Henry I of England – Reading Between The Lines Theatre Company’s modern history play.
A 1916 painting depicting the burial of King Henry I. Stephen of Blois wears the crown.
By the time of his death, William the Bastard had claimed his
father’s duchy and conquered a kingdom. He had subdued with the sword and ruled
with an iron hand. He had also fathered four sons.
Three of these—Robert (known as Robert Curthose), William
(known as William Rufus), and Henry—survived to adulthood. Having thus produced
an heir and two spares, William could reasonably expect his line to continue.
What he seems not to have expected was the rebellion of Robert, his eldest son.
Although William had placed Normandy under Robert’s care while busy subduing
England, he was quick to remove his adult son’s authority and independence once
the Conquest was completed. Angered by this, Robert argued violently with his
father, who was infuriated by such insubordination and, in any event, unwilling
to lose control over Normandy. Showing Robert the door, William banished him
from his lands. Not surprisingly, Robert now found his way to Paris and to the
more welcoming court of the French king.
Philip I, who was no fool, received the young man warmly and
proceeded to install him in the muscular castle of Gerberoy, along the
simmering Vexin frontier. Reacting with typical bluntness, William fortified
his neighboring Norman castles and besieged Gerberoy, with Robert in it. But
Robert refused to back down, sallying forth with his own men to engage the
besiegers in battle.
William was still a formidable fighter, but Robert was far
younger and—as his father may not have recognized—an outstanding warrior in his
own right. Engaging his father at sword point, Robert managed to unhorse and
wound him, forcing proud William to withdraw to Rouen—a defeat of the most
humiliating kind.
Frantic efforts by Robert’s mother at last brought
reconciliation. But after her death, trouble between the two broke out again.
Despite William’s reluctant recognition of Robert as his heir in Normandy,
Robert still had no real authority there—nor was it William’s intention to give
him any. Exacerbating the situation, William regularly insulted Robert in
public. Even Robert’s nickname (Curthose, or “Short Boots,” a joking reference
to his height) became a verbal brickbat from the far taller father.
At length, William once again sent the discontented young
man into exile, where he still was knocking about upon the Conqueror’s death.
It may well have been Robert, in fact, who fomented that surge of trouble
between Philip and William in the Vexin that led to the Conqueror’s demise.
Persuaded on his deathbed to do right by Robert, William
gave him Normandy, as promised. But he refrained from giving him anything else:
England went to the second son, William Rufus, who had played his cards right,
while the youngest, Henry, received a large sum of money. In time, as in the
fairy tales, the youngest would end up with the entire kingdom. But in the
meantime, strife broke out between the two older brothers, with William Rufus
supporting Robert’s rebellious barons, and Robert in turn receiving aid from
the French king.
Several years later, when Robert gave Normandy to his
brother as security for a loan to take him on crusade, William Rufus
immediately fortified his Vexin borders with a vengeance—most notably at
Gisors, where he piled up a steep artificial hill with a large tower on top
(see illustration in chapter 10). He carried out the same plan at other
locations along the Epte, including Château-sur-Epte. Unlike his brother,
William Rufus was taking no chances with the French king.
#
Philip I was leery of William Rufus as well, for it was no
secret that this boldly acquisitive English monarch (crowned as William II)
wanted the French Vexin, and even entertained dreams of the French crown—a
“detestable ambition,” as Abbot Suger caustically put it. Paris, which
straddles the Seine upriver from Normandy, lay little more than forty miles
from Norman frontiers, and at one point in his Vexin wars, William Rufus
advanced as far as Pontoise—virtually at Paris’s door.
But William Rufus’s opportunities stemmed from more than
geographic proximity. As he well knew, Philip I had only one son and heir. The
chance that this heir—young Louis—would survive to adulthood was in those
uncertain times far from likely. The Capetian monarchy was in fact a breath
away from extinction, and William Rufus (who was related to the French royal
family through his mother) sat ready and waiting to administer last rites.
