King William II was accidentally shot and killed while hunting in the New Forest in Hampshire on 2 August 1100. The earls gathered to choose a successor and while most barons favoured Duke Robert, who was on crusade, Henry de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Warwick, advised them to select his younger brother, Henry. De Beaumont became the king’s companion, one of the few barons faithful to the king.
Henry I quickly upset many barons. He accused William of Mortain, 3rd Earl of Cornwall, of taking lands without permission and confiscated them. William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey, had wanted to marry Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland but Henry took her for his wife instead. Ranulf Flambard also escaped from the Tower of London and fled to Normandy. They all wanted to see Henry’s brother, Duke Robert Curthose, on the throne.
Mortain started by attacking Henry’s Normandy estates along with his exiled uncle Robert de Bellême, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury. They all rallied to Duke Robert as soon as he returned from the First Crusade and then persuaded him to invade England and depose his brother.
Robert landed at Portsmouth in July 1102 but he immediately sued for peace and agreed the Treaty of Alton with Henry I. The treaty included an amnesty for the rebels but Henry intended to ‘soothe them with promises’ so they could be ‘driven into exile’. He compiled evidence and then accused them of unlicensed castle building.
Robert de Bellême, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury, refused to answer the charges and he captured Duke Robert’s English castles to try to appease the king. But he and his brothers had to forfeit their English titles and estates before they were exiled. William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey, suffered the same penalties, but Robert Curthose convinced his brother to restore William’s earldom. Henry had also wanted Warenne to marry one of his illegitimate daughters to assure his loyalty but Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury refused permission because they were related. For the time being Henry’s position was safe, but for how long?
Pope Gregory VII had declared that only he could appoint or depose bishops in 1075. The announcement resulted in the Investiture Controversy which saw the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV appoint a series of antipopes. When Henry had problems with the English Church in 1105, Robert de Beaumont advised him to select his bishops, so he could control them. Pope Paschal II excommunicated the king but the exiled Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury cancelled it. De Beaumont was rewarded with the Earldom of Leicester after pledging allegiance to the king.
King Henry defeated William of Mortain, 3rd Earl of Cornwall, at the battle of Tinchebrai in 1106. It meant that all of Normandy was under Henry’s rule and he placed his supporters in key positions across the Duchy to secure it. William spent the rest of his life in the Tower, becoming a monk in 1140.
The barons along Normandy’s frontier opposed Henry’s policies in 1110 and they rebelled when he tried to capture Robert Curthose’s son William Clito. The French King Louis VI sent Robert de Bellême, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury, to negotiate Robert’s release in 1112, but Henry arrested de Bellême and he died in custody. The Normandy rebellion ended soon afterwards.
Henry I, Alexander of Scotland and Richard d’Avranches, 2nd Earl of Chester, joined forces to attack Gruffudd ap Cynan in Gwynedd in 1114. Alexander married Henry’s illegitimate daughter Sibylla in the hope of bringing the two crowns closer together, but they had no children to continue the union.
Richard d’Avranches, 2nd Earl of Chester, drowned in the White Ship disaster in 1120 and Gruffudd ap Cynan took the opportunity to raid his estates along the Welsh border. King Henry created Ranulf le Meschin the 3rd Earl of Chester and instructed him to drive Welsh rebels back and secure the north-west.
Henry’s only legitimate son, William Adelin, drowned when the White Ship sank near Barfleur on 25 November 1120. Henry immediately made his illegitimate son, Robert Fitzroy, the Earl of Gloucester, his heir. It was an unpopular decision which would create future problems between Henry’s daughter Matilda and her cousin Stephen.
The twins Robert and Waleran de Beaumont had been taken into the royal household when their father died in 1118. They inherited their lands when they came of age two years later and while Robert received the English estates and became the 2nd Earl of Leicester, his brother took the French lands and became the 1st Earl of Worcester. Robert also acquired Breteuil through his marriage.
While Robert was busy dealing with a rebellion in the Breteuil area, Waleran was drawn into a conspiracy with Amaury de Montfort, Count of Évreux, who supported Robert Curthose’s son and King Henry’s nephew William Clito. King Henry soon learnt of the conspiracy and he sent his bastard son Robert Fitzroy, 1st Earl of Gloucester, and Ranulf le Meschin, 3rd Earl of Chester, to deal with Clito. They captured Waleran at Vatteville castle in March 1124. Many of the rebels were blinded while Henry paid Pope Callixtus to annul the marriage of William Clito and Sibylla to stop them having children who would be potential heirs to the throne.
David, the heir to the Scottish throne, had been exiled to the English court when his father, King Malcolm III, was killed attacking Northumbria in 1093. In 1113 he was married to Maud (or Matilda), daughter of Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, the last Anglo-Saxon earl to have any power under Norman rule.
Henry helped David take his throne when Alexander I died in 1124 but he could only exercise power in the south of Scotland and was ‘king of Scots in little more than name’. The Scots rose behind his nephew Malcolm when David visited Henry in 1130 but the two kings allied to imprison the rebel. David would introduce a Norman style administration into the Scottish government and he spread feudalism across his kingdom with the help of his Anglo-French and French supporters.