This Sceptred Isle: Trollheart's History of England

[Trollheart]

The Revolt of the Earls: Marital Strife Becomes Martial Strikes

I mentioned earlier that, having secured his position as the new King of England, William almost immediately fucked off back to Normandy, and left his new kingdom in the hands of some of his most trusted nobles. At least, he assumed they were to be trusted, but as ever in such a situation, as a famous Irish sports commentator once stated, give a man a hat...

In this situation, that could have been amended to give a man a wife, or rather, refuse to give him a wife, and it is this refusal that is at the very root of the open rebellion among his court which led to what became known as the Revolt of the Earls. Whether it was a case of love at first sight, boy meets girl or simply boy wants girl, or what I don't know, but Ralph de Guader fancied one Emma, daughter of the Earl of Hereford, and sought permission to marry her. William, very busy frogside showing everyone there how clever he was and relating tall tales about how wet and miserable England was (possibly leading those who listened to him to wonder why he had bothered conquering the place if it was so shitty) either ignored his request or turned it down. Either way, it really didn't matter, as Ralph thought to himself, His Majesty is over the Channel and I want to get my leg over, so fuck him. And, in short order, fuck her. Every night. And so he married Emma, without royal permission.

Big mistake.

When the Earl of Northumberland, Waltheof (who had been one of those greeting Sweyn at the Humber with Edgar) rose in revolt, and Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford, joined him, Ralph, now related to him by blood, joined Roger in supporting Waltheof. He turned out to be what medieval historians technically term a little bitch, going ratting to the Archbishop of Canterbury about the plot, and dropping his mates right in it. As a result, Roger was held at the river Severn by a paid army of free Saxons (why were they fighting for the Normans? Didn't you see the word "paid"?) led by the one remaining Saxon bishop who had not been dismissed, and whom the Catholic Church would later canonise, Wulfstan.

With one of the triumvirate of rebels having betrayed them, the remaining two were running out of luck. Roger was excommunicated by Lanfranc, the aforementioned Archbishop of Canterbury, while Ralph's army ran into not one, but two bishops, one of whom was William's brother, Odo of Bayeux, and the distressingly-obsessed with cutting people's feet off Geoffrey de Montbray at Cambridge, and had to retreat to his castle in Norwich. Here, he literally asked Emma to hold down the fort while he sailed to Denmark to request assistance from Sweyn. The Danish king sent him a fleet, and two of his sons (again) but they were no help, and Ralph had to flee to (no, not Flanders for once) Brittany with Emma when his wife managed to negotiate terms of surrender. These included, of course, the loss of all their lands, and his title.

He, it turned out, was the lucky one.

Roger was imprisoned and later beheaded, though not until after William had also passed on to that Great Throne Room in the Sky, while crybaby turncoat Waltheof lost his during the king's reign (William perhaps, amusingly, crying "Waltheof with his head!" No? Fair enough), making him the only English noble to be executed during the reign of William the Conqueror, a milestone I'm pretty sure he would rather not have crossed. Needless to say, both men also lost their lands and titles, in addition to their heads. Waltheof, perhaps due to being, as I said, the only Englishman to be executed on the king's orders, later became a martyr, and all sorts of miracles were said to have been performed at his tomb, though as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sensibly points out, these reports were in all likelihood ye pile of bollocks.

What's not a pile of old bollocks is that the Revolt of the Earls was seen as the last significant rise against William's reign, though it seems nobody told the Danes about that. And back to them we go.

[Trollheart]

The Return of the King. Of Denmark

To some extent, you have to feel for William. Getting on in years now, possibly sitting more on the throne for support as to prove his kingship, he had in fact only two years to live when Sweyn's son, Cnut, decided it was time for a rematch, and, gathering allies from Flanders (Count Robert I) and Norway (King Olaf III) he prepared for a final attempt to regain his grand-uncle's throne and re-establish the rule of the House of Denmark over England. This time they meant business, their fleet numbering a thousand ships, which even back then was recorded by contemporary historians as being "fucking huge".

William, on the other hand, seems not to have had much of a navy. I wonder why? Didn't he come to England originally with a shit ton of ships? What happened to them? Hmm. Doesn't say, but yes, over exaggeration as it may have been, William is said to have sailed with three times that number - 3,000 ships - so where did they go? Perhaps when he had, as he saw it, subdued England he no longer needed them and sent them back to Normandy? I suppose a navy has to be paid for, and what point shelling out the wages if you don't need them? At any rate, the accounts say he had no major navy, certainly nothing capable of opposing the combined Danish, Norwegian and Flemish fleet, so instead he employed mercenaries from France and stationed them on the coast.

In the end, it came to nothing as, rather like the projected invasion by Hitler's Germany almost nine hundred years later, and that by the Spanish five hundred years later, events conspired to ensure England's shores would never echo to the footfall of the invader. Well, other than the invader who was already there, of course, and in control. Olaf and Cnut fell out, as any good Viking worth his salt will, and the Danish king also had problems dealing with overtures from the Holy Roman Empire, leading, perhaps, but certainly resulting in his passing in the year 1086, helpfully assisted through the gates of Valhalla by rebels (possibly loyal to Olaf, though it doesn't say) who ended his reign, his life, and, by extension, the threat to England. The massive fleet had never left harbour, and William stood his army down, confident that the danger was passed.

It was, and there would never be another. Small consolation to him, I guess, as he would himself pass beyond the veil the following year, though at least he would do so as the uncontested King of England.

Note: Though there was plenty of unrest in France that William had to deal with, this is the History of England, and so I'm not going to go into that in any detail. We've probably spent longer on William the Conqueror than I had intended anyway (not that he doesn't deserve it) and we've still a thousand years of history to write about - well, close to it anyway - so we're leaving it at that.

What did the Normans Ever Do for Us?

While it can't be denied that the invasion by and subsequent rule of William the Conqueror began a whole new chapter in English history, it also destroyed forever the grip of Anglo-Saxon England, relegating its names, heroic figures, practices and even its language to, as I heard someone say yesterday on a documentary about Hitler, the dustbin of history. The Norman occupation of England would give rise to the legend of the greatest rebel and hero of them all, Robin Hood, but even the fabled outlaw (if he existed) would be unable to break the power of the Normans over England, and they would rule in an unbroken line for the next seventy years. Which, I have to admit, doesn't really seem all that long. But I guess the point is that while the actual House of Normandy would end with Henry I in 1135, the legacy they had built is still with us today. Principle among which is...

Norman Castles

It was rather to my own surprise that I learned the very word castle had not been in the English language until the arrival of the Normans, but in short order the previously-dominant Anglo-Saxons were shown just what that meant. Huge, frowning edifices of brick and stone, many hundreds of feet high, protected by high walls manned by garrisons of troops, with forbidding portcullis protecting the entrance and a drawbridge further restricting access across a moat in which an attacking army could drown or be easy targets for archers, Norman castles were the Death Stars of their day. Okay, they couldn't fly through space and they didn't launch hordes of fighters at you, but they were all but impregnable, and a single glance at the high, unscalable walls must have been enough to have had an opposing army turn away in dejection. Perhaps they could be more properly compared to aircraft carriers (minus the aircraft of course); a self-contained world which was mostly self-sufficient, all food, fuel, ammunition and other materials needed stored behind its vast gates, all but a mini-town of its own, keeping out intruders and undesirables.

One of the most famous of these Norman Castles is the Tower of London, which was begun just after 1066, and to which William had added the White Tower in 1078. In contrast to the timber fortification, the White Tower is made of stone, and of course, as everyone knows, stands today, and has been used by many subsequent kings and queens of England/Britain as a prison, a dungeon, an armoury and a place of execution. The idea quickly took hold of a castle as a place not only of fortification and defence, but of permanent habitation too. These were places armies could live in and places lords, nobles and monarchs could call their home. With the advent of the castle also came the somewhat revolutionary idea of towns, England having been previously divided up into shires, hides and other sections of the land.

William also brought with him Norman laws, such as the right to hunt. Under Norman law (or certainly, royal law) all of the forests and woods were the protectorate and possession of the Crown, and so anyone hunting there was guilty of stealing from the king. This law may have had two foundations: one the one hand, it kept the common Saxons in check and showed them who was boss, and on the other, it preserved all the game in the English forests for the exclusive use of the king, or those he allowed to hunt there. William, like many French nobles, was a big fan of hunting, and under his law many a man lost a hand or an eye for daring to trespass and hunt (poach) on this land. This, you'll not be surprised to hear, led to the genesis of the legend of Robin Hood, who, it is said, not only traversed and hunted Sherwood Forest with impunity, but made his base there, turning the king's forest against him and his officers, a Saxon two fingers to the Crown. But that's later in the story.

Although the accepted King of England, William did not renounce his French title, and so when he travelled to his home country he acknowledged that he was loyal to the French Crown (even if the French king was at various times attacking him or supporting rebels who rose against him), something, I believe - though I could of course be wrong - no other English king ever did after him. When Henry V, for instance, travelled to Calais he did so as the King of England, owing no fealty to the French throne - believing, in fact, that he should be on that throne as King of England and France. I suppose William's origins were unique in that aspect, though further down the line another William, he of Orange, did not, I believe, react similarly to the Dutch king, if he ever visited Holland again after being crowned. William also moved the royal capital, for the very first time, from its traditional location at Winchester to London, which has been ever since both the capital of England and the residence of the sovereign.

The Domesday Book

The first, and certainly most detailed account of landholdings in England, the Domesday Book was commissioned by William and completed a year before his death, in 1086. And yes, it is pronounced "doomsday", the idea being that its contents could not be altered until the dawning of Judgement Day itself. Originally called Liber de Wintonia, or The Book of Winchester, it was a record of every shire or county in the kingdom, listing each lord's landholdings, serfs, agricultural equipment, livestock etc, so that the king could know the actual value of the land and thereby  how much tax was owed to the Crown. I suppose in some ways it was both the first Norman accounts ledger and the first Royal Census, though the Saxons didn't count as anything other than numbers - nobody cared what their names were, what they did or anything about them: they were, quite simply, resources, and one could say all but property, slaves in all but name.

Under Norman law, all the land in England belonged to the king, and so he was like a "super-landowner", hiring out the land to his "tenants", the nobles and  lords who "held" it for him, thus the description of them as "holdings" or "land holdings". In return for his granting them the tenancy of the lands, of course, His Majesty expected them to cough up the bucks, and the Domesday Book laid out in clear, precise terms (if in Latin) how much each lord owed. Naturally, the more land, workers, cattle etc any lord or noble had, the more he owed and would be expected to pony up.

Oh, and in case you want to know, just as words such as "terrific" had a far different meaning back then to the one they have now, the word "doom" itself did not carry the dire and dread implications we attribute to it now. Don't take my word for it: here's Henry II's treasurer, Richard FitzNeal, writing in 1179: "The natives call this book "Domesday", that is, the day of judgement. This is a metaphor: for just as no judgement of that final severe and terrible trial can be evaded by any subterfuge, so when any controversy arises in the kingdom concerning the matters contained in the book, and recourse is made to the book, its word cannot be denied or set aside without penalty. For this reason we call this book the "book of judgements", not because it contains decisions made in controversial cases, but because from it, as from the Last Judgement, there is no further appeal."

Another thing that occurred in England during Norman times - perhaps not intentionally, but with the rise of the Norman noble classes and the fall into servitude of the Saxon lords it was bound to happen - was the rather rapid loss from history of names associated with Saxon England. As already noted, names such as Aethelbert and Aethelstan vanished, the very idea of pairing A with E given the elbow sharpish, and names more linked with France such as Henry, William and Robert came more into vogue, this being of course due to the important children being born all coming from noble (Norman) families, and therefore given Norman names. A few names did persist, such as Albert, Edward, Edgar etc., but they lost the old spelling and had to "Normanise" themselves.

But the main change in names wasn't to do with first names but last, as wealthy French families were rewarded with land which had previously belonged to English ones, and so the French way of denoting son (de/of) became more popular, with De Courceys and De Montfort, and other suffixes and prefixes like Fitz and De La. The links between England and Scandinavia, which had persisted for almost three hundred years, were severed forever as William forged closer ties with his native country and paid off the last of the Danish fleets to try to invade England, the last, as we saw, never making it out of the harbour.

[Trollheart]

The Final Years of William the Conqueror

In 1082 William had his half-brother Odo arrested. Nobody knows why, but we can probably guess. Apart from it being more or less the done thing to have your siblings arrested, tried, and possibly imprisoned or executed (or, if you were feeling particularly magnanimous, secure in your power and merciful, exiled), the chances are that the two did not get on, and that William would have seen him as a threat. Odo was also said to have tried to enlist some of his half-brother's vassals to participate in an invasion of Italy, with the idea of making himself pope. This would not have gone down well with the king (or the current pope!) for two reasons: one, Odo seconding his vassals would have weakened the authority of the king and two, probably, he already had Rome onside with regard to his rule of England. Were Odo to become the next pope, and decide to invalidate that seal of approval, it could have caused untold trouble for William. Also, had the new Pope Odo (or whatever name he might have chosen) then opposed, even attacked his half-brother, William would again be fighting for his new country, and to be quite honest about it, and to quote Danny Glover, he was getting too old for this shit.

So into a dark cell he was thrown, not to be released until the king's passing, but William's problems did not end there. Like all good sons, his own, Robert, rebelled, and with the help of the French king, another rebellion a year later by Hubert de Beaumont-au-Maine, and the passing of his wife Matilda (whom he seemed to have genuinely loved), pushed him into an early grave. Accounts of his death vary, and nobody really knows how he died, but there are some disturbingly macabre and gory details and some rather black humour attending his funeral.

