The Conquering Family (23 page)

The second Henry was finding himself, in fact, in much the same position as the last of the Henrys in the matter of Anne Boleyn. With a wife on his hands and no legitimate reason for a divorce, Henry VIII went to the extreme of separating England from Rome and then promulgating his own divorce. Henry II lived in an age when such a solution was unthinkable. All he could do was to play for time and hope that Eleanor would die. The few things known about Alice suggest that she had some qualities in common with Anne Boleyn. She was ambitious, clever, an aid to the King in planning the devious excuses which kept her from the nuptial couch of Richard. She must have been deeply attached to Henry or she would never have acquiesced in the highly unenviable position this created for her.

With Eleanor in captivity at Winchester, there was no longer need for the King to cover up his movements. His court became convinced that he
and the princess were living together as man and wife, and so the whole world came to believe the same. Henry stood out in this matter against all counsel, all pressure, all the misfortunes which could be traced directly to his ill-advised course.

After Richard became King, Philip tried to force him to carry out the old arrangement and marry Alice. Richard refused on the ground that she had been his father’s mistress and had borne him a son. If such were the case, the child was born abroad, for there are no records of it in England, and must, moreover, have died in infancy. Philip did not dispute the statement. He finally agreed to a cancellation of the betrothal, and Richard married Princess Berengaria of Navarre instead. Philip then gave his unfortunate sister in marriage to a nobleman of France; a sorry conclusion for her, but not as grim an ending as that of Anne Boleyn, who succeeded in making herself Queen and laid her head on the block because of her success.

But this was after the death of Henry. As long as he lived, he refused to give Princess Alice up. She was thirty-two when he died and for seventeen years had been the object of his infatuated attachment.

Another reason the sons had for their continuous efforts to free themselves of parental control was the stern and unchangeable nature of that control. Although Henry and Richard and Geoffrey were granted the outward semblance of authority, they were puppets in the fullest sense of the word. Henry always selected the men to work with them. He saw to it that these advisers and administrators had been thoroughly trained in his own ways of doing things. These stern Norman officials were under orders to see that nothing was done of which Henry would not have approved. If one of the sons differed from his advisers and decided to take matters into his hands, they would produce papers which showed they had the power and the son no more than a make-believe authority. If the son appealed to his father, the latter would side with the officials.

In 1168, when the people of Aquitaine had been on the point of rebellion, Henry had sent Eleanor to Bordeaux to assume the rulership of her own duchy. All Aquitaine was delighted. At last their beautiful Eleanor, to whom they had always given their full allegiance and with whose peccadilloes they had been rather pleased than otherwise, was back again. It seemed like a perfect arrangement, and the Queen approached her task with a deep sense of pleasure. But she soon found herself in the position which would later irk her sons. The Earl of Salisbury had been sent with her and also a whole corps of officials from the English
Curia
and chancellery. When Eleanor wanted to make changes to meet the demands
of her people, the earl said no. She was unable to alter any of the laws and regulations which had caused their dissatisfaction. She sent passionately angry appeals to Henry to relieve her of these stern and heavy-handed men. Henry paid no attention. She was frustrated at every turn, and because she was doing nothing for them the people began to lose some of their affection for her, and this galled her high spirit.

The result was that the nobility of Aquitaine staged a palace revolution and murdered the Earl of Salisbury and all his seneschals in one day. The uprising had been badly planned and was soon suppressed. Eleanor was recalled to England, and the old methods of administration were continued thereafter without any change or amelioration.

The laws which Henry had established in England and which he was now enforcing in his continental dominions were better laws for the people than those which had existed before. It was the nobility who objected. They saw their feudal power being pared, they were forced to pay heavier taxes, they found themselves subjects under these new laws instead of rulers. They had for Henry nothing but hatred, these chivalrous knights of Aquitaine and Poitou. But Henry was right and they were wrong.

