The Good, the Bad and the Unready (24 page)

Sadly for Victoria, England simply did not see Albert in the same light as she did. Yes, he had earned much popularity at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, but in general his subjects simply could not forgive him for being a foreigner, a German with disconcerting un-English manners and tastes. Some scoffed at his continental dress while others castigated him as the tool of the Russian tsar.

Be that as it may, Albert clearly did possess a genuine tenderness that brought out the best in many people. Even Napoleon III, ‘the Man of December’, was compelled to write favourably about the prince after walking with him in the garden at Osborne House. ‘One goes away from him,’ he acknowledged, ‘more disposed to do good.’

Haakon the
Good

Haakon I, king of Norway, c.920–c.961

Haakon was a Christian, and on becoming king he attempted to introduce the religion to his subjects, going so far as to invite missionaries from England to his country. But as soon as he gauged the response of his subjects to the idea (they hated it) he promptly embraced his pagan religion of old.

Chroniclers deemed Haakon to be ‘good’ not by dint of his faith but because of two other factors. First, he was a good administrator, eager for peace and order and energetic in his reform of the military and judicial system. Second, he was a good soldier. One contemporary poet records how, in the middle of a battle against the Danish, Haakon ‘threw off his war-gear [and]… joked with his men’. Perhaps due to his skimpy battledress, Haakon was mortally wounded while attempting to drive back a third Danish invasion in 960. He was given a lavish pagan funeral.

Hywel the
Good

Hywel, king of Wales, c.882–950

Hywel, the only Welsh king to be named ‘Dda’ or ‘Good’, occupied a period in Welsh history remarkable for its stability and harmony. His secret seems to have been his diplomatic good sense in recognizing and respecting the culture and principles of organization of his English neighbours. The first recorded act of his reign, for instance, is a visit to Edward the
ELDER
to pay him homage. This, however, may be a decidedly English appraisal of Hywel’s reign. In Welsh history he is renowned as a great national lawmaker.

John the
Good

John II, king of France, 1319–64

John the Good was bad through and through, with the fifteenth-century chronicler Pierre Cochon describing him as ‘the worst and cruellest king who ever lived’. Why his contemporaries called this son of Philip the
LUCKY
(
see
GALLIC PRACTICE
) ‘the Good’ is a matter for conjecture. Perhaps it was because of his devotion to the chivalric code – he founded the Order of the Star, a decidedly second-rate rival to the Order of the Garter. Or perhaps it was due to his alleged generosity to the poor – once, we are told, he gave a purse of money to a milkmaid whose pails were knocked over by his greyhounds.

These acts, however, cannot mask a reign of aggression and duplicity. At the outset of his reign, for instance, John alienated his entire nobility by executing the charming and much-loved Constable of France, the Comte d’Eu. He then turned his attention abroad to his two bitter enemies, Edward the
BANKRUPT
of England and ‘Charles the Bad’ of Navarre, and spent the following years making and breaking truces with both.

Roundly thrashed by Edward the
BLACK PRINCE
at the battle of Poitiers, John was imprisoned in England, where he remained for some time because he was unable to raise his ransom money. Finally hostages were accepted in his place but when one of them (John’s own son Louis) escaped, John did what he must have considered the chivalrous thing, and returned to England and voluntary captivity. Behind bars once more, he quickly fell ill of an ‘unknown malady’ and died.

Magnus the
Good

Magnus I, king of Norway and Denmark, 1024–47

Back in eleventh-century Scandinavia, goodness meant military courage, and Magnus’s goodness was amply demonstrated by his fearless exploits when fighting the Wends in southern Jutland. According to legend, the night before a major battle in which Magnus’s forces were considerably outnumbered, the king dreamt he saw his father, ‘Olaf the Saint’, who assured him of victory. Fortified by his vision, the next morning Magnus doffed his mail shirt and strode into battle wearing nothing above the waist except a red silk shirt. According to Adam of Bremen, 15,000 Wendish corpses littered the battlefield that day. Soon thereafter Magnus died of disease at the tender age of twenty-three, leaving the sort of reputation that poets and saga writers loved to eulogize.

 
Philip the
Good

Philip III, duke of Burgundy, 1396–1467

Philip enjoyed the good life. His official court chronicler, Georges Chastellain, wrote how he was skilful on horseback, excellent at tennis, and that he ‘loved to hunt… and linger over meals’. He was also something of a ladies’ man, with records showing that he had some twenty mistresses in all, maintaining a number at the same time in different places.

Later in life, when not hearing Mass or watching dancers cavort, Philip loved to amuse himself in a sort of glorified portable shed, a mobile wooden hut in which he would while away the hours simply pottering about, making clogs, soldering broken knives, repairing broken spectacles, and so on. His son ‘Charles the Bold’ mocked his father for his hobby, and destroyed the whole outfit after his death. The shed may be gone, but Philip’s reputation as a good and popular duke remains intact.

Good Duke Humphrey

Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, 1391–1447

Humphrey was famously pious, an excellent soldier (he received a wound at Agincourt in the service of his hero and brother Henry the
ENGLISH ALEXANDER
–
see
ENGLISH EPITHETS
) and a scholar of some merit, with his collection of classical tomes forming the core of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Despite his notorious promiscuity and his track record as a truly lousy administrator, he was hugely popular among all classes and known throughout the land as ‘Good Duke Humphrey’.

He did have his enemies, however, and none more so than Henry Beaufort, the chief minister of the realm. Beaufort found the hot-headed Humphrey contemptible and was constantly on the lookout for a way to stop him meddling in national affairs. His chance came when it was discovered that Humphrey’s wife, Eleanor, dabbled in witchcraft. Eleanor, it was claimed, regularly checked her horoscope and had once made a wax figure of Henry the
MARTYR
and melted it in a fire. For this she was imprisoned
for life and Humphrey was discredited and eventually arrested for treason himself. While in jail he fell ill and died.

The phrase ‘to dine with the Good Duke Humphrey’, meaning ‘to go without dinner’, has its roots in a case of mistaken identity. Londoners in trouble with the law would often congregate (for discussion rather than for worship) in St Paul’s Cathedral, where they were safe from arrest. There they would gather near a monument popularly thought to be dedicated to Humphrey. In fact the good duke was buried at St Albans and the tomb was that of one Sir John Beauchamp. Nevertheless, people who could not afford a meal and instead whiled away the time in the cathedral were said to be dining with the duke.

Good King René