Having fought against Robert in Mantes, west of Paris, William either "fell ill" (nice and vague) or was "injured by the pommel of his saddle", presumably falling on it? Yeah I don't really see how that would kill him. I thought maybe a saddle pommel was sharp or something, but I see a picture of one and it's not. Mind you, that is a modern saddle, and I'm sure there were plenty of changes in the design over almost a thousand years, so maybe. Ah, right. Another book tells me knowledgably that his horse stepped on a burning cinder, reared and threw him forward onto the - iron - pommel. Well, as Bart Simpson has said on several occasions, that's gotta hurt! At any rate, he died on September 9 1087, and that's where it begins to get interesting.

I certainly don't understand why, but maybe with the man opposing the French king now dead people did not want to be seen to be associated with him? At any rate, it's said that few people stayed with his body, each person leaving the deathbed at Rouen and "hurrying off to tend to his own affairs." If any of these were English, or Normans who had an interest in the succession, perhaps they wanted to get home and jockey for position, as was usual when a monarch died, or maybe they were anxious to make new alliances or break old ones. As I say, the body was left in France and, perhaps looking at each other and then shrugging, the monks must have found or been told of the English king's last wishes, to be buried in the Benedictine monastery of Abbaye-aux-Hommes (literally, can you believe it, abbey for men?) also known as the Abbey of Saint Etienne, in Caen, which he had founded. The king's body was thereafter conveyed there, and his funeral took place.

Everyone who was everyone was of course there, as was some wanker who claimed his family owned the land the abbey was built on, and demanded to be paid for it, saying he had been stiffed by, well, whomever. Possibly to shut him up and keep scandal to a minimum, possibly also hissing "this is a fucking funeral, mon ami, and not just any funeral - the funeral of the King of fucking England! Can't we sort this out later?" to be told that "Non, m'sieu, we cannot, because then you will refuse to pay me, whereas now, all you want to do is get rid of this annoying grotty little man who is stinking up your royal funeral, non?" And so they got rid of the annoying grotty little man, but the funeral was, sadly (and, I have to admit with a little guilt, humorously) about to be stunk up even worse.

Seems when they lowered the corpse into the grave, some idiot hadn't measured properly, and the king's body was too wide to go in. So, like all good workmen the world over, not just Frenchmen, I stress, they used their initiative and, well, forced it. Let me just take a step back and give you a personal view of how we all do this. I remember we were waiting for a taxi to take my sister Karen to a dental appointment, and I had stressed that we needed a wheelchair taxi. I had also made it very clear that we needed a large van, as she could not get out of the wheelchair, as some disabled people can, and would have to sit in it while in the back of the van. Come the day, they sent a small vanette. It had a wheelchair ramp, yes, but you entered through the side, not the back, and simply put, the wheels on Karen's wheelchair made it too wide to go in.

With no idea what to do, no chance of booking another wheelchair taxi for that day, and facing not only a cancellation of her appointment with the dentist - and who knew when we would get another? - but also the prospect of her being in pain for at least another day, I did what every desperate idiot does who has completely run out of ideas and has no clue how to proceed: I tried to force her chair through a gap that was clearly too narrow to allow such a thing. Talk about greasing the sides with butter! I nearly did. I was determined that this would not thwart us, that we would make the best of a bad situation, that I would get her in. I never, of course, gave any thought to what would happen, should I against all odds manage to force her in, when it was time to get her back out again. Oh no: I just kept pushing against the chair, trying by sheer force of a combination of stubborn will and gross stupidity, and a defiant refusal to see the truth, to push her through a gap she could not possibly pass through. It wasn't till the taxi driver put his hand on my shoulder and said "Son, she isn't going to fit" that I finally realised how truly thick I was being, and gave up, no doubt to Karen's relief, having felt like a square peg being forced into a hole which was decidedly not square.

So really, to some extent, I can't fault or laugh at or condemn the gravediggers for doing what they did, but when you step back and consider what happens when you try to force an object into a space for which it is far too small, you'd think they would have seen it coming. But they didn't. In a matter of moments though, they certainly smelled it, as the king's body burst, a smell which, I think, would have taken a whole lot of Airwick to cover! What a revolting and humiliating and entirely inappropriate end for the man who conquered England and brought an end to Saxon rule! Had those Saxons back home heard about this incident, I venture to suggest there would have been cheering and sneering laughter echoing from Land's End to John O'Groats.

That wasn't to be the end of the indignities for William the Conqueror, as in 1562, almost half a millennium after his burial, during the Wars of French Religion, about which I know nothing and about which I need to know less, his grave was reopened and his bones scattered around and lost, the only remaining relic being one thigh bone. Well, I suppose it's better than poor old Alfred the Great, of whom we have only a pelvic bone to remember him by! The thigh bone was reinterred almost a hundred years later, but the architects of the French Revolution weren't having that: the bones - sorry, bone - of an oppressive English king buried in the sacred (well, not sacred, as we don't follow any religion now, but you know what I mean, citizen) soil of France! So they destroyed it again.

A war of succession ensued, almost inevitably, after William's death, and we'll be tackling this in the next chapter. We'll see that as always, nature abhors a vacuum, and kingdoms in particular abhor a power vacuum, but luckily (or unluckily) there's always more than enough people rushing to fill it. William had begun and indeed mostly accomplished the conquest, for the first (and only) time of England by a French king. You might think this would strengthen ties between the two countries, but on the contrary, as we all know, it led to a rivalry that exploded into wars between both - which often pulled in or latched onto the conflicts being fought between other European powers, such as Holland, Spain, Portugal or Germany - and would, in time, raise England, and later Britain, to the status of a major player in European, and later world politics.

[Trollheart]

Chapter V: Under the French Heel, Part Two: Sons of Anarchy

As often happens when a great man dies (great being subjective in a historical sense, and dependent very much on your own viewpoint of course), his successor fails to fill his boots in any significant way. We've seen this with (spit) Oliver Cromwell and indeed with Cnut, neither of which could rely on their sons to carry on their legacy.Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut both presided, in short order, over the fall of the House of Denmark, while Richard Cromwell was so bad at following in his father's footsteps that the English Parliament shook their heads and asked Charles II to come and take the reins again, hoping all that messy beheading business with his old man would be forgiven and forgotten.

In the same way, almost, the sons of William the Conqueror did little to consolidate their late father's power. Since there were two, this was never a good start, and as you might expect, each fought the other. William had left instructions for his succession which seemed, on the face of it, to solve the problem: he left England to his son William Rufus, and Normandy to his son Robert. In point of fact, William had four sons, but Henry, the youngest, was never going to inherit either kingdom as the lowly fourth son, and Richard, the third son, got done for in the New Forest when, rather stupidly but quite hilariously, he ran into an overhanging branch while hunting (no, I don't think it was a Special Branch ho ho) which stopped him from seeing his sixteenth birthday. Curiously, perhaps, William Rufus would later meet his end in the very same forest, though it would be an arrow that secured for his brother the throne of England, and not surprisingly, rumours, though unprovable, of murder would circulate. Oh, you know how those young princes can be!


Richard had the bad grace to be killed before his father had even passed on, so on the death of William the Conqueror he was already out of the running, but Henry must have been somewhat pissed off to have been ignored in his father's will, the old man not even seeing fit to leave him any lands. "We'll just see about that," he possibly fumed, and bided his time. Meanwhile, Robert kept up the family tradition of Normandy opposing England, and rebelled against William. This put the local nobles in something of a predicament: which brother did they swear fealty to? It couldn't be both, as these guys owned land both in France and England, and surely the best way to solve that problem was to unite the two realms, which meant deposing one or other of the sons of the Conqueror. When William's eternal nemesis, his half-brother Odo, plumped to support Robert, they flocked to him and attacked William.

This, then, was the short-lived Rebellion of 1080, and it did not end well for Odo, who was captured by William's forces, and Robert, his Norman troops driven back across the Channel by the oh-so-dependable English weather, knew the game was up when he was unable therefore to arrive at the captured Rochester Castle and rally his troops, who folded like umbrellas. Odo was banished penniless to Normandy, exiled there for life, stripped of all land and titles, while the vanquished Robert was allowed to remain in England and keep his estates across the Channel, provided he acknowledge his brother as the King of England and forswear any further claim to her throne, which he did.

In 1095, nearing the cusp of a new century, good old Northumbria rose again, this time under Robert de Mowbray. William rode to battle against him and defeated him, and perhaps showing he was after all his father's son and could be as cruel as the Conqueror when he wanted to or had need to, he had another noble who had supported de Mowbray's rebellion seized, blinded and castrated. Some balls, that guy. Sorry. He also took on the eternally oppositional Scots, and defeated their king, Malcolm II, and when Malcolm and his son were killed and his brother Donald took over, William supported instead the other son of Malcolm, Duncan II, and later his son Edgar, who swore fealty to him.Possibly just for the look of it, or in case they had felt left out, he also invaded Wales, but didn't get very far, though he did do what all good Norman kings did back then, and built a castle or two there before legging it back to England.

When Pope Urban II called all Christians to "liberate" the Holy Land in 1096, in what became known as the First Crusade, Robert, kicking around with little to do and possibly thinking of his immortal soul (or more likely, those sexy Arabian women and all that even sexier gold and treasure just waiting to be plundered) grinned "Sign me up, Your Holiness!" There was only one problem, but it was a large one. Like an international holiday (but with more swords and axes and blood and dysentery, depending I suppose on where you choose to holiday) taking part in a crusade was an expensive business, so he went to his brother and asked him to pony up the readies. After all, this was God's work, was it not? God was not available for comment at the time of writing.

William, however, was, and what he commented was "You must be fucking one brick short of a castle, bruv! Where the hell am I supposed to get that sort of cash? I mean, times have been hard, you know? Wars to fight, rebellions to put down: it all costs money." To which Robert had replied "What about Normandy? It's still in great nick, only two careful dukes, one of which was our very own pere. What do you say?" In the end, King William agreed, but in order to get the vast sum he would need to realise Normandy as collateral on this royal loan, he turned to the people kings always turn to when they want money: the tax payers. After all, they're not called that for nothing. So, another huge and highly unpopular tax (has any tax, ever in history, been popular?) and a lot of grumbling from the people as torches wavered in the cool morning air and coins were counted out into eager Norman hands, and brother Robert was on his way to Jerusalem.

It's not recorded, but surely it's possible that William entertained some hope that his bro might not return. Crusades are dangerous, and even if Robert could handle himself with a sword, there were all kinds of other hazards - diseases, heatstroke, hunger, getting lost in the desert... any number of reasons why, when they shook hands and waved each other farewell William might have considered this to be the last time he would ever see his troublesome brother again. As it turned out, he was right. Not because Robert died while killing for Christ, but because William did. Well, not fighting for Christ, but by the time a grinning, victorious and no doubt richer Robert made it back to the shores of dear Old Blighty, his brother and sovereign had turned up his toes, he just missing the funeral by a month.

[Trollheart]

While he had been away though, Robert found that his brother had not been idle, and having Normandy to play with he had of course used it, invading in 1098 and making significant gains, He then returned to England to plot further campaigns, but before heading back decided to get in a spot of hunting in, you guessed it, the New Forest. At least he got to see the new century in. Accounts of his death vary, but most agree he was shot with an arrow "by one of his own men". It's not made clear whether this was on purpose or by accident, though the story began to circulate that landless brother Henry had either been the man behind the bowstring or had arranged someone to be. Either way, by the time Robert returned, heard his brother was dead and possibly rubbed his hands together, thinking his time to sit in the big chair had come, his kid bro was already making himself comfortable there, possibly proving the old adage that all things come to those who wait. And who know how to engage an assassin who will never be traced back to them.

The blame has historically been lumped on one Walter Tirel, as detailed here by the famous historian of the age, William of Malmsebury, though he refers to Tirel, for some reason, as Walter Thurold. "The day before the king died he dreamt that he went to hell and the Devil said to him "I can't wait for tomorrow because we can finally meet in person!". He suddenly awoke. He commanded a light to be brought, and forbade his attendants to leave him. The next day he went into the forest... He was attended by a few persons... Walter Thurold remained with him, while the others, were on the chase. The sun was now declining, when the king, drawing his bow and letting fly an arrow, slightly wounded a stag which passed before him... The stag was still running... The king, followed it a long time with his eyes, holding up his hand to keep off the power of the sun's rays. At this instant Walter decided to kill another stag. Oh, gracious God! the arrow pierced the king's breast.

On receiving the wound the king uttered not a word; but breaking off the shaft of the arrow where it projected from his body... This accelerated his death. Walter immediately ran up, but as he found him senseless, he leapt upon his horse, and escaped with the utmost speed. Indeed there were none to pursue him: some helped his flight; others felt sorry for him.

The king's body was placed on a cart and conveyed to the cathedral at Winchester... blood dripped from the body all the way. Here he was buried within the tower. The next year, the tower fell down. William Rufus died in 1100... aged forty years. He was a man much pitied by the clergy... he had a soul which they could not save... He was loved by his soldiers but hated by the people because he caused them to be plundered.


Now let's look at the case for the prosecution, as it were. First, the idea surely of any archer worth his salt making such a catastrophic miscalculation, especially in the presence of the king, seems less than ludicrous. Witness, too, Tirel's sudden flight from the scene to Normandy, and his unexplained death shortly after. Henry tying up the loose ends? Let's hear a little about the youngest son of William the Conqueror while we're at it. He once threw a man off a tower, so he was certainly not averse to a little violence, He had been left without lands or title by Dear Old Dad, and had had to watch his two elder brothers lord it over him as they ponced variously about Normandy and England. With Robert away doing God's work in the Holy Land (and with the help of the Almighty, never to return) he must surely have seen his chance to take the throne he had been denied?

He was certainly present in the hunting party that day, though seems to have made sure that he was nowhere in the actual vicinity of his brother, perhaps to throw off any suspicion and provide himself an alibi. Also, as we've learned down through history, such accidents - actual or orchestrated - were so common during the hunt that it almost was the way young kings, princes, heirs to the throne and pretenders, bastards and anyone else deemed a threat to the current holder met their maker, almost as common maybe as traffic accidents today. It also seems very odd to me that, according to some accounts, the body of the ex-king was left by the hunting party in "a leafy glade" where it was later discovered by a - no doubt terrified - commoner by the name of Purkiss, who presumably had to report it.

