Richard I, whose exploits have been much admired by posterity, reigned for ten years, of which roughly six months were spent in England. In order to finance his crusade to rescue the Holy Land, he put up for sale every manor, castle, public office, and lordship in England, then joked, “I would put London itself up for sale if I could find a buyer.” At his mother’s instigation he married Berengaria of Navarre, but left within hours of the wedding; they had no offspring. Most of his time was spent on crusade, and during his absence Eleanor was regent of England. Richard became known as Coeur de Lion, the Lionhearted, and returned from the crusade an acclaimed hero. In 1199, during a petty quarrel with a lord of the Limousin, he was wounded by a chance arrow and died not long after. He is said to have “confessed to his chaplain that he had betrayed his father to the French king and asked that as a sign of remorse he should be buried at Henry’s feet in the crypt at Fontevrault.”[1]
In the absence of a direct heir, John was next in line to rule the Plantagenet empire. There was a rival claimant, young Arthur of Brittany, Count Geoffrey’s son, but backed by Eleanor, John prevailed. His reign is mainly known for his scandals with women, his treachery, the liberties he was forced to grant England’s barons through Magna Carta, and for the capture of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, and the youth’s subsequent mysterious disappearance. It was rumored that John had murdered him. By feudal law, Arthur’s sister should have succeeded him as duchess of Brittany, but John shut her in Bristol castle. John died in 1216, leaving a son, the future King Henry III. (In the play King John, Shakespeare makes the little boy, Arthur, a sympathetic victim, but he was a sixteen-year-old knight when he was captured in battle while attempting to sack the castle where his eighty-year-old grandmother, Eleanor, had sought refuge.)
Alais of France was brought to Rouen and confined there by Eleanor. Although King Philip of France had still wanted her to marry Richard, neither Richard nor Eleanor would agree. Alais remained confined until Philip was finally able to arrange her release. She finally achieved respectability when her brother married her to the count of Ponthieu.
Henry’s bastard son, Geoffrey, became archbishop of York under Richard, mainly to prevent him from becoming a claimant for the crown. Later, Richard banished him from England.
Henry’s grandson, Otto, his eldest daughter Matilda’s second son, became Holy Roman Emperor.
Henry’s youngest daughter, Joanna, queen of Sicily, became a widow and subsequently married count Raymond of Toulouse. It was an unhappy marriage, and Joanna, alone and besieged in her castle, managed to escape to the safety of her mother in Aquitaine. Although pregnant, Joanna was permitted to enter Fontevrault as a nun and died several days later after giving birth.
Eleanor’s eldest daughter by Louis of France, Marie of Champagne, died the year before Joanna, in 1198.
Bertran de Born reconciled with Richard after King Henry’s death, then wrote a rousing sirvente in an attempt to create conflict between Richard and King Philip. But the fires of rebellion burned less brightly, as de Born was now in his middle years and comfortably settled at Hautefort with his second wife and several children. In 1197, he retired to a monastery and became a monk, “whether from religious conviction or sheer exhaustion is not known.”[2] He died in 1215. (Dante placed de Born in the eighth circle of hell in his Inferno for having incited a son, the young king, to rebel against his father.) De Born’s gai saber lives on. In 1998, a CD was issued by the early music ensemble Sequentia entitled Love Songs of the Middle Ages, 1150–1450. One of the songs included was written by Bertran de Born.
Philip of France, later known as Philip Augustus due to his widespread power, proved himself indeed to be “the hammer of the English.” He eventually took Normandy from John and soon occupied Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, lands that had belonged to the Plantagenet empire. In 1204, he marched into Poitiers, and most of Poitou was taken into the French fold. Aquitaine and its capital of Bordeaux was all that remained to England. This marked the beginning of the end for the southern troubadour culture.
William Marshal, upon the death of his brother John, became marshal of England in Richard’s reign, and remained marshal through the reigns of John and John’s son, Henry III. He died at the age of eighty, considered in his own day “the greatest knight, the flower of chivalry.”
After Henry’s death, Eleanor lived for another fifteen years and became a vital influence in determining the destinies of England and Aquitaine. She worked tirelessly to keep the Plantagenet empire intact. When Richard was captured, she arranged and collected the ransom, closed the Channel ports, and ordered all Englishmen to protect the east coast against a threatened invasion from Philip of France. She also thwarted John’s attempts to take over Richard’s throne. When Richard was released, it was through her mediations that he and John were reconciled. At Richard’s death she did all in her power to ensure that John became king, although, ultimately, she could not save him from the follies of his own nature. Due to her political skill and statesmanlike abilities, she was able to outwit Philip of France and save Aquitaine from his predatory grasp. One of her last acts was an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between France and England.
At age seventy-nine, Eleanor crossed the Pyrenees and brought her granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, little Eleanor’s daughter, back to France to become the bride of Philip Augustus’s son, Louis. Eleanor died in April 1204 at the Abbey of Fontevrault, four months before Philip Augustus invaded her beloved Poitiers—although he never was able to acquire Aquitaine. Of the ten children she had borne only two remained: King John and her namesake, little Eleanor, the queen of Castile. Her tomb at Fontevrault lies between Henry’s and Richard’s. The carved tomb figure of Eleanor is shown holding a book in her hands. Her expression is serene and there is the faint suggestion of a smile on her face.
In 1973, a symposium was held on the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine at the University of Texas in Austin, and the papers presented were published. Here are some of the comments from the volume: “No other medieval monarch inspired so much music as did Eleanor and her family, and without her the course of history and the course of music would be entirely different.” “Eleanor of Aquitaine is at the heart of an entire civilization. A shrewd and dedicated politician, a patron of the arts in the broadest sense, a lover of gaiety—Eleanor was all these and more.”[3]
To sum up the legacy of Henry II, I would like to quote from the playwright Christopher Fry: “Just as the thirty-five years of his reign contain a concentration of the human condition, so his character covers a vast field of human nature. He was simple and royal . . . direct and paradoxical, compassionate and hard, a man of intellect, a man of action, God-fearing, superstitious, blasphemous, far-seeing, short-sighted, affectionate, lustful, patient, volcanic, humble, overriding. It is difficult to think of any facet of man which at some time he didn’t demonstrate except chastity and sloth.”[4]
When Henry died at fifty-six, he “had laid the foundations of the English Common Law, upon which succeeding generations would build. Changes in the design would arise, but its main outlines would not be altered.”[5]
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[1] Claude Marks, Pilgrims, Heretics, and Lovers: A Medieval Journey
[2] Ibid.
[3] William Kibler, ed., Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician
[4] Christopher Fry, Foreword to Curtmantle: A Play
[5] Winston Churchill, The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. 1