Lionheart (9 page)

At Easter the pope excommunicated the four household knights implicated in Becket’s murder, who took refuge at Knaresbrough castle in Yorkshire for the rest of the year. Hugh de Morville was eventually absolved of his guilt after making pilgrimage to the Holy Land. William de Tracy also departed for Outremer after leaving his Devon manor to Canterbury Cathedral, but died on the way. For three and a half centuries, until Henry VIII had Becket’s name erased from prayer books and the shrine despoiled in June 1538, Canterbury prospered thanks to Becket’s tomb, which was the most important pilgrimage site north of the Channel and gave Geoffrey Chaucer the rationale of his epic
The Canterbury Tales
. The newly elaborated doctrine of transubstantiation held that the True Cross – of which hundreds of fragments were claimed to be genuine – was infinitely divisible by virtue of its sanctity.
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Similarly, for many years the best-selling souvenirs of a pilgrimage to Canterbury were thousands of small flasks of diluted fruit juice, allegedly the blood spilled at the martyrdom, which pilgrims drank on the spot or took home with them.

Despite having deliberately courted papal legates for years when they could serve his own political ends, Henry spent the following six months carefully avoiding those sent to negotiate his absolution for Becket’s murder because he had in mind a different way of winning Rome’s support. On 16 October he landed with a largely mercenary army at Waterford and set up winter quarters at Dublin for the conquest of Ireland. There, the stormy Irish Sea kept him safe from all but the hardiest papal envoy. The mercenaries were paid out of loans from the Jewish merchant Joshua of Gloucester, despite the Church’s ruling that, by involving himself in usury, even a king made himself accomplice to the forbidden practice.
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Typically, Joshua was never repaid by the king, but ordered to recover the loan for himself out of the proceeds of tax farming.

Since Henry thus had no Christmas court in 1171 which Eleanor and Richard were obliged to attend, they rode far south into Aquitaine to hold their own Christmas court in Bayonne. His mother falling ill on the way, Richard enjoyed more freedom of action as duke for a period, although the military force that should have enabled him to enforce his rule was kept under the iron control of his distant father. Among many disputes settled in his name during the
bombança
or luxurious festivities of the visit was the calculation of the tax due when
eubalaena glacialis
whales were captured in the Bay of Biscay. They represented an important source of food along the littoral and the blubber was rendered down and used for lighting purposes, and continued to be so until the species was effectively ‘fished out’ at the dawn of the twentieth century. It is likely that it was during this sojourn in the south that Richard came to appreciate the seagoing capabilities of the sturdy
balenier
boats specially designed for hunting whales, which would play an important part in transporting his army on the Third Crusade.

It was not until 17 April 1172 that Henry returned to England, having killed enough Irish to consider the island henceforward a part of his realm for Prince John to govern – which turned out to be a very bad idea, since John and his cronies mocked the native nobility for their unfashionable dress and pulled their beards as a lesson to become clean-shaven like their new overlords. On 12 May Henry was back in France, bringing with him the Young King and Princess Marguerite, who was still uncrowned. To the papal legates waiting at Savigny, Henry repeated his protestations of innocence in the assassination of Becket and rode away declaring that he was too busy to talk to them. His own bishops pursued him to Avranches because the burgeoning cult of Becket the martyr was making Henry II dangerously unpopular both in England and on the continent. At Avranches, across the bay from the holy shrine of Mont St Michel, he finally confessed that he just
might
have been the indirect cause of Becket’s death by taking too much to heart the many provocations he had suffered. As proof of how much the assassination had nevertheless grieved him, he offered to go on pilgrimage to Rome, Compostela or even the Holy Land, should there ever be proof that he had ordered his infuriating archbishop to be killed.

On occasion, Henry made grand gestures. Submitting to the discipline of the Church, he knelt outside the cathedral where sinners and excommunicates belonged. There, he stripped off his outer garments to reveal a hair shirt, submitting to a scourging by relays of monks after this was removed. Among the witnesses watching his father being flogged for the murder of his foster-father was Young Henry, little guessing that the king’s talent for spectacular gestures had not yet exhausted the potential of the situation.