If the king's death had been an accident, why would his corpse be abandoned by his retainers? What possible reason could there be to leave the body of your liege lord lying in a forest, beating a hasty retreat? Certainly, some might feel suspicion might fall on them, and they had a new king now, but even so, did nobody ask, on their return, where William was? What about his wife, unaware that she had just become a grieving widow? What about his supporters, his children... ah. Not married, no kids. Homosexual, in fact. Well that was handy. But still, he must have had people who at least wondered where he had got to, and even if they put about the story that the king ("The King is dead! Long live the King!") had become somehow separated from the hunting party and might be lost in the forest, did nobody go look for him? Maybe they did, and that was when one very scared-looking peasant encountered them?


(A medieval peasant. Not to be confused with a pheasant, though both could be, and were, shot. It's not recorded, however, that peasants were eaten; probably too stringy, what with their poor diet and all.)

No. You know, it really does pay to read as many accounts as possible before writing about them, Trollheart me old son. The story, in fact, goes on to say that Purkiss - a charcoal-burner, whatever that may have been (possibly he burned charcoal, but don't quote me) actually loaded the dead king onto a cart and brought it to Westminster, where the monks there were so shit-scared that they buried the corpse immediately. I find it hard not to think that they had been told, should anyone turn up with the king's dead body, I want it to disappear, and I'm your king now, so you had better do what I say. I would also be surprised to hear that Purkiss survived. Nothing shuts a man's mouth more effectively than death, though I can't exactly see the monks doing the deed. They may have turned him over to the new king's men though. No, wrong again: read fucking AHEAD, Trollheart you knob! Seems Purkiss was bought off with some land, and his descendants had him to thank for a jolly old life and very much a rise in social status, from burning coal to owning land holdings. So I guess old Purkiss was after all happy that he decided to pick that day to head into the forest in search of wood for his charcoal burner, and found instead a dead king. It's an ill wind, eh?

As he was a known, as George R.R. Martin so colourfully described them, sword-swallower, it seems too that King William Rufus was not exactly the toast of the kingdom, things like buggery and sodomy still being very much frowned upon, especially by the ever-critical Catholic Church, and when the tower under which King William's hastily-interred corpse blew down in a storm a few years later, it was seen as a judgement by God on his wickedness, and no doubt everyone congratulated themselves on a job well done.

There is one further, damning piece of evidence against the now-king of England, but there is maybe an element of self-serving in it, so whether it can be taken as gospel or not is open to conjecture. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, if anything, it was Tirel's friend, Alan Sugar, sorry Abbot Suger, who sheltered the unhappy knight in France (though probably not for too long, since as we read, he died shortly after 1100) who had this to say: "It was laid to the charge of a certain noble, Walter Thurold, that he had shot the king with an arrow; but I have often heard him, when he had nothing to fear nor to hope, solemnly swear that on the day in question he was not in the part of the forest where the king was hunting, nor ever saw him in the forest at all."

A friend covering for a friend? Or a man who could not believe his buddy had performed, if accidental, regicide? Or maybe, just maybe, the man with the key to the whole case, to whom nobody listened because, well, he was Tirel's mate. Of course, nobody took note of who went on what hunt, so there would be no way for him to prove he was not there, and it's doubtful anyone would have spoken on his behalf, as to do so might have thrown suspicion on the man who was now their king, but it does make you wonder. No smoke without fire? I guess he didn't mention his concerns to Henry when he sat between him and Louis VI seven years later, mediating a dispute between the two monarchs. In fact, he lived to a ripe old age, though possibly due to the favour - and therefore, one might assume, the protection of the king - he enjoyed at the French court. Possibly, too, due to not opening his mouth and deciding the past was the past.

And what about Robert? Did he just accept this "rather fortunate" set of circumstances that conspired to place his kid brother on the throne? Well, what do you think? A year after returning from the Crusades he mounted a campaign against Henry, but the young king was well liked and had more support than had Robert, who had, after all, been away for five years in a foreign land, and who was not very well known to the Normans, having spent most of his time in France. His time in the Holy Land should however have stood him in good stead, and it kind of did, but he was fighting a losing battle, and he was roundly defeated and returned to his duchy of Normandy. Not entirely sure how that worked out, given that he had mortgaged it to William Rufus and never, so far as I can see, paid that debt. But it probably didn't matter, because Henry decided leaving his older brother to cause mischief across the water was not the kingliest of ideas, and so he invaded Normandy in 1105.

A son of William the Conqueror he may have been, a crusader he may have been, and a potential king of England, but it seems Robert was not the cleverest of men. While debauching himself with whores and jesters one night, he woke to find they had robbed all his clothes, and he had to miss the mass he had been looking forward to attending, as the Church tends to take a rather dim view of people - even dukes - who turn up naked at mass. After a decisive defeat by Henry at the Battle of Tinchebray (where, atypically, Henry ordered his knights to dismount and fight as infantry) Robert was captured, and Henry claimed the duchy of Normandy as a possession of the English Crown. Robert was imprisoned, moved from one jail to another, for the rest of his life. He died in 1134.

An interesting footnote is that on the very same day (and possibly, though I can't confirm, at the very same hunt) as Wiliiam Rufus had his "accident" in the New Forest, Robert's son Richard (not the third son of William the Conqueror, another one) also died in an accident there. Was this just pure coincidence, or was the future king of England making sure that, once he had dealt with Robert, his son would be out of the picture and unable to challenge him for the throne?

[Trollheart]

Henry I (1068 - 1165)

The youngest, and therefore last of the sons of William the Conqueror, Henry also became the last Norman king, due to the death of his heir, William Adelin, in the White Ship Disaster (see my History of Ireland journal). He was, however, the most successful in keeping good relations with Scotland, having married the sister of King David I, Matilda., He was a king who recognised both the advantages of manipulating the local barons and nobles both at home and abroad, and also the need for an effective intelligence network, perhaps the first King of England to create and maintain a ring of spies to keep him informed. He was also merciless to his enemies. He set down certain standards and rules for court etiquette, and forbade his nobles from raiding each other's holdings, as had been allowed by his brother.

He introduced the Royal Exchequer and appointed roving judges, or "itinerant justices", to dispense his laws across the country. Although the punishment for counterfeiting money would, during the time of the American Revolution, be death, Henry took a slightly more lenient (!) attitude towards what were known as "coiners", instructing that their hands and, um, man parts should be chopped off. Nothing funny about that money, honey!

Between 1108 and 1114 Henry was busy with politics across the Channel, but as these did not directly affect England (no invasion or anything) we will not concern ourselves with them here. However, in 1114 he showed how skilful a politician he was when he actually had Scotland fight for him against the Welsh, defeating them and ending their rebellion. For now. Having lost his successor Henry needed an heir and so remarried, this time to Adeliza of Louvain, but she failed to perform, and with the death of Richard, Earl of Chester, the Welsh saw their chance and rose again. Henry put them down again double quick. Still desperate for an heir, he decided to target his nephew Stephen of Blois, and had him marry the Countess of Boulogne, Matilda, who would herself figure in the monarchical line of England, though she would never officially rule.

Look, I'm confused. There were fucking Matildas to beat the band: Henry's daughter was Matilda, he married Stephen to another Matilda, a third Matilda was the Empress and had a fucking daughter named, you guessed it, Matilda! So it's hard to know which Matilda we're talking about, especially since our Henry named the Empress Matilda as his successor when her husband died. But I've written an account on the woman who would be the first unofficial Queen of England, for another journal, and I'll transcribe it here later when we get to her - disputed - reign. For now, just know that Henry had a very ignominious end, and though he went hunting the day before, it for once had nothing to do with arrows, boars or misplaced overhanging branches. He would probably have preferred if it had done, but as it goes, he seems to have died of, well, I don't know. Overeating? Poison? Poisson? The official account points the finger at his having eaten too many lampreys (eels) and feeling not quite so tucker afterwards. So not tucker, in fact, that he languished in agony for a week before turning up his toes, leaving the question of the succession unanswered, and leading to a period known to historians as "The Anarchy".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda: A Lack of Originality in Names

Just a slight diversion before we proceed, one of these little tangents I like to go off on, though this one is related. A little above, I mentioned that I wasn't sure which Matilda I was talking about when I spoke about Henry's intended successor, as there were many. I just quickly want to check out how many. From Henry's own mother, the wife of William the Conqueror, Matilda of Flanders (at least that helps differentiate her) to his own wife, Matilda of Scotland, we have no less than ten Matildas coming into the story. Henry, as we know, was not shy about putting it about, and had reams of bastards, no less than three of which were named Matilda. We have Matilda, Countess of Perche, Matilda, Duchess of Brittany and Matilda, Abbess of Montivilliers, whom, it can be presumed, never married or had children, so at least no more Matildas out of her!

Matilda, Henry's first wife (all of these apparently are also known as Maud, just to confuse things, and how cool is it that his mother then becomes Maud of Flanders?) died and the king married again, thankfully not another Matilda, but his nephew did, or at least was lined up for one. Matilda, Countess of Boulogne, but just to muddy the waters even further, the Empress of Germany was also called Matilda, and when her husband (Lord help us!) another Henry, though a French one, died, this Henry, the son of William the Conqueror, decided she'd make a better successor than Stephen, even though she was, obviously, a woman, and women generally - and certainly not in England - did not rule. Now, I think - checking, checking - that the empress was Henry's daughter (our Henry, not the dead French one)?

Right, on we go. With the Empress Matilda now his heir(ess) and married off to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, Henry must have believed he was sorted and dumped Stephen and his Matilda like the proverbial hot potato. Sadly for him, Geoffrey and his Matilda fancied the throne - at least, the one in Normandy; not quite so sure about the English one, but sure if it was going I'm sure they would not insult him by saying no - and were not prepared to wait till her daddy kicked the bucket, and so rode against him, supporting rebels in Normandy. It was around this time that Henry, just back from a damned fine hunt and in the mood for some lampries - ooh lovely! Have another? Don't mind if I do - found that after stuffing too many slippery eel-like fishies into his gob he felt a little poorly, retired to his bed for a week and died, in not inconsiderable agony, as we have already seen.

So that looks to be, what, nearly a football team of separate Matildas? Some of which were dead, admittedly, like his mother and first wife, one of which hied her to a nunnery, but to make it even more complicated, as we begin to wade through the period of English succession known as the Anarchy, it looks as if two of the most powerful Matildas - Stephen's wife and the Empress - fought against each other. Sounds like fun, I don't think. I hope my brain doesn't implode.

Oh right, yes, true. I don't have a brain.
For-ward!

[Trollheart]

Anarchy in the UK: This Throne Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us

I'm sure it's not the only time it happened, but I think it might have been the first, that two rival claimants for the throne of England both technically sat on it during the same period. We've had occasions where one king took the throne from another, or usurped or just ascended on the death of his rival, but I can't recall an instance were two separate monarchs both ruled, independent of and in opposition to each other. Of course, one of these was never acknowledged as the sovereign, but we'll get into that. The period known as The Anarchy of course came about due to Henry I's failure to provide an heir, his two sons going down with the White Ship and his plans to make the Empress Matilda his heir scrapped after she turned against him with her new husband, Geoffrey of Anjou. The man he had intended to hand over the throne to prior to that, his nephew Stephen, not unreasonably decided to claim his birthright, as he saw it, on the death of his uncle, and that was when all hell broke loose.

But before we go there, I have two articles posted in other journals which need to be reposted here, as they are not only relevant to the Anarchy but also help explain the reasons for it, and indeed the bitter rivalry between Stephen and Matilda (not his wife, the other one) which led to the first real English civil war. The first goes back to when Henry I was still alive (though his wife - yes another bloody Matilda! Haven't we been over this already?) was not. Henry, secure in the knowledge that his son would succeed him, was relaxing when he got the news.

What news? This news.



Sinking the Succession: The White Ship Goes Down

No less a figure than the son of the man who had brought William the Conqueror himself to England in 1066, the White Ship was captained by Thomas Fitzstephen, and was originally offered to Henry I but he had said "nah you're all right mate, I'm sorted already, but my sprogs would sure welcome a berth." And so his son, yet another William, as well as two of his many bastards, and a bunch of others boarded the White Ship. As did the man who would later be King Stephen, but he, seeing all the boozing going on, thought better of it and disembarked, recorded as saying "Go ahead; I'll catch the next one. Got a few loose ends to tie up here in Normandy anyway. I'll see you over there."

But he wouldn't. What was that? Oh yeah. Booze. Well, seems that drink was called for, and supplied "in abundance", showing little real difference from today's booze cruises. I have no idea how many it was supposed to take but it was certainly carrying more than its complement, reckoned at around 300 people. Suitably tanked-up and belligerent, the nobles and the king's sons roared "Follow that ship! Overtake the old man! We'll show him!" or words to that effect. "Right you are, your various Highnesses!" grinned the captain at the nine hundred people yelling at him, and gripping one of the three helms on the ship, steered it away from port and directly into nearby rocks. They never even got out of the harbour, the vessel going down like one of the rocks it had hit, most of its passengers probably too drunk to realise what was happening, never mind swim for it.

The only one with any sort of a clear head, oddly enough, was William, Henry's only legitimate heir, and he got into a boat and tried to make it but ended up turning back for his half-sister and being literally drowned by the rest of the bastards. When the captain, who had not drowned, surfaced and realised the heir to the throne had died on his watch, he decided it wasn't worth it and just let himself drown. Better that than face the furious and grief-stricken king.

And so this left a gap in the market, as it were. The removal of William left Henry with only one legitimate heir, even if she was a woman.