Philip, in the meanwhile, nurtured and prepared this single
heir. Under his watchful eye, young Louis grew into a capable warrior, well
able to deal with the various baronial insurgencies that repeatedly cropped up
throughout Capetian lands. In addition, Philip formally associated his son with
him on the throne.
Philip’s detractors have suggested that the old king merely
passed along to his offspring what he had come to be too lazy to do for
himself, and it is possible that his motives may have been mixed. Still,
Philip’s willingness to allow his son and heir an active role in the royal
government went a long way to ensure that the monarch who would someday take
his place would be an effective one. Indeed, Louis turned out to be a good and
successful ruler, credited by historians with consolidating lands and power in
a meaningful fashion and starting the Capetian monarchy on its spectacular
rise.
Of course, no one knew that things would work out that way.
William Rufus was betting that Louis would not live long enough to receive the
royal crown, and Philip, too, worried about this. Indeed, it probably was this
concern that prompted Philip to remarry, putting aside his first wife, who had
proven incapable of bearing him further heirs. But instead of securing the
succession, the children from this second union created a new threat to
Philip’s legitimate heir. Indeed, Philip’s death in 1108 precipitated a crisis
in which a “conspiracy of wicked and evil men” tried to crown Louis’ young
half-brother in his place. Louis (Louis VI) received his crown on the run, in
Orléans—the first time that a Capetian monarch had not been anointed and
crowned at Reims.
As if these perils were not enough, Louis’ most dangerous
foreign enemy, the king of England, soon appeared on Normandy’s shores. But the
king Louis now faced was not William Rufus, who had been shot by a longbow
while hunting in the New Forest. Instead, it was the Conqueror’s youngest son,
Henry, who had seized the crown.
Unlike his father and his brothers, Henry did not thrill to
personal combat. A balding man of average height, with fleshy body and brawny
chest, he was fond of saying, “My mother bore me [to be] a commander, not a
soldier.” Beauclerk, he was later called, in tribute to his reputation for
learnedness. Still, he was as ruthless and aggressive in his own way as either
his father or next-older brother, and he was perfectly capable of mounting a
successful campaign, even as he was quite capable of winning what he wanted
through means other than war. Within six years after William Rufus’s death and
Henry’s assumption of the crown, Robert Curthose was Henry’s prisoner for life.
Robert never was Henry’s match.
Thus it was that as young Louis VI of France fought to save
his crown, the Norman duke he faced was neither William Rufus nor Robert
Curthose, but the far more dangerous Henry I of England. Refusing to pay homage
for Normandy to the new king, Henry now arrived on Norman shores.
#
As a military objective, Paris at the opening of the twelfth
century lacked distinction. Half a millennium before, Clovis had made it his
capital, and his successors favored it as well. But the last of Charlemagne’s
heirs had preferred Laon, and for most of the eleventh century the Capetian
monarchs resided in Orléans. Paris in the eleventh century was in fact one of
the smaller towns in Capetian domains. Yet by the century’s close, Philip I was
spending an increasing amount of time there, and eventually his son, Louis VI,
established Paris as his capital.
The site—a hill-ringed basin lying at the Seine’s confluence
with the Oise and the Marne—certainly was propitious. Centuries before, the
Romans had taken due notice, driving out the Parisii Celts and establishing
what they called Lutetia at this junction of a major overland route between
southern France and the North Sea. Erecting a temple and administrative
buildings on the largest of Lutetia’s islands (now the Île de la Cité) and
settling to the south on the hill later named for Paris’s patron saint,
Geneviève, they created a small metropolis—with a forum near what now are the
Luxembourg Gardens, extensive baths abutting the present-day Musée du Moyen
Age, and an arena alongside the present Rue Monge. They also built an aqueduct
leading in from the south.
Lutetia’s role as a strategic crossroads grew, with bridges
(now the Petit-Pont and Pont Notre-Dame) linking what now is Rue Saint-Martin
on the Right Bank with Rue Saint-Jacques on the Left. By the second century a.d.,
this metropolis contained a population of more than ten thousand—considerably
less than the eighty thousand of Lyons or the one million of Rome itself, but
still of respectable size.
