1443.

Cardinal Beaufort and the Earl of Suffolk persuaded the king that the best way of pursuing peace with France was through a marriage with Margaret of Anjou, the niece of King Charles VII. Henry agreed, especially when he heard reports of Margaret’s stunning beauty, and sent Suffolk to negotiate with Charles, who agreed to the marriage on condition that he would not have to provide the customary dowry and instead would receive the land of Maine from the English. These conditions were agreed to in the Treaty of Tours in 1444, but the cession of Maine was kept secret from parliament, as it was known that this would be hugely unpopular with the English populace. The marriage took place at Titchfield Abbey on April 23, 1445, one month after Margaret’s 15th birthday.

After the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester on February 23, 1447, Richard, Duke of York, became the heir presumptive to King Henry VI until the birth of Henry’s son Edward in 1453. In 1449, the Duke of Somerset, leading the campaign in France, reopened hostilities in Normandy (him having been one of the main advocates for peace), but by the autumn had been pushed back to Caen. By 1450, the French had retaken the whole province, so hard won by Henry V.

In 1451, the Duchy of Aquitaine, held since Henry II’s time, was also lost. In 1452, the Duke of York was persuaded to return from Ireland, claim his rightful place on the council and put an end to bad government. His cause was a popular one and he soon raised an army at Shrewsbury. The court party, meanwhile, raised their own similar-sized force in London. A stand-off took place south of London, with York presenting a list of grievances and demands to the court circle, including the arrest of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. The king initially agreed, but Margaret intervened to prevent the arrest of Beaufort.

In October 1452, an English advance in Aquitaine retook Bordeaux and was having some success but by 1453, Bordeaux was lost again, leaving Calais as England’s only remaining territory on the continent. However, on hearing of the final loss of Bordeaux in August 1453, Henry experienced a mental breakdown and became completely unresponsive to everything that was going on around him for more than a year. (Henry may have been suffering from a form of schizophrenia, according to modern experts, as he reportedly demonstrated other symptoms of schizophrenia, especially hallucinations.) He even failed to respond to the birth of a son and heir, who was christened Edward. Henry may have inherited a psychiatric condition from Charles VI of France, his maternal grandfather, who was affected by intermittent periods of insanity during the last thirty years of his life.

The Duke of York, meanwhile, had gained a very important ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, one of the most influential magnates and possibly richer than York himself. On Christmas Day 1454, King Henry VI regained his senses. Disaffected nobles who had grown in power during Henry’s reign, most importantly the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury, took matters into their own hands. They backed the claims of the rival House of York, first to the control of government, and then to the throne itself (from 1460), due to York’s better descent from Edward III. It was agreed that the Duke of York would formally become Henry’s successor, despite York being older.

York was also named regent as Protector of the Realm in 1454. The queen was excluded completely, and Edmund Beaufort was detained in the Tower of London, while many of York’s supporters spread rumours that Edward was not the king’s son, but Beaufort’s. Other than that, York’s months as regent were spent tackling the problem of government overspending.

Edward of York, eldest son of Richard, Duke of York, carried on a factional struggle with the king’s Beaufort relatives. He established a dominant position after his victory at the First Battle of St Albans in 1455, in which his chief rival Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was killed. However, Henry’s Queen, Margaret of Anjou, rebuilt a powerful faction to oppose the Yorkists over the following years. In 1459 Margaret moved against the Duke of York and his principal supporters—his brother-in-law Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and Salisbury’s son Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who rose in revolt.

The Yorkist leaders fled from England after the collapse of their army in the confrontation at Ludford Bridge. The Duke of York took refuge in Ireland, while Edward went with the Nevilles to Calais where Warwick was governor. In 1460 Edward landed in Kent with Salisbury, Warwick and Salisbury’s brother William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, raised an army, and occupied London. Edward, Warwick and Fauconberg left Salisbury besieging the Tower of London and advanced against the king, who was with an army in the Midlands, and defeated and captured him in the Battle of Northampton. York returned to England and was declared the king’s heir by parliament (in the Act of Accord), but Queen Margaret raised a fresh army against him, and Richard, Duke of York was killed at the Battle of Wakefield on December 30, 1460, along with his second surviving son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, and the Earl of Salisbury.

This left Edward, now Duke of York, at the head of the Yorkist faction. He defeated a Lancastrian army at Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire on February 2-3, 1461. He then united his forces with those of Warwick, whom Margaret’s army had defeated at the Second Battle of St Albans (February 17, 1461), during which Henry VI had been rescued by his supporters. By this point, however, Henry VI was suffering such a bout of madness that he was apparently laughing and singing while the battle raged.

Richard, Duke of York, had restricted his ambitions to only becoming Henry’s heir, but Edward now took the more radical step of proclaiming himself king on March 4, 1461. He then advanced against the Lancastrians, having his life saved on the battlefield by the Welsh Knight Sir David Ap Mathew. He defeated the Lancastrian army in the exceptionally bloody Battle of Towton in Yorkshire on 29 March 1461. Edward IV had effectively broken the military strength of the Lancastrians, and he returned to London for his coronation. King Edward IV named Sir David Ap Mathew Standard Bearer of England and allowed him to use “Towton” on the Mathew family crest.

Edward IV failed to capture Henry and his queen, who fled to Scotland. During the first period of Edward IV’s reign, Lancastrian resistance continued mainly under the leadership of Queen Margaret and the few nobles still loyal to her in the northern counties of England and Wales. Henry VI, who had been safely hidden by Lancastrian allies in Scotland, Northumberland and Yorkshire, was captured by King Edward in 1465 and subsequently held captive in the Tower of London.