Matilda (1102 - 1141)

Born into, as we have seen above, something of a time of turmoil as her father fought her uncles, Matilda did not know very much about happy families. She now had one uncle who had been killed, possibly by (yes, yes, eminent historians! I said possibly!) or at the behest of her father, another off fighting in Jerusalem who might very well want the crown back when he again sighted the shores of Old Blighty, and a mother who was from the royal family of England's age-old enemy, bonny Scotland. Not only that, but daddy could most definitely not keep it in his pants, and while she only had one legitimate sibling, a brother, she had no less than twenty-two bastard brothers and sisters. Talk about an extended family! As if this wasn't enough to deal with, she was barely seven or eight years old when the lecherous old king of Germany, another Henry, decided he'd have her as his wife. Let's see what age he was at this time. We're talking 1109 here, so then: born in either 1081 or 1086, this makes him at best (assuming the latter date to be the correct one) twenty-three years old. Well okay, not too old, but he sure did like them young then, didn't he? Matilda began her voyage to Germany in 1110, her dad chuffed at the marriage proposal, as it would strengthen his weak claim on the English throne and make Germany his ally. Matilda? What had she to do with it?

So Matilda became Queen of Germany, but in fairness she was too young to be married, even for the decadent Middle Ages, so Henry had to take cold showers (and probably mistresses and servant girls) for another four years, before his new bride was ready to be porked. Henry and Matilda were married in 1114, which still only makes her about eleven, but that's the twelfth century for you! I'm actually surprised His Majesty waited. Two years after their marriage Henry, with Matilda at his side, marched into Italy to sort out the pope, with whom he had a bone to pick, the guy having excommunicated him and all. Looks like popes just didn't like kings named Henry! Nevertheless, excommunicating a king is one thing, taking on his army is another, and like the big girl's blouse he was, the hilariously-named Paschal II legged it over the mountains at the approach of the Germany army, leaving his successor, Gregory VIII, to crown Henry as Holy Roman Emperor and Matilda as Holy Roman Empress.

"That'll do for me," grinned Henry, but unfortunately it would not. Do, that is. See, the thing is, our man Gregory VIII, then a mere papal envoy known as Maurice Bourdin, had also been excommunicated by his boss, and further, would be deposed and imprisoned by his successor, making the whole coronation thing a little shaky to say the least. Never one to let ambiguity get in the way though, both Henry and Matilda continued to use these titles, even if they may no longer have been seen as official. What happens in Rome stays in Rome, ja? Henry had to return to Germany in 1118, as the natives were getting restless, and Matilda ruled over Rome in his absence. He wasn't to be long for his world though, suffering from cancer and succumbing to it in 1125. I guess Matilda didn't have too many friends in the fatherland, as the local bishop convinced her to give up her claim to the throne, being childless and therefore unable to act as regent (for some reason I don't understand) and promptly handed the crown to Henry's enemy, Lothar of Supplinburg, who said ta very much mate, and kicked Matilda out of Germany. She stuffed all her jewels in a bag, also cramming in two of her late husband's favourite crowns and the Hand of St. James the Apostle (never know when you're going to need a hand. Sorry.) and bailed for England.

The twelfth century was not a good time to be a woman. It would take another four hundred years before England would accept one as their ruler, and they sure weren't in the mood to do so here. Despite being Henry's only remaining progeny from his marriage, Matilda had no real claim to the throne of England in the eyes of the - male-dominated - nobility of the country, and through Henry had bastards for all occasions running around the country, more bastards than you could count almost, nearly all of them were rebelling or fighting against him in one way or another. He wasn't about to crown one his successor, so his next plan was to do what any self-respecting heirless king would, and marry again, hoping to gain a son. Not only did his new wife fail to come up with an heir, she hadn't even the decency to give him a daughter, useless as that would have been. Back to the drawing board for our king in a quandary.

The best thing he could come up with was to get the widowed daughter back on the horse, so to speak, and see if she couldn't come up with a handy heir to his kingdom. To that end he had her marry Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. In theory, he could have married her off to any of a number of princes - Matilda was said to be quite beautiful, and still young and well able to bear children at this point - but like most kings, while he needed an heir he also planned strategically, trying to secure alliances that would consolidate his power in Normandy, and Geoffrey was his man for this. There were however several problems here, not least of which being the Count's tender age, a mere lad of thirteen when he was wed to the twenty-five-year-old Matilda, whom he must have looked upon as very old indeed. Matilda wasn't happy either; a count is a hell of a step down from a king, and miles from an empress, and remember, she was at this time the Holy Roman Empress, so she was being asked - ordered, commanded - to marry way below her status.

Add into this the fact that she didn't particularly care for Geoffrey either, and it's not that surprising that soon after the marriage she didn't want, she told her new husband "See ya! Wouldn't want to be ya! I'm for home!" And promptly returned to Normandy, leaving Geoffrey to sort through the CDs and DVDs possibly to work out who owned what. In 1131 they got back together, probably with a lot of urging/commanding/pleading/bribery from dear old dad, and to his immense joy his troublesome daughter finally popped a son out, a baby who would go on to become  Henry II, first of the Plantagenet Kings of England. About fucking time, probably thought Henry, and sat back to enjoy his last few years as king, the succession now assured. A year later she was pregnant again, though this time the birth was much tougher and in fact she came so close to death that she and her father argued about where she would be buried. Come on now: what father hasn't had that conversation with his dying daughter? We've all been there.

Anyway, Geoffrey was born and luckily Matilda survived. Henry now had two heirs, or if you prefer, and yes I'm going to do it, just see if I don't, an heir and a spare. Whether the birth of their children had brought them closer together, or whether Geoffrey just fancied his own arse on the throne of England, the two fell out with Henry and Geoffrey demanded that the king recognise Matilda as his successor, to which Henry said, "Ask me arse. I know what your game is mate: you want to take my throne while I'm still alive. Well, over my dead body you do." It's possible his son-in-law shrugged "Yeah, that's the idea," but Henry would not be swayed, and as a consequence, when rebels rose against him in Normandy, Geoffrey and Matilda put their own armies at their disposal, possibly trying to kill or dethrone daddy. When Henry unexpectedly died in 1135, the husband and wife saw their chance, and pressed their advantage.

Enter Stephen, fated to go down in history as one of England's worst kings

[Trollheart]

Stephen (1092 or 1096 - 1154)

Known as Stephen of Blois, he was a Frenchman, born to the daughter of our man William the Conqueror, and so with possibly a stronger claim to the throne of England than Matilda possessed. You may recall he was one of the few with the foresight to say "No thanks, this cruise is looking too boozy for me!" and step off the ill-fated White Ship, thereby saving his life and remaining as one of those with the best legitimate claim to the English crown. Ah. According to another account his decision not to be aboard the White Ship was a little more prosaic and less noble; he was suffering from a case of the runs. Well, if so, his decision turned out not to be a shit one. Sorry. Anyway, not about to waste his heritage, when he heard Henry had popped his clogs, Stephen thought "Oh to see the green shores of England again", or something, possibly ignoring the fact that he had never seen the shores of England, green or otherwise, in his life. But sure that wasn't going to stop him. There was a throne going begging and as far as he and his mother were concerned, it had his name on it.

See, the thing about Henry was that he was generally not considered a good or well-liked king, and there may have in fact been few who mourned his passing. Witness the explosion of unrest and in-fighting amongst his many progeny, most of which were, quite literally, bastards. Whether he had instilled this lack of common familial feeling in his sons and daughters, or whether he had angered them by not being there for things like First Holy Communions and birthdays, or indeed whether it was just that none of them liked him, Henry was not a popular dad, and this lack of regard extended well outside his rather large and mostly illegitimate family. The flags may have been at half-mast when he breathed his last, but it was probably only for show. Inside, and in private - or even public perhaps - many may have been glad to have seen the back of the old bastard.

Stephen could not have been more different. A pious, noble man, he was one of the guys, sitting with his own men and laughing and drinking with them, and even his people liked him. He was very popular, and a very competent ruler too. He wasn't a king in Normandy, but a noble, and also well in with the Church, which always helps. Making his way to London, Stephen was proclaimed king in 1135. Just to make things even more confusing, Stephen's wife was also named Matilda (not this again!), so technically there would be two Queen Matildas, as we will see. Whatever else  can be said about her though, the Matilda we're talking about, Henry's daughter, must have been one tough woman. While campaigning around Normandy with Geoffrey they clearly found time to get it on - again - and she was pregnant with her third child, another boy, whom she gave birth to (thankfully sans the complications and near-death experience of her second-born) in 1136.

Stephen left his coat on the English throne in 1137 so that nobody would sit on it while he was gone, and returned to Normandy to take on Matilda (the other one) and her husband. However as ever, slightly hilarious history intervened to thwart him. His Norman nobles, who thought little of the Flemish mercenaries the king had signed up to help him, decided they didn't much fancy travelling and fighting alongside them: they'd much rather fight with them, and so they did, the two sides of his army duking it out in a crazy mini-civil war, while Stephen may or may not have pleaded "Come on, guys! Can't we all just get along?" They couldn't though, and King Stephen remarked "Fuck this! I'm off back to England!" And off he fucked.

Things, however, did not get any better for him once he landed on Old Blighty, as Matilda's uncle, King David I of Scotland, seized the chance to attack the northern territories of Carlisle and Newcaste, necessitating the English king's crossing the border with an army and asking David if he wouldn't mind awfully going back to where he came from, to which David shrugged "Aye, sure. I was only fashin' anyroad!" And off he fucked back to Scotland, leaving Stephen to breathe a sigh of relief and head southwards again. But not for long. The Welsh, seeing the Scots rise, thought we can do that too, and so they did, and Stephen was off fighting again, putting down revolts and rebellions like there was no tomorrow.

Time for a bastard to enter the fray.

Robert of Gloucester, one of the many illegitimate progeny of the oversexed late King Henry, rebelled against Stephen, being, as he was, technically Matilda's half-brother. His rebellion caused everything to kick off: a civil war in Kent, the re-invasion of Normandy by Geoffrey, and sure David thought why not get in on the action too, and re-invaded the north of England. Stephen must have thought "Suffering Jesus! Am I to be allowed no fucking peace?" This was a period of three years during which everyone seemed to want to fight, rebel against or take his crown, and in 1139 Matilda, having failed to convince the Pope to legitimise her claim, decided to take the direct route and just take the throne by force. She landed in the suspiciously-French-sounding Arundel, in West Sussex, in the summer, though in the company not of Geoffrey but of Robert of Gloucester. Seems her hubby had decided "You're all right, thanks, I'm happy here. But, you know, bon chance and all that bollocks." Yeah, he stayed in France.

Seems a bit odd to me that Matilda and Robert only brought 140 men with them (well, it says 140 knights; maybe there were other soldiers?) - when Henry II landed in Ireland his army numbered in the thousands, and 140 men can hardly have been enough to oppose Stephen on his home ground. I expect they were looking for support from the Norman lords in England. Matilda's mother was there, and she helped them, though Stephen seems to have quickly besieged her castle and taken her prisoner, later letting her go with a firm admonishment not to do it again, possibly missing the raspberry she blew at him behind his back. While he set about pursuing Robert, whom he no doubt considered the more dangerous enemy (what threat, after all, could a mere woman pose to a king and his army?) she settled in Gloucester and began making alliances, and plans. Irked to discover she was not just buggering off to a nunnery or sitting at home doing needlework, Stephen attacked her again, meaning to teach her a proper lesson this time.

However, he was the one who was taught the lesson.

New ally of Matilda, or at least enemy of Stephen, which amounted to the same thing, Ranulf of Chester joined Robert and together they took on Stephen's forces at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, defeated the king's forces and took Stephen prisoner, reversing the roles as he was now brought to Matilda's castle and incarcerated at Bristol. Matilda now began to make plans to have herself declared queen. Naturally, this as always involved bribes, promises, threats and the odd round of excommunications before everyone was happy, and even Stephen shrugged and said "Fuck it, let the bitch have the crown. It's been nothing but trouble to me since I put it on. Should have stayed in Normandy. They know how to treat a ruler there!"

On April 7 1141 Matilda was crowned Queen of England, though she assumed the title "Lady of England and Normandy" before she was actually crowned. This never happened though, as she was chased from London (where her coronation was to take place) by supporters loyal to Stephen, while back in la belle France Geoffrey folded his newspaper (yes I know), glanced at the clock (I KNOW!) and stretched and yawned. "Time for another invasion of Normandy, methinks!" he grinned, and set about fitting action to word. His successes then reverberated back through England, as supporters of Stephen began to see which way the wind from across the Channel was blowing, and thought of their own skin. Matilda's power grew as Stephen's waned. But if there's one thing you can say about military alliances, it's that they are fragile, and fluid. Two things. If there are two things you can say about military alliances, it's that they are fragile, fluid and likely to change. Three things. If there are three things you can say about military alliances, it's that they are fragile, fluid and likely to change. And affect the whole balance of power. Four things. Among the things you can say... you get the idea.

Having made an alliance with Henry of Blois, Stephen's brother, Matilda fell out with him and she and Robert besieged his castle at Winchester. Stephen's wife, the other Matilda (also known at this time still as Queen Matilda, to add to the confusion) took her chance and charged in for hubby's glory, and battle was joined. In what became known as the Rout of Winchester, Matilda was roundly defeated but escaped, leaving Robert to be captured and eventually exchanged for Stephen. Released, Stephen made sure he was re-crowned and so essentially, although never entirely legitimate, Matilda's reign as Queen of England lasted a mere eight months, making hers one of the shortest reigns in English history, though not the shortest. It's said that it was believed (whether true or just anti-Matilda propaganda) that during his imprisonment Stephen had been held in very poor conditions, and that as a result he had become so sick that it was feared he might die. As he hovered on the brink of death, sympathies began to turn back towards him and his following saw a resurgence.

Matilda had made her court in Oxford, and perhaps naively had sent Robert to fetch Geoffrey, hoping her husband would reinforce her relatively small and inexperienced army. Stephen, meanwhile, managed to convince Ranulf of Chester to throw his lot in with him again, and Ranulf deserted Matilda's cause. This left the Empress with a very small force against Stephen's more than 1,000, and he easily took the town and besieged Matilda's castle. Did a lot of besieging in those days, they did: besiege this, besiege that - couldn't move with a siege going on somewhere. Two months into the siege Robert returned, with about 700 men but no Geoffrey, who had again decided France was where it was at, and bugger his wife, who had never understood him anyway.