From Avranches, Henry II dragged the Young King to Montferrand, now Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne, to confirm the deal with Count Humbert of Maurienne betrothing 6-year-old Prince John to Humbert’s eldest daughter Alix, her dowry to include the strategic Alpine valleys of Novalaise and Aosta – with 5,000 Angevin pounds as the bride-price, payable in five instalments. The Angevin pound was the normal currency of the Plantagenet continental possessions, and was generally reckoned to be worth one-quarter of a pound sterling. The Young King, never remotely interested in court business, fretted in the sidelines, but Prince Richard’s star was in the ascendant. When Henry headed back to Limoges, Humbert came too. Not only was he determined to find out what exactly were the possessions and expectations of Prince John, about which Henry had been characteristically vague, but he also wanted the second instalment of the bride-price. Informed that John would be given the castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau, the count departed satisfied, in the belief that his daughter would soon be married to a son of one of the two most powerful men in Europe. To complicate matters, Young Henry considered those three castles as his, and wasted no time declaring that his father had been acting
ultra vires
in giving them away.

Richard’s good fortune was that Raymond of Toulouse confirmed at Henry II’s court in Limoges that he held the county of Toulouse as his vassal, and the vassal also of Young Henry and of Richard, as duke of Aquitaine.
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He swore to do homage with 100 knights for forty days, equipped and fed at his own expense, with the provision that any ‘overtime’ had to be paid for by Richard. In addition, he was to pay an annual tribute of 100 silver marks per annum or give in lieu ten trained war-horses, each having a value of not less than 10 marks, or just under £7. As Richard was not present, the ceremony of swearing fealty was postponed until Whitsun.

Richard, however, was after bigger fish. At Louis VII’s court in Paris he was knighted by the king of France – an important step towards what happened shortly afterwards. To defuse the tensions with his sons, Henry arranged a second coronation for Young Henry, this time with Marguerite installed beside him, at Winchester on 27 August. With the archbishops of London, York and Salisbury still excommunicate and no new archbishop of Canterbury yet appointed, it was the bishop of Évreux who officiated. Neither of the Young King’s parents were present, Eleanor being in Poitou with Richard and Henry II in Brittany.

It took more than that to placate Young Henry. In November, he again demanded to be given the power that went with the title of kingship. When this was refused, he took himself and the Young Queen off to Paris, where Louis VII welcomed them and lent a sympathetic ear to his son-in-law’s complaints about his father’s parsimony and unwillingness to share power. Henry summoned his son back to Normandy, but the Young King made a show of independence by refusing to attend his father’s Christmas court at Chinon, using the excuse that he was too busy giving a banquet for knights called William, of whom 110 were lavishly entertained by him while all his differently named friends were turned away that day.

In the draughty castle of Chinon, perched high above the River Vienne, Eleanor, Richard and Geoffrey had to put up with Henry II’s consequent bad temper – not helped by news from Rome that Becket, whose tomb in Canterbury Cathedral was credited with working thousands of miracles, was to be canonised on 21 February 1173. On that day Richard and his parents were at Limoges, entertaining the Spanish kings Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancho VI of Navarre, who had come on pilgrimage to the tomb of St Martial.
⁴

In Henry’s cortège came the disgruntled Young Henry. With Prince Geoffrey also present, it was the first time in a while that all three elder princes had been together. There had never been any love lost between them – in particular, Young Henry was jealous of Richard’s apparent freedom of action in Poitou and Aquitaine, compared with the way his father cramped his own style, and Richard resented the crown and title of Young Henry. Yet all three now discovered that they had one overriding thing in common: a deep resentment of the way Henry II had manipulated them and used them against each other, all their lives. Young Henry was 18, Richard 15 and Geoffrey 14. In those times when lives were short, Richard and his elder brother were already considered to be men and Geoffrey, although only on the threshold of manhood, was precociously astute. Young Henry already had a following of barons both in France and England who resented his father’s high-handedness. Richard had, in theory at least, the fealty of all the knightly class of Poitou and Aquitaine, and was on his home ground. Geoffrey would never have acted alone, but was prepared to join the two others on certain conditions. Thus a conspiracy was born.

