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

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Matilda, Henry I of England, Henry II of England, Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, Matilda of England, royal wedding, William Ætheling, William the Conqueror

From the Emperor’s Desk: Much leads up to this historical marriage. Over the next few days I will cover what lead up to the marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

1152 – The future Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. He would become king two years later, after the death of his cousin once removed King Stephen of England.

Henry II (March 5, 1133 – July 6, 1189), also known as Henry Curtmantle Henry FitzEmpress or Henry Plantagenet, was King of the English from 1154 to his death. He was the first king of the House of Plantagenet. King Louis VII of the Franks made him Duke of Normandy in 1150. Henry became Count of Anjou and Maine upon the death of his father, Geoffrey of Anjou.

Background

Henry was born in France at Le Mans the eldest child of the Empress Matilda and her second husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. The Empress Matilda Matilda was born to Henry I, King of the English and Duke of Normandy, and his first wife, Matilda of Scotland, possibly around February 7, 1102 at Sutton Courtenay, in Berkshire. King Henry I was the youngest son of King William I the Conqueror, who had invaded England in 1066, creating an empire stretching into Wales.

Matilda had a younger, legitimate brother, William Ætheling, and her father’s relationships with numerous mistresses resulted in around 22 illegitimate siblings. In late 1108 or early 1109, Heinrich V, Holy Roman Emperor, sent envoys to Normandy proposing that Matilda marry him, and wrote separately to her mother on the same matter. The match was attractive to the English king: his daughter would be marrying into one of the most prestigious dynasties in Europe, reaffirming his own, slightly questionable, status as the youngest son of a new royal house, and gaining him an ally in dealing with France.

The couple met at Liège before travelling to Utrecht where, on 10 April, they became officially betrothed. On July 25, Matilda was crowned Queen of the Romans in a ceremony at Mainz. There was a considerable age gap between the couple, as Matilda was only eight years old while Henry was 24.

Matilda and Heinrich remained childless, but neither party was considered to be infertile and contemporary chroniclers blamed their situation on the Emperor and his sins against the Church.

In early 1122, the couple travelled down the Rhine together as Henry continued to suppress the ongoing political unrest, but by now he was suffering from cancer. Heinrich V died on May 23, 1125 in Utrecht.

Now aged 23, Matilda had only limited options as to how she might spend the rest of her life. Being childless, she could not exercise a role as an imperial regent, which left her with the choice of either becoming a nun or remarrying. Some offers of marriage started to arrive from German princes, but she chose to return to Normandy.

Matilda’s brother, William Ætheling, heir to the English throne, died in the White Ship tragedy of November 25, 1120. William Ætheling and his companions had been crossing the English Channel from Barfleur in the Blanche-Nef, the swiftest and most modern ship in the royal fleet. William drowned when trying to rescue his illegitimate half-sister, Matilda FitzRoy, Countess of Perche; when they and several others threw themselves into the small dinghy, it, “overcharged by the multitude that leapt into her, capsized and sank and buried all indiscriminately in the deep.” His death created a succession crisis.

Matilda returned to Normandy in 1125 and spent about a year at the royal court, where her father was still hoping that his second marriage would generate a son. In the event that this failed to happen, Matilda was now Henry’s preferred choice, and he declared that she was to be his rightful successor if he should not have another legitimate son.

Henry began to formally look for a new husband for Matilda in early 1127 and received various offers from princes within the Empire. His preference was to use Matilda’s marriage to secure the southern borders of Normandy by marrying her to Geoffrey of Anjou, the eldest son of Fulk, the Count of Anjou, and Countess Ermengarde of Maine, (died 1126), the daughter of Elias I, Count of Maine, and Mathilda of Château-du-Loire.

Matilda appears to have been unimpressed by the prospect of marrying Geoffrey of Anjou. She felt that marrying the son of a count diminished her imperial status and was probably also unhappy about marrying someone so much younger than she was; Matilda was 25 and Geoffrey was 13.

Hildebert, the Archbishop of Tours, eventually intervened to persuade her to go along with the engagement. Matilda finally agreed, and she travelled to Rouen in May 1127 with Robert of Gloucester and Brian Fitz Count where she was formally betrothed to Geoffrey. King Henry I knighted his future son-in-law, and Matilda and Geoffrey were married a week later on June 17, 1128 in Le Mans by the bishops of Le Mans and Séez. Fulk finally left Anjou for Jerusalem in 1129, declaring Geoffrey the Count of Anjou and Maine.

This date in History: October 21, 1209, Coronation of Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II of England, Henry the Lion, Holy Roman Empire, King Richard I of England, Matilda of England, Otto IV Holy Roman Emperor, Philip II of France, Philip of Swabia, Pope Innocent III., Third Crusade

Otto IV (1175 – 19 May 1218) was one of two rival kings of Germany from 1198 on, sole king from 1208 on, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1209 until he was forced to abdicate in 1215. The only German king of the Welf dynasty, he incurred the wrath of Pope Innocent III and was excommunicated in 1210.