As the army besieging the castle got tired and bored, and careless - or possibly helped her, betraying their king, who knows? - Matilda managed to escape from Oxford with four knights, shocking and enraging a chronicler of the time, almost an apologist for Stephen, who fumed "I have never read of another woman so luckily rescued from so many mortal foes and from the threat of dangers so great: the truth being that she went from the castle of Arundel uninjured through the midst of her enemies; she escaped unscathed from the midst of the Londoners when they were assailing her, and her only, in mighty wrath; then stole away alone, in wondrous fashion, from the rout of Winchester, when almost all her men were cut off; and then, when she left besieged Oxford, she came away safe and sound?"

Like a dark ages Houdini, Matilda was gone again, slipped through the king's fingers like sand, literally, according to some chroniclers (not the one above) walking on water, though this has been taken to mean the Thames was frozen so she could use it as a path to escape, and wearing a white cloak as camouflage against the whiteness of the recently-fallen snow.

Having slipped through her enemy's fingers, Matilda made Wiltshire her new capital, at the castle at Devizes which had been confiscated by Stephen previously. Pulling in those old reliables, the fractious Flemish mercenaries, she set about securing the county under her rule. With Robert at her side again and the support of various nobles whose land Stephen had snaffled, she built up a sizeable court and settled down to wait the King out. Stalemate, or as we might say today, Mexican standoff. In England, obviously. Not Mexico. Which wasn't even discovered at this point. But you get the idea. She then decided to play Stephen at his own game, and besieged him in Wilton Castle in Herefordshire. This led to a battle as Stephen, knowing how serious a siege can be - he had done his share of besieging, after all - decided fuck this waiting around, I'm going for it, and out he broke. In the ensuing Battle of Wilton he was defeated, his castle burned, but he managed to become a dot on the horizon. One for Matilda and her forces. Girl power!

Things began to go slightly to shit for the king, as East Anglia rose up, followed by the yo-yo earl of Chester, Ranulf, who, like most nobles, didn't really care too much about promises or treaties or agreements, and went where the wind was blowing. At the moment, it was blowing slightly in Matilda's direction, so he headed that way. Stephen now had close to a full-blown rebellion on his hands, while in France  Geoffrey hadn't been idle, recognised by the end of the year as Duke of Normandy by the king, Louis VII. Despite this, things weren't all sweetness and light for the Empress either.

One of her best military commanders, Miles of Gloucester (no, not Miles TO Gloucester, though if he had been Miles II that would have been funny... okay, okay, I'll get on with it) fell victim to one of the most popular deaths for young virile men in 12th century England, the hunt. Whether he was done in or it was really an accident I don't know, but there's probably a reason men about to be married did not go on a stag. Anyway, his loss weakened Matilda's position, and then Stephen defeated Geoffrey (no, another one) of Mandeville, who had kicked off the East Anglian trouble, and sued for terms. Neither were prepared to compromise, and so the stalemate continued. But it wouldn't remain so for long.

Over a period from 1145 to 1151, Matilda lost many of her commanders to the Second Crusade, as they answered God's call to knock some good old European blood-and-guts sense into those damned heretics, Robert died - peacefully, it says, which surprises me, and probably surprised him - and Brian Fitz Count, another of her big supporters, decided he also wanted to die a non-violent death, and entered a monastery. They threw him out, probably silently, but he re-entered, and when he was eventually able to explain to them that he didn't in fact want to burn their abbey down, but join up, be a brother, be a monk, they said (silently; probably signed) sure dude, why not? God needs all the monks he can get. Unfortunately God called this new monk home sooner than he had expected, and the life of Brian (sorry) came to an end in 1151.

During this time, Matilda's son decided it might be a good idea to pop over the Channel, picking up some duty-free on the way no doubt, and visit mummy. The army he brought with him though seemed put out when he explained he couldn't pay them, and when mum refused to come up with the readies ("I only gave you sixteen thousand florins last week, son! That was supposed to last you all winter! You think I'm fucking made of money, do you?") they ended up getting paid by, of all people, Stephen, who probably thought well if I pay these guys they can hardly fight against me, now can they? He was of course right, and off they all buggered back to France, to his relief. Matilda followed them the next year, 1148, possibly at least in part due to her need to talk to the Pope about demanding his castle at Devizes back. "Oi! That belongs to the Bishop of Salisbury!" Pope Eugene II had thundered when he found out she was squatting in it. "Clear off, or I'll excommunicate you into the next century!" Hmm. Careful with that ex, Eugene!

"Fuck England into a hole!" snarled Matilda, setting up her new court at Rouen, and when Geoffrey died in 1151, Henry, their son, legged it back across to England to claim his throne, an army at his back to explain in detail the thinking behind his legitimacy. He failed,  but in the end Stephen adopted him as his son, and also his successor, so when Stephen died only a year later, Henry achieved what his mother could not, and became King of England. How proud his mum must have been.

As for her, she stayed in Normandy but did poke her nose into the new King Henry II's affairs, helping him to sort out his kingdom. And that relic, the Hand of St. James? Well, you might possibly have thought she had taken it as a handy back scratcher, and maybe she did, who knows? But it ended up in the Abbey of Reading, despite attempts by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, to get it returned to Germany. He was bought off instead with, um, a big tent. Yeah. If you have a choice between a supposedly priceless and powerful relic of a saint, and a marquee, go for the tent every time.

Matilda became a very valued advisor to her son and his court, and brokered many tricky deals and arrangements, and though she counselled against Henry's invading Ireland, he went ahead and did it anyway after her death, setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to centuries of bloodshed, strife, death and really bad feeling between the English and us. See my History of Ireland journal, obviously, for more. Matilda died in 1167, and was buried at Rouen, though through the depredations, three hundred years later, of the people she had tried to rule, her bones got scattered (people do seem to love scattering bones, don't they?) and though re-located in 1684, Napoleon made sure they were messed up again in the eighteenth century until finally they were again re-interred at Rouen in 1846, seven hundred years after her death.

Although never officially crowned nor recognised, even today, as a queen of England, Matilda still took on the most powerful man of the time, the King, Stephen, and several times thwarted him, either evading capture herself, or indeed having him captured, and fought him to a standstill. Though she technically never really gave in - the war between her and Stephen sort of ground naturally to a halt, for the reasons stated above - she never sat on the English throne and is today only considered a footnote in the history of English monarchs. Nevertheless, considering the time, and the huge disadvantages of being a woman, and the enemies she faced both within and without her own power structure, immense credit must be given to her as surely one of the most powerful, and successful, women in twelfth-century England.

Stephen, for his part, is known as one of England's worst kings, which I have to admit is a claim I find hard to support. Sure, he plunged all of his kingdom into its first civil war, and sure, he was at times fought to a standstill - and indeed, captured and imprisoned - by a mere woman, but it's not like he torched his subjects (Bloody Mary, I'm looking at you!) or dissolved the monasteries (Henry) or even supposedly killed two princes in the Tower of London (Richard III, stand up), so was he any worse than kings that came before or after him, and why is he so hated? I shall endeavour to find out.

[Trollheart]

Worst. King. Ever?

Okay, well first off he's accused of being an usurper. The English people, speaking generally, don't like usurpers and have even been known, on occasion, to frown on them. But was he? Didn't we read that Henry had made him his heir originally, and for this express purpose had married him to one of many, many Matildas? He only changed his mind then when the other big Matilda in the story, the German Empress, became a widow, and his focus shifted to her. Did he make his original intention known? If not, does it then matter if he had considered Stephen as the next king? And if he did, was not then Stephen simply doing what his (Henry's) own father, William the Conqueror had done, and making sure a promise was kept? Stephen must have felt that the throne was his, and if he didn't know already that he had figured in the late King Henry's plans for the succession, it's sort of an odd coincidence that he decided to try to take the throne.

Of course, I suppose anyone who was in any way related to the dead king would at that time have been trying to stake their claim, as it were, but Henry holds the historical record for most bastards produced in one life, and why were not all of them pushing to be made king? You'd have to say Stephen's being a natural nephew of the king was to his advantage over them, the bunch of bastards, but still: not one challenged his claim? Did that not then make him the rightful heir? Is it because his reign was contested? Nah, that happened before, and sure in living memory for these people - did not William Rufus and Robert clash, and then Robert and Henry? Not for all that long I guess but still, kings gonna king. But Stephen was opposed - and temporarily defeated - by a woman, so maybe that's a black mark against him.

His reign has been seen as "incompetent" and "reckless", and there's a lot of evidence to support the claim that this guy just did not know what he was doing, and often ignored or went against the advice of his people, a situation that often as not landed him in trouble. Maybe it's because he was a Frenchman, with no real claim, in English eyes, to the throne of England? But then so was William the Conqueror. Hmm. Perhaps it might be fair to balance out this "worst king in English history" (whom I had always taken to be the villainous King John, but maybe I just watched too much Robin Hood?) with some accounts of his bravery and determination. Like the time he was captured just outside Lincoln in 1141. Perhaps he knew the game was up, but had decided that if he was going down, he would take as many of Matilda's men with him as he could, and waded into the crowd, swinging first a broadsword and then, when that broke, a Viking axe. Must have cut quite an impressive figure. Unfortunately he was taken out by a mere stone, and captured. But at least he made a fight of it.


(How exactly do you break a fucking broadsword??)

Let's do him a little credit if we can, and look at one of the major battles he won. Odd enough title for it, but it's one of the ones that those chroniclers who had a bias in his favour remember as one of his best. Let's also not forget that writers and chroniclers in the Middle Ages, as in any time really, tended to write their accounts according to where their loyalties lay, so that Norman writers would naturally see the Saxons as brutish thuggish savages or whatever, while anyone writing for the previous rulers of England would portray the Normans as invaders, cruel and oppressive, and, worst and most damning of all, French. But the ones who supported Stephen and called him a saviour (where others called him a fool) lauded him for his victory at this battle, and possibly too because it was against the age-old enemy, Scotland.

The Battle of the Standard

Scotland was at this time ruled over by David I, whose daughter, you may remember (and you bloody should as she was another Matilda!) married Henry I, cementing the relationship between the two kingdoms, and even allowing the English king to call on the Scottish when those pesky Welsh needed reminding who was boss. But both his daughter and her husband were now dead, and David owed no allegiance to  the upstart frog who was now king. In fact, he had already sworn to support the claim of the late Henry's daughter Matilda, so he was dead against Stephen, and went to war against him. A truce was reached when Stephen made David's son Henry (another one, yes, what of it? I told you these people were less than original in their choice of names) the Earl of Huntingdon, but when he then later demanded that he be made earl of all Northumberland, Stephen thought that was a bridge too far and they squared up again.

English castles on the Scottish border must always have been worried about invasion from the north, being the first in the line of fire, and this time was no exception. Norham Castle fell quickly, but Wark-on-Tweed was a tougher proposition, requiring that staple of castle warfare, the siege. Demonstrating the bias I spoke about, Norman chroniclers evinced shock as David really did a Harry-the-South-lite as he plunged into English territory, nowhere near as much a raving madman as had been their hero and poster boy, William the Conqueror, sixty-odd years ago. I suppose in fairness, even his apologists did denounce William for that atrocity, as we saw, but this guy certainly thought the Scots were little more than wild beasts. Well, what goes around comes around, eh?

"an execrable army, more atrocious than the pagans, neither fearing God nor regarding man, spread desolation over the whole province and slaughtered everywhere people of either sex, of every age and rank, destroying, pillaging and burning towns, churches and houses. Then (horrible to relate) they carried off, like so much booty, the noble matrons and chaste virgins, together with other women. These naked, fettered, herded together; by whips and thongs they drove before them, goading them with their spears and other weapons. This took place in other wars, but in this to a far greater extent."

How much of this is hyperbole, or exaggeration, is of course hard to say. We are dealing here with a Norman chronicler who surely saw the "uncouth" Scots as indeed pagans and wild men, and Richard of Hexam, our scribe here, would have wanted to have painted the enemy in the worst, most atrocious and lurid light possible. He then goes on to bemoan the fate of those hostages, slaves as he wails: "For the sick on their couches, women pregnant and in childbed, infants in the womb, innocents at the breast, or on the mother's knee, with the mothers themselves, decrepit old men and worn-out old women, and persons debilitated from whatever cause, wherever they met with them, they put to the edge of the sword, and transfixed with their spears; and by how much more horrible a death they could dispatch them, so much the more did they rejoice."

This account, and the remembrance of it, did however help Walter Espec when he massed his troops before the battle, calling on his men to "Remember what they did in the lands across the Tyne, and hope for nothing gentler if the Scots conquer. I am silent about the slaughter, the rapine, the fires that the enemy employed in something like a human way. I would tell such acts as no stories tell and no histories relate of the fiercest tyrants. I would tell them, I say, if words did not fail before such horror, or the listener flee. They spared no age, rank or sex. The high born, boys as well as girls were led into captivity."

So I guess harrying can be a two-edged sword, then. Stephen attacked David but once the Scottish king was on his home turf he wasn't about to be defeated, and Stephen still had  Robert of Gloucester causing trouble in Kent while Geoffrey of Anjou was making life hard for him across the Channel,  and soon Matilda would come into the picture too, so off he went back down south. David, of course, took the opportunity to ride that direction himself, and had made it all the way to Yorkshire by July of 1138. Stephen being otherwise engaged, his nobles and bishops and what-have-you all got ready to defend England against the Scottish king. Ah, I see now why it was called the Battle of the Standard.