With Rome’s decay and the onslaught of Germanic invaders,
Lutetia’s role as a Roman outpost withered. Yet the town (by now called Paris,
after its first inhabitants) continued to function as a trading center, even
while the third-century arrival of Denis, the first bishop of Paris, added a
new element to the mix. Although St. Denis’ mission ended in martyrdom, he succeeded
in creating a foothold for Christianity. When Clovis, first king of the Franks,
converted to Christianity in the early years of the sixth century, he
established his capital here.
By this time, a cathedral dedicated to St. Étienne dominated
the eastern end of the Île de la Cité. Clovis made a significant addition to
this ecclesiastical presence by building the church on the Left Bank later
known as Sainte-Geneviève. Not many years later, Clovis’ son, Childebert,
founded the monastery that became known (after St. Germain, bishop of Paris) as
Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Members of the royal family had their final resting
place here from Childebert on, until Dagobert changed the royal burial site to
the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
During the years immediately following Clovis, Paris managed
in a modest way to prosper. But after the Viking onslaught and the collapse of
Charlemagne’s empire, little survived. Shrunken to scarcely more than the
walled Cité, the town became a tangle of marsh and weeds.
Still, several of the great churches and their huddles of
dependent villages remained. Recovery began during the eleventh century, and in
the following years the city gradually grew to encompass these ecclesiastical
bastions, slowly spreading to the marshy marais of the Right Bank as well as to
the Left Bank of the Seine.
By this time the great fairs of nearby Champagne had begun
to draw merchants from as far as Italy, spawning new traffic on roads and
rivers leading everywhere. Wool from England and cloth from Flanders exchanged
hands for spices, silks, and precious ornaments wrought of gold. These goods
then made their slow return along the dusty Gallo-Roman roads, bringing
quickened activity and prosperity as they came. Although Reims benefited most
from the increasingly lucrative Champagne fairs, Paris, too, profited from its
superb situation on the Seine. Port facilities had already sprung up along the
river’s northern and wider arm by the time Louis VI transferred the markets to
the Right Bank from the increasingly crowded Île de la Cité. Later in the
century, Philip II would build covered warehouses on the site, soon to become
known as Les Halles. He also expelled the Jews from the Cité; they eventually
reestablished themselves on the Right Bank, which was becoming the commercial
heart of town.
But in Louis VI’s day, most Parisians still lived on the
Seine’s largest island, the Île de la Cité. Here at the western end lived the
king, in a small palace that the second Capetian monarch, Robert the Pious, had
erected on the site of an ancient Roman citadel. To the east, near the
cathedral, resided the bishop of Paris and a growing throng of students, who
flocked from great distances to listen to and debate with the likes of William
of Champeaux and, the star of them all, Peter Abelard. In between these secular
and ecclesiastical domains, perhaps three thousand craftsmen and tradespeople
lived cheek by jowl, jostling each other along the cramped and muddy lanes as
they cried their wares and scurried from place to place.
Here, amid the cacophony, mud, and stench, Louis began to
fortify his palace, strengthening it not only against possible Norman attack,
but also—and more imminently—against the welter of powerful lords that
surrounded him. With this in mind, Louis linked the Cité to the growing port
along the Seine’s right bank via a great stone bridge directly connecting the
island with what now is Rue Saint-Denis, securing access with a stout
fortification, the Châtelet.
Rue Saint-Denis, one of two major routes leading northward,
led directly to the royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, founded centuries before at the
burial site of the martyred saint. Here, even as Louis VI was building Paris
into the seat of a reviving Capetian monarchy, Abbot Suger was planning a new
abbey church that would reach to the very heavens. His church, with its arched
and pointed vaults and astonishing deep-blue windows (of such brilliance that
many believed the glassmaker had infused his molten glass with sapphires), led the
twelfth century into those soaring Gothic realms where Chartres, Notre-Dame de
Paris, and countless others would soon follow. But more than this, Suger
created in Saint-Denis a fitting tribute to the saint who by this time was
evolving into a political as well as a spiritual powerhouse.