Otto was the third son of Heinrich XII the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Duke of Saxony, (as Heinrich III) by his wife and Matilda of England, the eldest daughter of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. His exact birthplace is not given by any original source. He grew up in England. in the care of his grandfather King Henry II. Otto was fluent in French as well as German. He became the foster son of his maternal uncle, King Richard I of England. In 1190, after he left England to join the Third Crusade, Richard appointed Otto as Earl of York.

Coat of Arms of Otto IV as Duke of Bavaria

The authenticity (or authority) of this grant was doubted by the vassals of Yorkshire, who prevented Otto taking possession of his earldom. Still, he probably visited Yorkshire in 1191, and he continued to claim the revenues of the earldom after becoming king of Germany, although he never secured them. Neither did he succeed in getting the 25,000 silver marks willed to him by his uncle in 1199.

In 1195, King Richard I of England began negotiations to marry Otto to Margaret of Scotland, daughter and heir presumptive of King William the Lion of Scotland Lothian, as Margaret’s dowry, would be handed over to Richard for safekeeping and the counties of Northumberland and Cumberland (Carlisle) would be granted to Otto and turned over to the king of Scotland. The negotiations dragged on until August 1198, when the birth of a son and heir to William rendered them unnecessary. Having failed in his efforts to secure Otto an English earldom or else a Scottish kingdom, in September 1196 Richard, as duke of Aquitaine, enfeoffed Otto with the county of Poitou. There is some disagreement over whether Otto received Poitou in exchange for or in addition to the earldom of York.

Coat of Arms of Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

Otto was in Poitou from September 1196 until mid-1197, when he joined Richard in Normandy to confer over the appointment of bishops to the vacant sees of Poitiers, Limoges and Périgueux. He then participated in the war against Philippe II of France on the side of Richard. In October he returned to Poitou. The German historian Jens Ahlers, taking into account Otto’s life prior to 1198, considers that he might have been the first foreign king of Germany.

After the death of Emperor Heinrich VI, the majority of the princes of the Empire, situated in the south, elected Heinrich VI’s brother, Philip, Duke of Swabia, as German King in March 1198, after receiving money and promises from Philip in exchange for their support. Those princes opposed to the Staufen dynasty also decided, on the initiative of Richard of England, to elect instead a member of the House of Welf. Otto’s elder brother, Heinrich, was on a crusade at the time, and so the choice fell to Otto. Otto, soon recognized throughout the northwest and the lower Rhine region, was elected German by his partisans in Cologne on June 9, 1198.

Otto took control of Aachen, the place of coronation, and was crowned by Adolf, Archbishop of Cologne, on July 12, 1198. This was of great symbolic importance, since the Archbishop of Cologne alone could crown the King of the Romans. The coronation was done with fake regalia, because the actual materials were in the hands of the Staufen.

After Philip’s death, Otto made amends with the Staufen party and became engaged to Philip’s daughter Beatrix. In an election in Frankfurt on November 11, 1208, he gained the support of all the electoral princes, as he promised he would not make hereditary claims to the imperial crown on behalf of any children he might father.

Now fully reconciled with Pope Innocent III, Otto made preparations to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. To secure Innocent’s support, he promised to restore to the Papal States all territory that it had possessed under Louis the Pious, including the March of Ancona, the Duchy of Spoleto, the former Exarchate of Ravenna, and the Pentapolis.

Travelling down via Verona, Modena, and Bologna, he eventually arrived at Milanwhere he received the Iron Crown of Lombardy and the title of King of Italy in 1208. He was met at Viterbo by Pope Innocent and was taken to St. Peter’s Basilica, where he was crowned emperor by Pope Innocent on October 21, 1209, before rioting broke out in Rome, forcing Otto to abandon the city.

Legal SuccessionI Part III: Stephen and Matilda

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Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth II, Empress Matilda, Henry I of England, Henry II of England, Kings and Queens of England, Matilda of England, William Atheling, William I of England, William the Conqueror

In the last section of this series I wrote of the battle for the throne between the three surviving sons of William the Conqueror. While that royal melee between the brothers really cannot be called a sucession crisis, the battle for an hier to the throne after the death of Henry I can be considered a crisis. It was a crisis that lasted almost 20 years.

Henry I had three children by his first wife Matilda of Scotland, daughter of Malcolm III, King of Scots. The two eldest surviving children were William Adelin and Matilda. William was married Matilda of Anjou in 1119 when he was 16 and Matilda was only 8. Needless to say that when William drowned in the English channel the next year 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. 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.  

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. The agreement between the two factions was that Matiilda’s eldest son, Henry Fitzempress, would succeed as King of England upon the death of King Stephen.

When Stephen died on October 25, 1154, Matilda’s son became King Henry II of England. Matilda retired to Normandy and held court when her son was abscent from Normandy. She died in 1167 and was clearly the legal successor to her father. Since she was the legal heir and given the fact the she briefly held London when Stephen was captured and imprisoned, many consider her the first true Queen Regnant of England.