Seems it was a foggy day (fog on the Yorkshire moors? You jest, sir!) and the army couldn't really be seen too well, all the knights having dismounted as they awaited the arrival of David's army. But what could be seen was the battle standard (presumably Stephen's royal standard?); David had intended to take the English by surprise, using the mist as cover, but I think it's accepted that the enemy knew they were on the way. The Scots had the high ground, which must have been seen as being to their advantage. Quite why the English hadn't already claimed this is a mystery, but there you go. The Scottish knights did not dismount, and the king's son, the Earl of Huntingdon, was with his father in the ranks. Among the English/Normans, it seems the Archbishop of York, Thurstan of Bayeux (also known as "Lieutenant of the North") - himself having served under both previous Kings, William Rufus and Henry, and pushing it a little at seventy years old, and Walter Espec, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, were among the leaders.

As so often happens, even in the presence of the king himself, arguments broke out among the Scots as to who would have the honour of being the first to charge. I mean, honestly! It sounds like they were bickering over who would be the first to have the opportunity of dying! I'm for staying safely behind at the rear, who's with me? It has to stand as something of an indictment of King David that such internal conflict was allowed to break out, especially as they faced their enemy. Didn't they think they had bigger, more important issues to discuss? But it seems he gave in, perhaps to preserve the peace, oxymoron though that may sound, as they faced a large English army and prepared to charge.

" And Alan de Percy, base-born son of the great Alan – a most vigorous knight, and in military matters highly distinguished – took these words ill; and turning to the earl he said, 'A great word hast thou spoken, and one which for thy life thou canst not make good this day.' Then the king, restraining both, lest a disturbance should suddenly arise out of this altercation, yielded to the will of the Galwegians."

The Galwegians, by the way, for any Irish readers, were not men from Galway, but from Galloway, an area of Scotland. Just wanted to clear that up. Back to the battle. Which had yet to begin. Because, as we all know, after the posturing and the threatening and the provocative waving of the nether regions at the enemy comes... the speeches. Oh yes. Can't have a good battle without a decent speech before it. No army worth its salt charges into combat without first yelling "Speech! Speech!" or something, and the commander or one of his general coughing and shouting "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking" to general hooting, roaring, banging of various weapons on shields, and horses' shying.

It was, according to one chronicler (and we won't dispute that, because in the end who cares?) our old friend Walter Espec, the High Sheriff - one assumes this was his title, not that he had dined on magic mushrooms or smoked opium before the battle - who made the speech, an extract from which we have already heard. But, like the best - and worst - speeches, it went on and on and the army on the other side must have rolled their eyes and snarled "Stupid bloody sassenachs! Gang on wi'it, why don't ye?" or words to that effect. But they would have to wait, because the speech was, as I say, a long one.

And here it is.

"Most illustrious nobles of England, Normans by birth, ... consider who you are, and against whom, and where it is, you are waging war; for then no one shall with impunity resist your prowess. Bold France, taught by experience, has quailed beneath your valour, fierce England, led captive, has submitted to you; rich Apulia, on having you for her masters, has flourished once again; Jerusalem so famed, and illustrious Antioch, have bowed themselves before you; and now Scotland, which of right is subject to you,[38] attempts to show resistance, displaying a temerity not warranted by her arms, more fitted indeed for rioting than for battle. These are people, in fact, who have no knowledge of military matters, no skill in fighting, no moderation in ruling. There is no room then left for fear, but rather for shame, that those whom we have always sought on their own soil and overcome ..have ...come flocking into our country."[37]This .. has been brought about by Divine Providence; in order that those who have in this country violated the temples of God, stained the altars with blood, slain his priests, spared neither children nor pregnant women, may on the same spot receive the condign punishment of their crimes; and this most just resolve of the Divine will, God will this day put in execution by means of your hands. Arouse your spirits then, ye civilized warriors, and, firmly relying on the valour of your country, nay, rather on the presence of God, arise against these most unrighteous foes"[37]And let not their rashness move you, because so many insignia of your valour cause no alarm to them. They know not how to arm themselves for battle; whereas you, during the time of peace, prepare yourselves for war, in order that in battle you may not experience the doubtful contingencies of warfare. Cover your heads then with the helmet, your breasts with the coat of mail, your legs with the greaves, and your bodies with the shield, that so the foeman may not find where to strike at you, on seeing you thus surrounded on every side with iron."[37]it is not so much the numbers of the many as the valour of the few that gains the battle. For a multitude unused to discipline is a hindrance to itself, when successful, in completing the victory, when routed, in taking to flight. Besides your forefathers, when but few in number, have many a time conquered multitudes; what then is the natural consequence of the glories of your ancestry, your constant exercises, your military discipline, but that though fewer in number, you should overcome multitudes?"


Okay, it's not Shakespeare exactly, but the general gist I get from this rather too-long speech of encouragement is: these bastards don't even have armour, and they're lawless, wild heathen who don't know their place. We are well protected, so fuck them and kill them, not necessarily in that order!"

Finally, to possibly everyone's relief, the battle charge was sounded, and the two armies charged at each other. Having forced King David to allow them the honour of attacking first, the Galwegans made a real mess of it, finding their own, weaker lances far from proof against the heavily-armoured Normans, and, seeming to think they were invulnerable to arrows, charged on with short sword to end up, as the Norman chronicler, Ailred of Rievaulx put it, "like a hedgehog with its quill, so would you see a Galwegian bristling all round with arrows, and nonetheless brandishing his sword, and in blind madness rushing forward now smite a foe, now lash the air with useless strokes. " As the battle turned against them, the Scottish king was hurried away by his retainers but his son charged into the Norman lines, scattering them and doing for the horse-holders (which one has to assume were unarmed men holding the mounts of the now-on-foot knights, and that doesn't seem quite cricket, now does it?) but when a call went up that David had been killed (which he had not, but who checks for proof of life in the heat of a battle?) the English surged forward.

The main advantage the Normans had was, for once, not their cavalry, but, equally useful, their armour. Most of the Scots (lending credence to Espec's claims of their being barbarians) were unarmoured, some unclothed at all, as Scots had been known to rush naked into battle, supposedly. But a naked or poorly-armoured man will always fail against a heavily-armoured one, and it seems that for the Scots, taking down the Normans was almost like trying to knock over heavy bowling pins with a sewing needle; they were just immovable and all but invulnerable in what Khal Drogo once called "their iron suits". Inevitably, this told, and the Scots were soon on the run.

It was a total rout. The Battle of the Standard had lasted a mere three-odd hours, and casualty reports vary between 10,000 and 12,000, all on the side of the Scottish, with very few Normans killed or even injured. Reports speak of panicked Scottish knights (the few Normans who were with David, around twenty) throwing away their armour in an attempt to get away, of men falling into rivers and drowning, of others escaping through woods and of general mayhem breaking out as the army of King David broke and scattered.

Hey! Hold on there just a moment, Trollheart me old mate! You put this forward as an example of King Stephen being a good ruler, and then he wasn't even at the fucking battle? Yeah, yeah, I know, but there's method in my - um, the thing about that is - well, I have a - oh okay! It's another case of me not reading the full article before writing about it. I thought he was - well, hold on - I can do this - they were his armies, after all. It's not as if they were independent of him or working against him, or without his orders. He was the mastermind behind the battle and, um, they were following his instructions and, well, I'm sure he was keeping in close contact - ah, riders, messengers ... what? No, no: you're right there. Not in three hours, no. Ah look, what do you want from me? Allow me to try to retain one tiny shred of whatever miniscule amount of dignity remains to me, huh? Is that too much to ask?[/i]

[Trollheart]

Let's see if I can find another example. Yes, this time he will be present. If I can find one, that is. Okay here's one. In 1140 he attacked the rebel bishop Nigel of Ely on the island that bore his name in the East Anglian fenlands. This kind of marshy ground is usually hard to march an army across, being, you know, marshy and all, and knights having a distressing tendency to sink into bogs and swamps and kind of not return. So our bishop thought he was safe, and possibly gave thanks to God for making him such a clever clogs. Stephen, however, was already making plans for Nigel (sorry) and had a trick up his sleeve, and it involved taking a bunch of boats (presumably, though it doesn't say, smaller, rowboat type things, rather than anything like warships, which would have been damn heavy) into the fens and had them lashed together to create a sort of makeshift walkway, across which his army trotted and nicked the bishop, perhaps in mid-devotion. Drat! Thought Nigel. Foiled again! etc. And had it away on his holy toes to Gloucester, leaving his castle and lands in the hand of the king, perhaps wondering if somewhere like the Isle of Wight might have been a better place to make his stand?

Credit must be given, too, to the part Matilda played in Stephen's campaigns. That's the one he was married to, not the one he was fighting. In order to identify which we're talking about, I'll call her Queen Matilda and the other one Empress Matilda. Anyway, Queen Matilda marshalled support for her husband after he had been captured by Empress Matilda, and indeed it was she who led the resistance in London that caused the empress to have to flee the capital, sans crown, and therefore never manage to be actual Queen of England, as related earlier. With cries of, possibly, "that's my fucking husband's crown, you bitch, and if you think you're putting it on your fat ugly German square head, you've got another think coming!" she chased the would-be-first-ever Queen of England out of London, where Empress Matilda had to take refuge in Exeter. Queen Matilda gathered Stephen's nobles and kept them together, even winning over Henry, Stephen's brother, who had been supporting the Empress Matilda. And of course the Queen secured the release of her husband at the Rout of Winchester, as already detailed.

Stephen, however, came perilously close to not only being the first king to be captured and imprisoned by a rival claimant (this would of course happen a lot more in the future, particularly with the Tudors and during the Wars of the Roses, but for this time it was a stunning setback that had not, so far as I can see, occurred previously) but to be captured twice. The second time he was in fact recovering from an illness - possibly due to the conditions of his incarceration, which were reported to have been harsh - which had led to rumours he was dying, and only saved from being taken twice by Empress Matilda's forces by the courage of his steward, William Martel, who covered for him as he escaped. Stephen does seem to have been though, at this time, kind of stumbling from crisis to crisis, and it's becoming increasingly hard to defend the general view historians have of him as one of England's worst and most incompetent kings.

Shortly afterwards, having made his narrow escape (and possibly cheated death too) the king seems to have decided that he hadn't enough enemies to fight, and provoked the Earl of Essex, who was no fan of his, and who accordingly joined the rebellion against him. Hardly a smart move, as Stephen was already fighting on several fronts. What was it Londo said in Babylon 5? "Only a fool fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Fools fights a war on seven fronts!" You get the idea. Not a good idea to keep making enemies, especially of those who weren't crazy about you in the first place.

Tell you what: let's do a quick headcount of the enemies ranged against Stephen at this point. First we have Ranulf of Chester, who was not exactly pleased that the king had given away so much of the territory in the north to one powerful family, the Beaumonts, and had allied himself variously with Empress Matilda and Prince Henry of Scotland. So that was two more: the Empress of course, and the son of the King of Scotland. Oh, and the King of Scotland, too, obviously, so David made four. Then there was Robert of Gloucester, who was also an ally of Empress Matilda, so five and counting, and this is only in England. Across the Channel we had Geoffrey of Anjou, Empress Matilda's husband, who was busily invading and re-invading Stephen's lands in Normandy, and of course, till he finally turned and supported him, his own brother, Henry of Blois. So what's that now? Seven? Looks like Stephen may have had a greater claim to that throne Londo Mollari spoke of than that of England! And now he was adding an eighth!

Oh, and there was Miles of Gloucester too, though Stephen had a late Christmas present when the guy's earl Miles (geddit? Shut up) ran out and he fell victim to what was almost as common as dying from natural causes in the Middle Ages, dying from causes of the hunt. So nine became eight, though you could hardly call it a real reduction in enemies, could you? Things got a little brighter for the royal side when Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Earl of Essex, latest of his enemies, went and got himself killed in battle the following year, then Stephen got cocky as the wars began to turn in his favour. Presented with a chance to bring Ranulf of Chester to his side, he instead tricked him, but the earl escaped and of course stayed on the empress's side. It was in fact the same trick he had used on de Mandeville, summoning him to court and then arresting him, so fool me once, shame on - well, you know how it goes, and so did Ranulf, and he did go, right back to the opposition.

Luckily for Stephen, things began to peter out soon afterwards. Robert of Gloucester died in his sleep, Empress Matilda fucked off back to France, and Pope Eugene III called for a Second Crusade, utilising the old Christian warcry of "If at first thou dost not prevail, endeavour, endeavour, endeavour to prevail once more" or something. This had the effect of many Norman nobles answering the call of Christ to go kill heathens, and if they happened to get filthy rich in the process, well, it was all part of God's plan, wasn't it? It certainly was part of theirs, and Waleran of Beaumont certainly saw where the gold glittered brightest, and headed off for the Holy Land. That was kind of it then. There was no decisive victory, really - not any victory to speak of - more a case, it seems, of everyone shrugging, looking at each other and then sidling off muttering, going their separate ways. Apart from a half-hearted and sort of distracted attempt at invasion of England by the man who would in fact become her next king, the son of Geoffrey of Anjou and the now-disenchanted-with-England Empress Matilda, Henry, which failed mostly because he hadn't got the cash to pay for it, the Anarchy stuttered to an inconclusive halt, with widespread devastation, near-bankruptcy and nobody hailing King Stephen as any kind of saviour, and he now had to devote time to that pastime that occupied every monarch, usually near the end of their reign, the question of the succession.

He needn't have bothered. Like the House of Godwin, last of the Saxon kings to rule before the Norman invasion, Henry would end up being a one-man royal line; no other member of the House of Blois would ever sit the English throne again. With the death of one son and the later rescinding of the claim of the surviving one, his line was to end with him, and the next man to sit upon the English throne would begin a dynasty that would last for over 150 years . After his abortive first invasion of England, Henry tried twice more, and eventually succeeded, as first Stephen's eldest son Eustace died, and then he himself, in 1154. Having already renounced any claim on the part of his other son, William, Stephen left Henry as the next King of England.