Centuries of close ties between the Abbey of Saint-Denis and
the royal crown had quite naturally lent a certain aura to the martyred saint’s
reputation. Since the late sixth century, members of the royal family had been
buried there, and from about the same time the court had deposited copies of
royal documents there for safekeeping. The royal regalia used at coronations
came to be kept at Saint-Denis as well, although the coronation itself
continued to take place at Reims, the site of Clovis’ conversion and
coronation. Dagobert’s recognition of St. Denis as royal patron further
enhanced the abbey’s reputation as the royal abbey, as did royalty’s extension
of numerous special privileges, which freed the monks from the usual fees and
obligations.
Yet these were evidences of royal favor, with power residing
in the benefactor. Indeed, for more than a century, when the monarchy sank to
its nadir, the abbey stood in danger of losing its independence to the real
source of local power, the counts of Paris.
Still, as Abbot Suger was quick to recognize, the king held
the French Vexin as a fief from the Abbey of Saint-Denis—in theory, from the
saint himself, although in practice from the abbey and its abbot (who during
Louis VI’s reign was, of course, Suger). A minister to the king during the
reigns of both Louis VI and Louis VII, and regent during Louis VII’s long
absence on crusade, Suger held a formidable position in the Capetian court.
Clearly the fortunes of the Capetians and those of Suger were intertwined, for
while this energetic abbot sent the arches of his abbey cathedral soaring
toward the heavens, he was also hard at work erecting a political construct
that would set the Capetian king at the pinnacle of feudal power—worldly power
for, as Suger argued, the monarch was in turn vassal to the long-dead St.
Denis. That the Abbot of Saint-Denis was the martyred saint’s agent here on
earth did not at all intimidate Suger, who did not shy away from the obvious
conclusion.
Suger’s political construct was at heart a simple one,
positing a neat and tidy theory of landholding. According to Suger, the French
territorial princes held their lands in fiefdom to the Capetian monarch in much
the same way that lesser lords had traditionally held their lands within the
hereditary Capetian realms. In Suger’s view, the count of Auvergne held his
lands from the duke of Aquitaine, who in turn held his vast realms from the
king of France. To Suger, Normandy and Aquitaine and all the rest were simply
part and parcel of the kingdom of France—a neat and tidy theory, filled with
possibilities for the Capetian monarchs. The only problem was that the
territorial princes did not view things that way. As far as they were
concerned, the king of the French could do what he liked in his own hereditary
lands, but he had no business whatsoever in theirs.
Suger’s political construct thus did not yet represent
reality, for feudalism, with its fundamental elements of loyalty and
protection, landholding, and military service, was still evolving out of the
disorder that had accompanied the widespread collapse of central authority in
the ninth and tenth centuries. Certain of its elements had ancient roots, but
tradition faltered in the face of raw aggression. Local conditions varied
enormously, and men of power—whether great or small—simply demanded and took
what the traffic would bear.
By Suger’s day, many of these arrangements had acquired a
certain stability and even sophistication. But the messy and overlapping
structure of French political society in the early twelfth century did not even
remotely resemble a pyramid, and certainly not one with the king at its apex.
Feudal relationships still were widely diffused, focusing on dukes and counts
and even local lords rather than the monarch. Although Suger’s theory presented
a kind of blueprint for power, the Capetian monarchs could not expect power to
come their way by some sort of divine right but would have to impose it upon
their recalcitrant subjects.
St. Denis pointed the way. With Suger’s encouragement, the
king acknowledged that St. Denis was not only his spiritual patron but his
feudal overlord as well. Facing invasion from the German emperor, Louis VI
hastened to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. There he begged the martyred saint to
defend his kingdom. Then he took from the altar the military standard of the
Vexin—a forked scarlet banner embroidered with golden flames that legend
ascribed to Charlemagne.