Unfortunately his sons lacked the insight which Henry possessed in such a great degree. It seemed to the three princes that their father was wrong and the barons who resisted him were right.

The struggle between Henry and his sons covered a period of sixteen years. It was very much confused and mixed up. At one time all the princes would be against their father. At other times they were fighting among themselves. At several stages the princes turned on their own allies in Aquitaine and Brittany and put them down with fire and sword.

In 1175 the King and
Li Reys Josnes
made a tour of England together. They visited the tomb of the Martyr. They made a close inspection of the Welsh Marches. They traveled as far north as York. This joint processional had a purpose, of course: to show the people of England that at last the differences between father and son had been adjusted and that once again there was amity in the royal family. Perhaps at no time in his life had Henry been happier.

In the full flush of this peacemaking he began to apply himself again to judicial reform. He defined more clearly the bounds of the six circuits and for the first time gave the
justiciarii itinerantes
power to deal with all cases, with questions of property and wardship and inheritance as well as crime and punishment. Henry remained two years in England, one of his longest stays. Around him at this time were the finest minds England had
produced, historians, poets, lawyers. The lawyers were particularly noteworthy. The machinery of the state had created a new class, men of the law who had great ability and learning. Their equal was not to be found in any other country.

But in 1177 the trouble started afresh. The princes flew to arms again and Henry hurried back to Normandy. There seemed no way of pacifying his passionate brood. They hated him and they were at odds with one another. “Is it to be wondered at,” asked Richard once, “that we live on such bad terms with one another, having sprung from such stock? From the devil we came, to the devil we must return.”

The lionhearted prince was referring to a story about the Angevins which had been widely circulated and believed. The grandmother of Henry’s father, the handsome and futile Geoffrey, had gone to mass so seldom that doubts had arisen about her. It was observed that she never remained for the consecration. Her husband decided to make a test and took four men to mass with them with orders that the countess was to be kept in her seat by force if necessary. When the moment came she sprang up as usual and they tried to lay hands on her. However, they only succeeded in retaining her cloak. The countess had flown out of the window, leaving behind her a frightened congregation and a strong smell of brimstone!

The third son, Geoffrey of Brittany, had the same fatalistic streak in him which Richard had displayed. “It is our proper nature,” he declared, “planted in us by intention, that ever brother should strive against brother, and son against father.”

There was so much switching of sides and betraying of allies that to recite the whole sequence of events would be repetitious and would, moreover, serve no useful purpose. Henry was not able to fight against his rebellious cubs with his usual spirit. On two occasions he sent envoys to them to discuss peace, but they butchered the unfortunate go-betweens by way of answer. Another time he went to Limoges, and a shaft was launched at him from the battlements of the castle. It came close enough to its mark to kill his horse. With tears streaming down his face the saddened King asked his son Geoffrey, “What hast thy unfortunate father done to deserve being made a mark for thy archers?”

These events were to have a sequel which involved Henry in the greatest sorrow of his life. A message reached him in 1183 that his eldest son was dangerously ill at Château Martel near Limoges and wanted to see him. It looked like a trap. The King could not be sure the message had come from his son and so paid no attention to it.

But the heir of England was even more ill than the message indicated. He was dying. A malignant fever had taken possession of him, and he seemed to be burning away to nothing before the eyes of his attendants. His sins weighed heavily on his mind and he talked incessantly of the
need for repentance. Finally, it being clear that the end was at hand, the stricken young man asked that a bed of cinders be made on the floor beside his couch and that a rope noose be tied around his neck. He then ordered his servants to drag him to the bed of cinders by the end of the rope. This was done, and in a very few seconds the heir of England breathed his last.

The King had not loved anyone as much as his son Henry. The news of his death was a loss from which the rapidly aging monarch never recovered. It was clear to all about him that he had received a mortal blow. He brooded continuously, his temper was short, he took no interest in what went on about him. The Young King was dead. Nothing else seemed to matter.