Here, in a very real way, the true succession of English monarchs begins. History knows them as the House of Plantagenet, or more commonly the Plantagenet Kings, and they would in time split into the opposing House of Lancaster and House of York, leading to the second English civil war, known to history as the Wars of the Roses. This period would also encompass the rise to power of a king who should never have been a king, his brother, who would seek, and mostly find, to one extent or another, fame and glory in the Holy Land, and birth the legend of the world's most famous outlaw who may or may not have lived.

[Trollheart]

Chapter VI: Under the French Heel, Part Three: Knights, Bishops and Pawns: Church or State?

As the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth (unlucky for many), one immutable fact persisted and could not be changed (that's what immutable means): the Normans were here to stay. This would not be like kicking the Romans out (which of course never happened; they left of their own free will, to defend the rapidly-crumbling empire) or seeing off the Vikings with two fingers raised in the time-honoured salute (though again, you could say they had their revenge in the shape of the Normans). No. The final invasion of England resulted in its last defeat. The green and pleasant land had been conquered, finally, and it would never shake the yoke of the occupier off.

While there would of course continue to be fierce opposition to what were still seen for over a century as the invader, this resistance would peter out eventually, and England would adjust to life under the Normans. After a while, it would be hard for anyone to remember it being any other way. Today, we take such things as castles and towns and knights and the laws brought by the Frenchmen that they seem like they have always been here, and the exploits of the revered Anglo-Saxon kings have been all but relegated to the realm of legend. One thing - among many - that the Norman occupation would do for England was to allow it to rise to become a European power. During the time of kings like Alfred the Great, Aethelbert, Aethelstan, even Cnut and various Edwards and Edgars, and others with AE in front of their names, England was very much what the title of this journal proclaims: this sceptred isle. While there may have been trade with other countries, the English had no navy, no real army and certainly had nothing to do with European, much less world politics. It was an insular place, to quote himself again, "this fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war... This little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea which serves it in the office as a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house."

Admittedly, when Shakespeare wrote this it was the Golden Age of British Exploration. Elizabeth I was on the throne, and England was very much a power. But I'm just using it to illustrate that, back before the Normans, how the Bard describes England is pretty much how it was: a self-contained, isolated fortress, standing alone, apart from the great mass of Europe, pretty much disinterested in the affairs of its neighbours, happy to be apart. That's probably very much simplifying things, of course, but it can't be denied that what the Normans brought was, if you will, a sense of cosmopolitanism, or perhaps even a sense of being part of Europe. A foreign-ness, certainly, and one of the many reasons the downtrodden Saxons hated their new overlords, but the Normans knew there was a whole big wide world out there (they would conquer, fight in or at the very least influence and shape most of it over the next few centuries) and must have looked on the English as somewhat provincial, ignorant clods.

Which is an accusation hard to refute, really. Like I say, until Hastings almost every king of England had looked to his own internal affairs, seeking to strengthen his immediate borders, make or break alliances with rivals and basically do his damndest to hold onto the throne until it had to be pried from his cold, dead hands. Apart from raids by the Vikings (and, earlier, as noted, the Romans) nothing much happened outside of England, in England, if you know what I mean. There was plenty going on, without question, but these were matters that did not concern English kings, who had enough trouble trying to make, shape and then hold their realm together. Remember, it was, at this point, a mere five hundred years since England had been more or less divided into seven states, each ruled by a separate king (you do recall the Heptarchy? Wasn't all that long ago, in historical terms) and England had really only been solidified into one nation, with one identity, for about three or four of those centuries. So in some ways, quite a young country. While nations like France and Germany had existed, in one form or another, since Roman times and before, England was kind of the baby.

Under the Normans, it would grow up, and fast. Normans, though originally descended from Vikings, were essentially French now, and thought of themselves in that way. They dressed in the French style, ate French food (if they could get it), spoke the French language and fought in the French way, by which I don't mean handing over your capital to Hitler after a three-day battle and then living as collaborators, what a terrible thing to say. Have you never heard of the French Resistance? Normans brought the idea to England of a navy - a proper one, not just a few piddling boats used to outflank the enemy by sailing down the coast if the army was too knackered to walk. They brought the idea of cavalry, and knights, and chivalry. Oh, and castles. Did I mention castles?

As a direct consequence of the Norman invasion and conquest, England has kings we remember with names like Richard the Lionheart, Henry VIII, Henry V and of course Elizabeth. Who wasn't a king, but claimed she had the heart and stomach of one. Which one, and how he lived without it, is not recorded. Not all of these were Norman, or French, but they all descended from the same family tree, all belonged to the root, and had Harold won at Hastings it's probably unlikely that any such names would have populated the throne room of England. Dynasties like the Tudors, the Stuart and the Windsors, who rule today. Incredible feats of bravery, skill at arms and often pure dumb luck such as the routing of the Spanish Armada, the establishment of the Church of England and the Gunpowder Plot, to say nothing of the Battle of Agincourt and the burning of heretics on both sides would never have taken place. In some cases, I'll grant you, history might have been better off without these events, but good, bad or repugnant they all go together to tie in as closely interwoven threads in the tapestry that is English, and later British history.

It all began with 1066, which is why every English school child knows this date, even if they struggle with others.

It would of course be remiss of me to list the accomplishments of the Normans and ignore the hardships, cruelties and injustices visited on the previous masters of England during the Middle Ages, and further. In almost a foreshadowing of what would happen across the sea in Ireland some hundreds of years later, the ruling English (Saxon) class had been entirely disenfranchised, their lands and titles taken from them and their rights trampled on. To be entirely fair, this was not, unlike in Ireland, because they refused to worship the same god, or at least, the way the conquerors wanted him to be worshipped. It was not because they were seen as heretics, or indeed because the minority occupiers feared uprisings which would topple them from power and unleash civil war across the land. No. The Normans beat down the English for two reasons: one, they were the vanquished enemy, and one does not show mercy to a foe one has beaten, at least, not if he is a Norman. But more importantly, two: they simply wanted their lands, titles, wealth and their absolute subjugation, because (and again, this is twofold) they believed them beneath them and the men who had fought for William the Conqueror, who had become King William I, had been made certain promises and expected these promises to be fulfilled. In short, they wanted to be paid for their service.

Land, castle, titles, all were taken from Anglo-Saxon lords and given to Norman nobles, lords, barons and bishops, both to reward them for supporting the new king, and to ensure that the power rested in Norman hands. Whether the innate and almost casual cruelty displayed by the Norman rulers towards their now Anglo-Saxon serfs are true or not, whether they have been exaggerated by TV and Hollywood, I honestly don't know, but we will find out as we progress through life in England under the Normans, or, to again use the overarching title of this part of the journal, England under the French Heel. My own belief is that, while perhaps every Norman soldier did not wake up every morning and think "Time to burn down another Saxon village," the overall feeling was probably that these people were almost sub-human, and that they must be ground down, kept down, crushed into the dirt, so I think it may have happened more often than it didn't. But as I say, we will see. Let's put it this way: if he did not exist, then it's unlikely the legend of Robin Hood would have grown up at this time if the Normans were basically all right, the kind of occupation force you could really get along with. Yeah: no smoke without fire, and usually from the thatch of a peasant's roof.

So we won't paint the Normans quite in the shades of black, yellow and red they may deserve, but I do feel we'll be filling in the sketch sooner than expected. Perhaps it will balance out. Easy for me to say, of course, not having had to live under such oppression, but overall, in a historical sense, I think we may probably find that the Normans did more for England than they did to it, or if you prefer, the pluses of their occupation may outweigh, or at least balance the minuses. As ever, of course, I may be talking out of my arse again. I really don't know. But I'm sure that along the way, some of the handy books I'm using will have first or second-hand accounts of how life was in the Middle Ages for ordinary English folk, and I tell you something else: I bet Robin Hood, if he existed, never wore green. A construct of Hollywood? Well, it would have made sense, I suppose, if you're going to make a forest your base, but it sounds a little trite, doesn't it? Just as bulls do not react to a red flag (being colour blind), we may find that the legends speak of the famous outlaw as wearing brown, or russet. Who knows? It's all ahead of us.

But as we have done more or less since the first kings emerged in the fragmented realms that eventually made up England, we have to trace the story of the country's evolution and history through the eyes, deeds and words of its rulers, and that brings us to a whole new regnal line, as I mentioned at the end of the last chapter. These were, of course, all French - I think I can say with some certainly that there would never be another king or queen of England who was not descended from European stock - and Norman. But the issue of William the Conqueror was now done. With the death of King Stephen in 1154 the new line of kings would come from the family of the Empress Matilda, her son, Henry, becoming the first of the Plantagenet kings.

[Trollheart]

Plantagenet comes from Geoffrey V Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and, you'll remember, husband of Matilda and more importantly father of Henry. He was the one who kept invading Normandy, to Stephen's annoyance, while his wife was trying to get her arse on the throne of England. Never particularly interested in sitting on the biggest chair in England, it's kind of ironic that his son would end up fathering an entire dynasty, but then, not like father, like son I guess. You'll also recall that it was Henry who fought against Stephen during the Anarchy and who eventually secured from the king his fealty and the promise that his own remaining son would not try to claim the throne, not even when Henry took a long holiday and left the keys to the throne room on a hook beside the gates, honest, cross me heart.

Well, basically Stephen knew that the game, for him and his line, was up. He had never really had any proper claim to the throne anyway, and Matilda, outlasting him by a decade, lived to see her son become the King of England. Hey, if you can't do it yourself, live vicariously through your kids, eh? I bet she was a real power behind the throne. As you can see above, the now-famous "three lions" that represents England came from the Plantagenet family crest, and would remain as a symbol of England to this day.


This is him. This is the guy. Although never King of England himself (and though his wife almost made it, but fell at the last fence) he did give his name to a dynasty that would last for three centuries and produce some of the most famous kings of England. Nobody seems entirely sure where the word plantagenet comes from, but certain experts on heraldry (and who am I to argue their wisdom?) seem to think it may have stemmed from a nickname given to him when he was young, due to the sprig of yellow flower he used to carry in his lapel, the French word for which is genêt though the Latin name,  planta genista seems to fit better. Anyway, basically if this is right you could generally call the entire line of kings descended from Geoffrey "the yellow flower kings". Hasn't quite got the same ring though, does it?

Because of his origins in Anjou in France, the Plantagenet Kings are also known by historians as the Angevin Kings, and just to make it even more difficult, they're split into two branches. The first is counted from where the Angevin kings still possessed their lands in Anjou, but apparently they lost them later, mostly, I think, thanks to bad old King John. After that the Angevin line is treated differently (though still called Angevin, and indeed Plantagenet), and in fact it was only Richard, Duke of York,  who took Plantagenet as his family name, and that was all the way forward in the fifteenth century. It was used retrospectively after that by the kings who came after him, and historians now call all the line up to the emergence of the Tudors the Plantagenet Kings.

Getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but just some interesting information. But to the new royal line, and as I say, this began with Henry, son of Geoffrey and Matilda. Having secured the throne of England from Stephen, he now became King Henry II.

Henry II (1133 - 1189)

The first thing that strikes me about the portrait above is that the new king looks either drunk, out of his head or uninterested, as if he's rolling his eyes. Still, that's medieval art for you. In reality, of course, Henry could not be more interested in being king. He had, after all, fought Stephen and taken (well, sort of had surrendered up to him) the throne, and he would no doubt be at least happy that people would stop referring to him by his previous names, Henry Fitzempress or Henry Curtmantle, neither of which seem very fitting for a king. He came to the throne, as I said, on the death of Stephen, in 1154, and inherited pretty much a disaster of a kingdom. Stephen and Matilda's war had all but bankrupted England, the nobility was divided and there were those pesky Saxons still to deal with, and all this before his arse even hit the throne.

But he sat on it for the first time as a young man, barely twenty-one, and was said to be bursting with energy. He had married the beautiful Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and ex-wife of the King of France, Louis VII. Grumpy that his wife had not produced an heir for him (not even a daughter!) His Majesty had the marriage annulled and Henry swooped in. This gave him further holdings in France, but again though the history of at least the early Angevin kings is very much intermingled with events in France, this is the history of England so, in so far as I can, I'm going to ignore them. So we take up the story as Henry arrives with his wife of two years in tow, on English shores to take up residence in the throne room. Incidentally, you may remember that when I wrote of her flight from Germany I noted Matilda stuffed two crowns into a bag (also the hand of Saint James, but I don't know what happened to that)? Seems her son wore one of those crowns at his coronation. Was that some unspoken sign that the reign of English kings was over? Probably not: maybe he just liked the fit.

The problem with having holdings in two countries though means you have to keep shuttling back and forth between the two, unless you have people you trust in one, or both countries. Henry therefore seems to have spent rather a lot of time in France - much more than William the Conqueror, and he appears to have been in England so short a time that he barely had time to put down rebellions before he was getting his passport stamped for the continent again. Over five of his first eight years Henry was absent, but while in England he did manage to force the Scots to hand back the northern counties they had taken as he and Stephen fought each other, which helped him secure the ever-fragile and fluid northern border, and though the Welsh were something of a tougher proposition, he eventually brought them into line, too, more or less returning the national borders to the way they were before that oik Stephen fucked everything up with his stupid Anarchy in the UK (yeah I know I've used it before).

While it would perhaps be unkind to say that Henry's reign was controlled by the two women in his life - he was certainly his own man, and a strong king by all accounts - there's no denying that neither his mother nor his wife were content with sitting at home and leaving the business of running the realm to the men. Naturally, having fought for several years against Stephen for control of England, Empress Matilda was not likely to take a back seat now that her darling son was in control, and Eleanor had ambitions to be, if not the power behind the throne, then one of the two driving it. With Henry away so often, it's probably not surprising that these two ladies made it their business to get as involved in court politics and royal policy and decision-making as they could. While few men would be likely to listen to, much less take advice or orders from a woman, the fact that one of these was a warrior empress who had battled the length and breadth of England, and also captured its previous king, would have made them more, shall we say, amenable to her suggestions. And Eleanor was a previous consort of the French king. Nothing Normans liked better than a good French king (or a bad one) - as long as he stayed the fuck out of Normandy, and their business, that is- and they would have been reluctant, at the very least, to upset him.