In all humility, Louis received this silken banner in a
manner that acknowledged his vassalage to his saintly overlord, St. Denis. He
then called for all of France to rally around him against the common foe. The
response was impressive, with many of France’s most powerful barons flocking to
his side. Reconsidering, the emperor decided to head for other parts (German
historians insist that he had more pressing business elsewhere). Rejoicing in
this turn of events, Louis returned the banner to the abbey in triumph.
“It is neither right nor natural that the French be subject
to the English, but rather the English to the French,” Suger gloated,
anticipating days of glory that still lay well ahead. But for the first time a
king of France had caught a whiff of the possibilities. For nearly three
centuries thereafter, the French would go into battle bellowing their famous
war cry, “Monjoie Saint-Denis!” and carrying before them the flame-colored
silken banner of Saint-Denis known as the Oriflamme.
Already, this banner was emerging as the royal standard of
France.
#
“Louis, king of the French,” wrote Suger, “conducted himself
toward Henry, king of the English and duke of the Normans, as toward a vassal,
for he always kept in mind the lofty rank by which he towered over him.” As
duke of Normandy, in other words, England’s Henry I was Louis VI’s feudal
dependent, no matter what other titles he bore. For years, Henry resisted this
logic, and this recalcitrance lay at the heart of Henry’s struggles with the
French king.
Louis in turn countered by rallying to the cause of the
imprisoned brother, proclaiming Robert Curthose’s son—an attractive young man
by the name of William Clito—as the rightful Norman duke and English king.
Until his untimely death, Clito served as a rallying point for all of Henry’s
enemies, which was exactly what Louis had in mind.
William Clito was not the only son upon the political
chessboard, for Louis and Henry each had sons. In a reversal of previous
generations, Henry had but one legitimate son, while Louis was blessed with
eight. In much the same spirit as his father, Louis designated the eldest of
these as his successor and associate in the crown, while the next in line, a
mild lad by the name of Louis, departed for a monastic career.
The White Ship. The White Ship (French: la Blanche-Nef, Latin documents Latin: Candida navis) was a vessel that sank in the English Channel near the Normandy coast off Barfleur, on 25 November 1120.
Henry I’s son, known as William Aetheling, was but seventeen
years old when Louis VI appealed the cause of William Clito to the pope, with
such success that Henry had to scamper to protect both his duchy and his crown.
To ensure his son’s succession in Normandy against William Clito’s claims,
Henry now agreed that young Aetheling would do homage to Louis for Normandy—a
significant concession, although not quite the same as the king himself bending
the knee. William Aetheling did as he was directed and then prepared to return
to England on the White Ship, the newest and finest vessel in his father’s
fleet. It was a lovely evening in late November, and he and his young friends
were prepared to party all the way.
The king set sail first in a light breeze, just before
twilight. Delayed by their festivities, young Aetheling and his friends did not
push off until well after dark, with a crew that by this time was almost as
drunk as the passengers. Catching sight of the king’s ship well ahead, the
passengers called out that “those who were now ahead must soon be left astern.”
The ship fairly flew, “swifter than the winged arrow.”
Too late, the crew saw the rock that rose above the waves.
As the boat impacted with a grinding crash, the young nobles cried out in
alarm, suddenly realizing their peril. Out came the oars and boat hooks, as the
crew tried in vain to force the vessel off. But the rock had split the prow,
and water now came pouring in.
Amid the terror, as frantic bodies fought the sea, someone
thought to launch the single skiff and push the prince inside. Well on his way
toward shore and safety, he heard one voice above the others—his illegitimate
half-sister, the young countess of Perche, who shrieked out for him not to
abandon her. Overcome with pity, William Aetheling ordered the little boat to
return, thus sealing his fate: “for the skiff, overcharged by the multitudes
who leaped into her, sank, and buried all indiscriminately in the deep.”
There was but one survivor, a butcher who managed to seize
the mast and keep afloat until morning. He alone remained to tell the terrible
tale. Lost were countless sons and daughters, the cream of England and
Normandy’s young aristocracy. Scarcely a noble family went untouched.
Worst of all was the king’s loss. For now Henry, duke of
Normandy and king of England, had no legitimate son and heir.
The White Ship had changed history.