All through the harrowing struggle the hand of Bertran de Born could be detected. This famous knight and troubadour, who was not a rich landowner but the lord of a single castle in Périgueux called Hautefort, had it firmly fixed in his mind that the only hope for the people of the west and south was to keep the English and the French at war. As long as Henry and Louis continued to fight, they would not be free to disturb the peace-loving people of Aquitaine and Limousin and Auvergne. To accomplish his purpose he proceeded to sow enmity between Henry and his sons. He was always at the shoulder of the Young King or of Richard, implanting suggestions and ideas which would keep the feud alive. Everything that happened was grist to his mill. He made capital of Henry’s overtures to Rome in the matter of a divorce. He disturbed the minds of the naturally suspicious princes by surmises as to what was behind the appointment to the chancellery of Geoffrey, the bastard son of Fair Rosamonde. Did the King harbor any idea of giving preference to Geoffrey at his death?

When Eleanor was made a prisoner he wrote a song of lamentation which struck sorrow to the hearts of Aquitaine. “Return, poor prisoner!” he declaimed in verse. “Return to thy people, if thou canst. And if thou canst not, weep and say, ‘Alas, how long is my exile!’ Weep, weep again, and say, ‘My tears are my bread, both day and night!’ ”

When the Young King first threw in his lot with Richard and the Aquitainians, a coalition which the machiavellian knight himself had done much to bring about, he wrote his most famous
sirvientes, Pois Ventadorns e Combor ab Segur
. This song reverberated throughout Aquitaine, and it brought armed men riding in with Eleanor’s colors on their lance tips and a fever in their blood to sever the tie with the Angevin empire. As has already been told, however, the coalition proved an unhappy one.
The first hint of reverse sent a cold chill down the spine of Louis, and so the Young King felt compelled to abandon his allies.

Bertran de Born seems to have had a great affection for
Li Reys Josnes
. He was always ready to forgive his vacillations and prepared to trust him again, even after it became abundantly clear that the English prince was unstable and treacherous. The death of the prince at Château Martel caused him genuine grief which he vented in two beautiful songs. With Richard, however, he was continually on his guard. He it was who coined the phrase
Richard Oc e No
for that war-loving prince, Richard Yea and Nay.

The activities of the knight of Hautefort were maintained after the death of the oldest son, and they involved him finally in a struggle for his existence against the King and Richard, the latter having decided for some unexplained reason to support his father against his former friends and associates in rebellion. King Henry had been aware of the activities and plottings of Bertran de Born and had marked him for punishment. The chance to deal with the fearless troubadour seemed to have arrived. Henry marched his forces down the Loire and into Limousin and invested the castle of Hautefort.

It was not one of the strong feudal castles which could resist attack indefinitely. Originally no more than a motte and bailey, a central court surrounded by a line of fortification, it was built with some thought to comfort and the possibility of gardens and flowers under the warm southern sun. However, the uncertainty of the times had persuaded the owner to the addition of bastions and to raising the walls. He defended himself, therefore, with such spirit and success that the King was finally compelled to use a
malvoisin
. It was a “bad neighbor” in every sense of the word, for it was a wooden tower which rose above the level of the walls of the castle and thus turned the tables on the defenders. Bertran and his men were no longer in a position to shoot arrows and hurl stones and pitch on the besieging army from a superior height; instead they were exposed to bombardments from the top of the
malvoisin
. It was impossible for the garrison to hold out, and the troubadour knight surrendered.

He was certain, when he was summoned to appear before Henry in the lower level of the temporary tower, where the King had settled himself, that he would not have long to live. Accordingly he laid aside his battered hauberk and arrayed himself in his best attire. The men of the south went in much for fine silks and velvets and the most pleasing colors, and the cloak which the vanquished knight wore into the presence of his victorious foe was of a rich blue with trimmings of white and gold. He had curled and perfumed his hair and was wearing rings on his fingers.