Had Henry II not been preoccupied with tying the knots of his grand design for Italy, he might have smelled rebellion in the air but, during the week-long festivities in Limoges, his main concern was finalising the betrothal of Prince John and Alix of Maurienne, which ended with 4-year-old Alix given into his keeping, her upbringing entrusted to Eleanor. Had the princes confided their intentions to a few vassals who could act fast, the rebellion might have succeeded, but the old king’s spies were everywhere among his sons’ households and it was from Raymond of Toulouse that he learned of the plot.

He then rode out of the city with Raymond and a small escort, on the pretext of a day’s hunting. Making a lightning tour of all the castles in the region and ordering the castellans to put them on a war footing, the old king appointed Abbot William of Reading to replace Archbishop Bertrand of Bordeaux, who had died the previous December, and sent him off to keep control of Gascony before himself returning to Limoges, whence the restless barons had departed to raise their troops for the rebellion. As quickly as a man pinning a snake by its head, he dismissed the Young King’s household knights
⁵
and ordered the sullen prince to accompany him back to Normandy at the beginning of March, leaving Eleanor in Poitiers with Richard and Geoffrey.

Young Henry was kept on a very short rein, required even to share his father’s bed at night. Yet, at Chinon on the journey north, he managed to creep out of their bedroom early in the morning of 6 March. Escaping from the castle, he headed north, perhaps hoping that his father would assume he had gone south-east, back to Limoges. Through the early morning mists he covered the 60 miles to Le Mans, another 30 miles to Alençon and twenty more to Argentan. Henry was roused in a fury to thunder in pursuit, making a chase scene worthy of Hollywood’s best. The terrified prince rode horses into the ground, as did his furious father, gradually gaining on him.

Hearing that Louis VII was at Mortagne, Young Henry changed direction and sought asylum there on 8 March, while his father was still taking stock of the situation back in Alençon.
⁶
Under feudal law, the Young King, as invested duke of Normandy, had every right to place his dispute with his father, the count of Anjou, before their mutual overlord the king of France, and Henry was hardly going to put his head into the lion’s mouth by following his son to Louis’ court. When his emissaries arrived there and announced that they represented the king of England, Louis affected surprise on the grounds that his honoured guest was the crowned king of England because the ‘old king’ had resigned.
⁷

Louis also had made a replica Young Henry’s seal, of which the original was still in Rouen. This was used to validate charters rewarding the barons who flocked to his cause: Count Philip of Flanders was given – on paper, at least – Dover Castle and the county of Kent; his brother the count of Boulogne got the county of Mortain; William of Scotland, currently raiding the north of England, got Northumbria; his brother David received the shires of Huntingdon and Cambridge. At that point, the duty of taking counsel that had been urged on Becket saw Young Henry agree to persuade his brothers to declare openly for him, bringing Poitou, Aquitaine and Brittany into the coalition against Henry II.

Arriving at Eleanor’s court in Poitiers to enlist them to the cause, Young Henry must have had doubts. Yes, the princes all resented and hated their father, but Richard was already reputed to be so unreliable as to merit Bertran de Born’s nickname for him: Richard Aye-and-Nay (in Occitan,
Ricart oc-e-no
). Vassals, friends and allies never knew where they stood with him, for a promise made on Sunday could be broken on Monday. Prince Geoffrey was a wild card, known for being ‘as slippery as an eel’. The key was to convince Eleanor. After listening to the Young King’s assurances of support from King Louis and his vassals and allies, she concluded that there would never be a better time to strike against the husband and father they had all come to hate, and therefore put her considerable powers of persuasion to work, to reconcile Richard and Geoffrey with Young Henry’s plans.