Geoffrey, the third surviving son, had been recognized by king Louis at Montmirail as heir to Brittany, which he would hold as a vassal of the king of England. As has been seen, he had acquired his claim to the duchy by his betrothal to the daughter of the deposed duke Conan. His position was strengthened by Conan’s death in 1170, when Henry annexed the former duke’s county of Penthièvre in Geoffrey’s name, and by the confiscation during the same year of the estates of the great Breton rebel Eudo de Porhoet. Geoffrey grew up to be one of the most evil of the Plantagenets, and once boasted that it was the tradition of his family for brother to hate brother and for a son to turn against his father. He too was to have no qualms about rebelling against Henry, which was all to Eleanor’s purpose. Like the young king, Geoffrey visited his mother’s court at Poitiers.
The fourth son, John, received nothing at Montmirail. The king laughingly named him ‘Lackland’ but obviously meant to give him some great appanage in due course...much to the disquiet of his brothers, who feared that they would have to contribute towards it from their own territories.
As for Eleanor’s daughters by Henry, Matilda married duke Henry of Saxony, one of the greatest of the German princes, in 1168; Eleanor was betrothed to Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1170; and Joanna, the youngest, married William II of Sicily in 1177. None of these girls played any part in their mother’s grand design.
Meanwhile the affair of Thomas Becket finally blew up in Henry II’s face in 1170. Although the dispute had not been settled, and despite warnings, the archbishop insisted on returning to England where he was as noisily intransigent as ever. At his Christmas court at Bures in Normandy, where Eleanor was keeping him company, Henry cursed his maddening archbishop; perhaps he did not actually say, ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’, but clearly he said something very like it. Four of his magnates... not mere knights... set out to do so.
Despite vain efforts to stop them by messengers whom the king sent in pursuit. On the night of Tuesday 29 December they hacked the archbishop to death in his own cathedral at Canterbury, deliberately spilling the brains out of his skull onto the pavement. The killing horrified all Christendom. Pope Alexander III would not allow Henry’s name to be mentioned in his presence for a week after hearing the news, Louis VII called him a ‘rebel against humanity’, and the count of Blois spoke of a ‘horrible … unparalleled crime’. Although Henry was not excommunicated and his kingdom was not laid under an interdict, he had to undergo many humiliations that culminated in 1174 with his being scourged at the archbishop’s tomb by the monks of Canterbury. Naturally his enemies, including Eleanor, believed that his power had been severely undermined.
Moreover at this most inauspicious time the English king appeared to be over-extending his resources by attempting to conquer Ireland, the most barbarous land in Christendom. It was ruled by countless petty kinglets or chieftains, who paid a loose allegiance to five over-kings and an elected ‘high king’, in a society very like that which existed in the Scottish Highlands before 1746. Their principal occupation was fighting and cattle raiding, but they were usually incapable of uniting against a common foe. The only towns were a few seaports founded by the Vikings and peopled by their descendants, and the island’s sole wealth was its rich pastureland; much of the country was covered by impenetrable bog and forest.
The only exports were wolfhounds and pine marten skins. For a brief period during the Dark Ages the Irish Church had been famed for its saints and scholars, but that was now a thing of long ago... save for a few newly established Cistercian monasteries. Irish morals scandalized Christendom; bishops were frequently succeeded by their sons, and the native Brehon law recognized six sorts of marriage, most of them concubinage. The pope had almost no authority in this anarchic and savage land. Henry had contemplated invading it as early as 1155 and had obtained a grant of ‘lordship’ over Ireland from the English pope Adrian IV, whose own motive was to impose proper clerical discipline.
For all its poverty and barbarity, its rains and mists, here plainly was another country for Normans to conquer, just as they had done in England and Sicily. From 1169 Norman marcher lords from Wales were operating in Ireland; in 1170 they captured Dublin, its richest town, and during the next year overran its eastern coast as far south as Waterford.
King Henry had no desire to see the establishment of a new and independent Norman-Irish state that would not be subject to him. In October 1171, therefore, he landed near Waterford, remaining in Ireland until the following April and extorting homage from the Norman invaders and from many of the native kings. Although he never visited it again, he was henceforth to devote much time, effort and wealth to the conquest and settlement of Ireland.
Henry’s domains now stretched across a second sea. His vassals were some of the most unruly and turbulent in Europe ...fiery Occitanians, Poitevins and Angevins, dour Normans and English, and wild Bretons, Welsh and Irish. Hardly a day went by without rebellion in some corner of his ramshackle empire.
Eleanor cannot be blamed for supposing that her husband had over-reached himself, and that a concerted revolt in as many areas as possible would bring the whole rickety structure of his power base crashing down. For such a revolt she required allies who had a genuine sense of grievance and who would band together in a carefully planned campaign. By 1173 the queen had them... her three eldest sons. She must have waited impatiently for them to grow old enough to join her.
Henry, the young king, was now eighteen. He was tall and handsome, charming and generous, and useless ... ‘a restless youth, born for the undoing of many’. He was unquestionably brave and energetic, and a superbly chivalrous knight; William Marshal, no mean authority, calls him ‘the beauty and flower of all Christian princes’. But he was hopelessly unstable, as inconstant ‘as wax’. Moreover, although the young king was famed for his generosity, he was ruinously extravagant, endlessly demanding money from his father, and always in debt and borrowing recklessly. Indeed Geoffrey of Vigé says bluntly that he was ‘not so much generous as prodigal’, and Robert of Torigny simply terms him ‘a spendthrift’. Admittedly his extravagance had a certain regal panache. Once he invited every knight in Normandy named William to dinner, and more than a hundred came.
His unrestrained warmth of manner, caressing speech and wild liberality, together with his love of splendor, jousting and feasting, attracted a wide following of immature young men, the only one of any distinction being the heroic William Marshal. His protégés included that inveterate trouble-maker, Bertran de Born. Even the young king’s good qualities were spoiled by excess; he was so merciful that Gerald of Wales labels him ‘the shield of the wrongdoer’.
The old king treated the young king with outward respect and was fond of him; in 1172 he accorded him the honor of a crown-wearing at Winchester, when his wife was consecrated queen. But although the young king was joint monarch with his father, he had no lands of his own and had to live on what he considered a shamefully inadequate allowance. The old king refused his request to let him have either England, Normandy or Anjou, and in his father’s absence England was ruled by a justiciar. Even the members of his household were chosen for him. The vain young king deeply resented what he regarded as his humiliating situation.
Richard, count of Poitou, was an advanced sixteen, tall, handsome and reddish-haired like his elder brother, but stockier and stronger in build, a better horseman and (later) an infinitely better soldier. In character he was already quite different: bold, daring, harsh,