The love of learning and spirit of inquiry Henry imbibed from these exemplary scholars would last all his life. His parents had provided him with the tools to be anything he wanted. His teachers (or masters, magistri), tolerant and inquisitive, had opened Henry’s mind; many chroniclers tell of his passion for books, learning and discourse. He would aspire to be a philosopher-prince in the Platonic mould.111
V
The first war on English soil since the Conquest was a war of attrition, bitter and vindictive, with the rule of law sporadic. Although the fighting was mostly confined to the south-east and south-west of England, Stephen’s leadership was inadequate. Contemporaries called it ‘the anarchy’, a time when they believed themselves abandoned by Christ. The author of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote in despair, ‘The earth bore no corn, for the land was all laid waste … and people said openly, that Christ and his saints slept.’
When he was fourteen Henry, imbued with loyalty to his parents and belief in his own right to rule, decided to fight alongside his mother for their birthright. At the beginning of 1147, he hired mercenaries on credit and sailed to England with a few companions to aid her. He led an attack against his first cousin, Philip of Gloucester, at Cricklade, just over thirty miles west of Oxford. Philip, Robert’s son, had deserted Matilda for Stephen, ‘seeing that at that time the king had the upper hand, [he] entered into a pact of peace and concord with him, and after being lavishly endowed with castles and lands, he gave hostages and paid him homage’.112 Philip’s defection was a reminder of the extent to which this war left families bitterly divided. But it is likely that Geoffrey knew nothing about his eldest son’s trip to England, for Henry had no money to pay his men, and had arrived in England with virtually nothing; once they realised, they deserted. Henry, desperate, asked his mother for money but she had none to spare. His uncle, Robert, gave him a similar answer.
When Stephen’s forces routed him nearby, at Bampton in Oxfordshire, Henry persuaded his cousin to give him money to pay for his journey home. Unwisely, Stephen agreed; he was, according to the author of the Gesta Stephani, ‘always full of pity and compassion’. But whether it was because, as his detractors claimed, chivalry was his undoing, or because he wanted Henry and his troublesome mercenaries out of England as quickly as possible, we may only speculate.113 By Ascension Day, 29 May 1147, Henry was back in Normandy.
For Henry, the moment marked the passing of the first chapter of his life. It was the last time he would see the uncle who had not only been responsible for shaping so much of his education but who had also made his and Matilda’s cause in England possible. Robert of Gloucester died on 31 October at Bristol. He was buried in the Benedictine priory church of St James, which he had founded.
Matilda left England less than four months after her brother’s death, in mid-February 1148, defeated and exhausted. Gervase of Canterbury wrote that she was ‘worn down by the trials of the English hostilities … preferring to retire to the haven of her husband’s protection than endure so many troubles in England’. She may have stomached the pitiful stalemate for so long because she was waiting for Henry to come of age. And it is possible that she felt unable to continue her cause without the leadership that her half-brother had provided. Robert’s son and heir, William, was not up to taking his father’s place; he was judged ‘effeminate and a lover of bedchambers more than of war’.114 Matilda made her home at Le Pré, near Rouen. She would never return to England.
Matilda was once again cast as a failure. Her biographer Marjorie Chibnall calls her ‘almost a queen’.115 But Matilda’s mission was doomed from the start. She was castigated for her character, her fiery temper – she ‘drove [her enemies] from her presence in fury after insulting and threatening them’ – and for her lack of femininity: ‘The countess of Anjou … was always above feminine softness and had a mind steeled and unbroken in adversity.’116 She was a ‘virago’, who ‘put on an extremely arrogant demeanour instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex’.117
For not even clever, ambitious, determined Matilda could overcome the ‘problem’ of her sex. Her father had foreseen the difficulties of his magnates accepting female rule, which is why he had induced them to swear their oaths to her three times. The very few women who did rule independently were encouraged to disregard their femininity altogether and to behave as kings. When Geoffrey’s father Fulk died in Jerusalem in 1143, the powerful Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux urged his widow Queen Melisende to ‘show the man in the woman; order all things … so that those who see you will judge your works to be those of a king rather than a queen’.118 Urraca of the Spanish kingdom of León and Castile pretended to be a man, signing her documents as a king rather than a queen.
Matilda’s hopes would now rest in Henry, her heir. As the coming man and despite his youth, Henry was already attracting support in England to add to those nobles who had staunchly championed the Angevin cause. This allegiance was motivated at least in part by economic interests. As soon as Geoffrey was recognised as duke of Normandy by Louis VII in 1145, it was clear to those magnates who held land on both sides of the Channel that Stephen would never reunite Normandy and England. But once Stephen died, should they offer their allegiance to Henry, and not Eustace, the problem would be solved.
Geoffrey always contended that he conquered Normandy on behalf of his son. His charters, after becoming duke, often read ‘with the advice and consent of Henry my son’.119 The intention was that there should be no impediment to Henry inheriting Normandy. Gilbert Foliot, when consecrated bishop of Hereford in September 1148, swore allegiance to Henry, and not to Stephen. And in mid-1148 William of Gloucester swore to aid Roger of Hereford against all men ‘saving the person of their lord Henry’.120 At this stage, it was more to do with Henry’s lineage, as the grandson of Henry I and the descendant of the Norman conquerors and the Anglo-Saxon kings, than his abilities. That was all about to change.
In October 1148, Henry’s immediate family – Matilda, Geoffrey, and his two younger brothers – met at Rouen to decide their strategy. Normandy was theirs, won both by diplomacy and by military action, and they had a good shot at England. To claim his entire birthright, Henry would return to England where his uncle, David King of Scots, would knight him. The knighting ceremony, very important as a passage to power, would mark the beginning of Henry’s manhood. And as he turned sixteen, it was an apt time to hold the ceremony. On Whit Sunday 1149, David knighted his nephew with the belt and garter in a magnificent ceremony at Carlisle Castle, followed by a lavish party. Henry now began to call himself ‘duke’; the bishop of Lisieux wrote to his friend Robert, bishop of Lincoln, to ‘favour as much as you can the cause of our duke.’121
Many of Matilda’s staunchest supporters – Miles of Gloucester, Brian Fitz Count, her brother Robert – were either dead or retired. With Henry’s return, a new body of men began to coalesce around the freshly anointed scion of Anjou and Normandy. These men included his uncle Reginald of Cornwall, who remained true to his sister’s cause; Robert Fitz Harding of Bristol; Ranulf earl of Chester, married to Robert’s daughter but whose allegiance throughout the past ten years had been in flux; Ranulf’s brother the earl of Lincoln; and the earl of Hereford. Henry was their acknowledged leader – not so much for his qualities, but more as a result of their bitter experience that Stephen could be duplicitous and capricious. Stephen, after Matilda left for Normandy, had courted the earls of Chester and Essex with lands; he had then, without warning or cause, imprisoned them.122 These Anglo-Norman magnates yearned for stability, and they looked to the as yet unproven Henry to provide it.
But just as in the previous generation when William Atheling’s greatest foe had been his first cousin William Clito, so Henry’s biggest danger lay with his cousin Eustace, Stephen’s eldest son. Eustace was as determined to be king of England as Henry was. He had paid homage to Louis for Normandy in 1137, and had been married to Louis’ sister, Constance, as putative heir to England and Normandy. He was knighted a year or so before Henry, at the end of 1147.
Stephen, fearing Henry’s growing