Mind you, Eleanor would have been quite busy squeezing out the sprogs, as Henry planted no less than eight children in her, five of which were boys, so no problem with an heir in his case. Given that she eventually turned against him and was imprisoned in 1173 - and assuming he made no furtive romantic visits to her while she was incarcerated (unlikely to the max, as he had fallen out of love with her and had a new filly to warm his bed) that means that their marriage, such as it was, lasted barely twenty years. Eight children in twenty years? Given that each pregnancy takes, duh, nine months (so really, we're talking a year per kid here) that means she must have been up the duff for eight out of her twenty year marriage. She must have been exhausted! No wonder she supported the rebellion against him. But I digress, and get ahead of myself.

As for Henry, he certainly had the stamina and seed of a king, didn't he? In addition to the eight children he gave Eleanor he fathered at least another two bastards. You'd wonder where he got the time, wouldn't you? Imagine them trying to co-ordinate their schedules! "Oh I'm ovulating, Your Majesty, on April 21. How are you fixed?" Henry looking at his diary, shaking his head. "No can do, love. I'm due in Brittany that night. How's next Thursday fortnight?" She looking surprised: "I wasn't aware you were going to be in France then," and he winking "Who said anything about going to France? Brittany is a sexy little kitchen maid I've been seeing!" And so on. Still, can't be too flippant. If he hadn't been so, well, frisky, the long line of Angevin Kings would be a whole lot shorter. Of course, we wouldn't have had King John, and then maybe Robin Hood may not have needed to be brought into existence (if he wasn't real) or elevated to the status of legend (if he was). So I guess it's ye olde swings and roundabouts.

But if the Norman nobles thought their new king was going to help them regain the lands stolen during the Anarchy, they would be disappointed. He left such matters to local authorities such as the Shire Courts, and had far more important things to be getting on with as he channel-hopped between England and France, possibly wondering morosely when someone would think of the idea of a Channel Tunnel to link the two. Nevertheless, when he was Blightyside he did do what he could to crack down on crime, and while they may not have been the very first of their kind (or may; the article is a little vague on the details) he seems to have introduced the idea of juries at court in 1176, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, exactly six hundred years before a major colony of what would be the British Empire declared its independence and sunk into the mire of history probably.

In matters of religion he may have looked ahead to the time of his great-great-great- (add a few greats probably) grandson Henry VIII, and was not a fan of the pope, wishing to maintain his own regal authority over the appointment of bishops, archbishops and perhaps what kind of bread was used in the Eucharist, or perhaps not. This was the twelfth century, but it seems that even this far back, English kings were wary of letting Rome have too much influence over their kingdom, while presumably paying lip-service to the Vicar of Christ. And there wasn't even such a thing as Protestantism yet. Of course, I don't know this, but I'd be willing to bet most of the higher levels of the clergy - abbots, bishops, archbishops - would have been just as happy not to have the Holy Father sticking his saintly nose too far into their affairs, as some of the things they got up to could be quite, um, ungodly, but not only that: they were mostly nobles and lords raised to their position by the king, and had lands, wealth and who knew what to protect? I'm not saying the pope would have told them to hand over a portion of their income to Rome, but I wouldn't be that surprised.

For his part, the Pope was pushing for more influence, especially over the appointment of clerics, wishing to dilute the power of the king over what would have I suppose have been termed ecclesiastical matters, so England looks to have, almost from the beginning at least of the Plantagenet or Angevin dynasty, maintained what could kindly be called a fragile balance with the papacy, something that would of course completely shatter in the sixteenth century, and lead to the current state of affairs in Britain. You would probably also have to take into account the status of the pope at this time. As has been mentioned by me many times (especially in my History of the Papacy journal) back then popes were more like feudal warlords, kings or even emperors. They did not always distance themselves from secular matters, and many was the pope who not only got himself involved in, but often started wars and struggles for power. So to some very believable and understandable degree, a king of England could see the pope in Rome as all but a rival king, and who wants to hand over power of any kind to a rival king?

Again showing that the Angevin line was the beginning of a whole new era in English monarchical history, Henry II was the first English sovereign to have his name on the coins minted, a process that continues today, on bank notes as well as coins. Perhaps the king might not have been so eager to have himself so readily recognised by his people - I'm sure at that time, few of the ordinary folk, even nobles could be relied upon to pick His Majesty out of an identity parade - when his name suddenly became synonymous with one of history's worst and most despicable murders, and one on which the pope definitely frowned. God the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, was not available at that time for comment, though reliable sources quote His celestial press office as reacting to the deed with a single, damning word: shame.

[Trollheart]

A Killing at Canterbury: This Turbulent Priest - The Murder of Thomas Becket

Given that Henry's view of the Church in general was that it should keep its mind on religious matters and not interfere in politics, appointing his ex-Chancellor to the plum and powerful role of Archbishop of Canterbury may not have been seen as the most intelligent move an English king has ever made. With somewhat supreme arrogance, Henry believed that his man would see things his way, toe the royal line and do what he was told. He thought, in other words, that he was appointing, what Francis Urquhart would later call "a sound man" to the position. He did not, however, seem to realise just who he was dealing with.


Saint Thomas Becket (1119 - 1170)

Born, in some ways, not quite into poverty but certainly not nobility, Thomas Becket first screamed his presence to the world in a house at Cheapside, one of the market towns of London. His father, though by the time of his birth a landowner and well-to-do, had begun life as a trader, perhaps in textiles, so while you couldn't quite say he was a commoner he was not exactly born into wealth and privilege. However he was of course a Norman, his family coming from Brionne and his wife - another bloody Matilda! - from Caen, where William the Conqueror's body was brought after the tragic accident that led to his death. The stars may have aligned somewhat for young Thomas, as he was born both on his name saint's feast day (I don't know if they named him for St. Thomas, but if not it's an interesting coincidence) and on the day of the winter solstice, December 21. He had a somewhat idyllic early life, hunting and hawking and possibly fishing on the estate of his father's friend, Richer de L'Aigle, and spent a year in Paris but was far from a stellar student. In his early twenties Thomas's father's fortunes dipped, and the young man had to take a job as an office clerk. I imagine you could say this taught him humility, but then, considering he ended (literally) up going against the king, maybe not.

Eventually, though, he secured a position in the household of the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, and from then on his career in the Church was on its way. He became Archdeacon in 1154, just as King Stephen was breathing his last and Henry rubbed his hands together as he prepared to ascend the throne of England, and in fact one year later his diligence had brought him to the notice of the king, who appointed him as Lord Chancellor. I will just sound a personal note of scepticism here and say that I find it odd that a man of whom it appears the king had not even heard was suddenly elevated to one of the highest positions in the land, one year after the new king was crowned, but I expect there's more to that than I currently know, or indeed care. The point is, there he was, a cheap lad from Poorside, sorry I mean a poor lad from Cheapside, a moderate student of passable Latin, occupying the post of  Lord Chancellor to the king. Talk about local boy done good! His Majesty even sent his own eldest son, also called Henry, to stay in Beckett's house, as was, apparently, to quote Grampa Simpson, the style at the time.

Henry junior was in fact technically (but only technically) also king, and this is why. The French had this odd custom of having the eldest son crowned as the heir apparent, so that there would be no tedious mucking about with all that nasty succession lark that bothered the English so much, and so, in technical terms, though only a mere lad, Henry junior (known often as The Young Henry, or even the Young King) was also King of England, if in waiting. He would be left waiting though, as he would die before his father, and so would never ascend the throne, but more on that later. It must have been quite the honour to have the future King of England leaving his shoes and hose to be cleaned outside of a room he occupied in your very own house, and you also have to wonder (well, I do) whether or not Henry senior, the current king, was having his sprog keep an eye on the Lord Chancellor?

A few months after the Archbishop turned up his toes and went to meet his maker, Becket stepped into his shoes. Elected Archbishop of Canterbury, he was now the most powerful man in the Church, in England anyway. Now this I do find strange (bloody Church!): it says Becket was only ordained as a priest after being chosen for the top job, but how then could he have served as an Archdeacon if he wasn't even a priest? Let's see: what exactly is an archdeacon anyway? My dictionary says it's a "priest ranking just below an archbishop". So how could he be ordained if he was already a priest? I say again, bloody Church. Anyway, Becket resigned as Lord Chancellor (I'm not sure whether it was that he couldn't hold both titles, saw them as being a conflict of interest or if he just no longer wished to be or thought he could not be able to discharge both posts) which riled the king, who had thought, as I said earlier, that Becket was his man.

And with that, we return to the story of his murder, surely one of the most infamous acts of any king up to then. As they grew increasingly apart (if they had ever been that close - I don't know what the relationship was between Henry and Becket when he held the Chancellorship; they certainly were not old friends or anything), Becket pushing the divine right of the Church to hold court over religious matters, Henry grumping "I'm the King, and what I say goes", the whole thing came to a head in something called the Constitutions of Clarendon, in which Becket was told basically to shut the fuck up about the rights of the Church, bend the knee or it might just be bent the other way. Ah yeah but it wasn't that simple. Let's take a goosy at these edicts, shall we?

The Constitution of Clarendon: Putting Manners on the Clergy

Apparently, the idea behind this was nothing really to do with Thomas Becket initially, but was an attempt to curb the power of Rome in deciding the guilt of clerics who had committed crimes. Rather like, it would seem, a papal version of a court martial, any such person would be, and could only be, tried by the papal courts, not the king, not the law courts, and as they have done since shortly after Jesus was nailed up and Christianity became a thing, and then a bigger thing, and then the biggest thing you can think of and then some, papal courts went easy on the perps. No sentence of death was allowed (presumably this was against God's law, though see also the Crusades and the various Inquisitions) and really the worst any "bad priest" could expect was to be defrocked, which was hardly a punishment fitting the crime. So Henry set up the Constitution of Clarendon (named, of course, for Clarendon Palace, where the accords were drawn up), proclaiming that once a priest or cleric was defrocked they could no longer come under the protection of the Church, and were his to deal with. Kind of, I think, a little like the way the Anglo-Saxon kings would withdraw the king's protection from someone, leaving them at the mercy of anyone who wished to harm them, with no punishment due for themselves. As I said back then, a sort of eighth-century version of The Purge.

All the clergymen under the king's control saw they had little choice but to agree to these protocols, but there was one man who doggedly held out, and would pay the ultimate price. Thomas Becket knew that the real purpose behind the Constitution of Clarendon was not really to make clerics subject to the king's justice - that was just a happy by-product. The real intent was to weaken the power of Rome in England and strengthen the hand of the king. So while he demurred by basically agreeing to the thing in principle, he literally avoided signing on the dotted line, refusing to add his signature as the highest-ranking cleric in England. Henry ran out of patience, lost the head and summoned Becket to court, where he was accused of, and convicted of contempt of royal authority, and had to leg it to Europe to escape Henry's wrath.

All right, all right!We're talking about a cold-blooded murder here, and the murder of an archbishop into the bargain, and that's no laughing matter. But you have to grin at the image presented by this extract from Wiki: "Henry pursued the fugitive archbishop with a series of edicts, targeting Becket and all Becket's friends and supporters, but King Louis VII of France offered Becket protection."  I can just see the king galloping on horseback, loading edicts into a crossbow and firing them at the fleeing Becket, who ducks, and eventually is given shelter by the French king, who has a huge shield in front of him. "Over here, mon ami! I will protect you!"


Indeed it is. So noted, Vivian, Rick, Neil and Mike. Becket was of course not without his own powers, and sought to excommunicate Henry, but the pope, his boss, said "here you! If there's any excommunicating to be done around here, I'll do it, all right? Now fuck off back to England and do your job." Surely aware of the fragile relationship between Rome and the Crown, Pope Alexander III was hardly going to further antagonise the new king on behalf of one miserable archbishop who had found sand in his vagina etc. So he sent his enforcers, um, papal legates to England to sort it all out, and back to Blighty trudged a grumpy Becket. Back in the green fields of England, and no doubt itching to deal out a bit of excommunicating himself, Becket turned his wrath on three bishops who crowned the Young King (remember him? Henry's eldest son?) in the wrong place, i,e., not at Canterbury. When Henry heard this he flew into a rage, and said one of many reported things, all amounting to the same thing.

Some accounts say it was "Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?" hence my section title. Boring old Simon Schama, clever clogs historian, says that's wrong, and posits an alternative moan, along the lines of ""What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?". This is very long-winded and wordy, and probably more the kind of thing a king might be more expected to say, though I personally think he might have shouted "Will somebody - anybody - please for the love of the great lord fucking Christ KILL this cunt before I go stark staring mad?"

Whichever version you choose to believe was uttered, the result was the same. Four knights took it as a command, and set off for Canterbury, planning to take the recalcitrant archbishop back to Winchester to answer to the king. When Becket was disinclined to go, they got all knighty and went back for their weapons, which, being brave men of chivalry, they had sneakily hidden near a tree outside the cathedral. Well, in fairness, the idea probably had been that it might have been seen as just a tiny bit sinful, not to mention sacrilegious, to have taken weapons into God's house, and maybe they had hoped Becket would come quietly. He did not. They called him a traitor, he denied he was one and clung onto a pillar of the cathedral for moral and quite literally physical support, daring them to drag him away, and one thing you don't do to knights whose blood is up is dare them.

Luckily, we have a first-hand account of the arrest which became murder, and it's from some lad called Grim, whose name seems apt as he was wounded in the attack. Here's what he says about it: ...the impious knight... suddenly set upon him and [shaved] off the summit of his crown which the sacred chrism consecrated to God... Then, with another blow received on the head, he remained firm. But with the third the stricken martyr bent his knees and elbows, offering himself as a living sacrifice, saying in a low voice, "For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church, I am ready to embrace death." But the third knight inflicted a grave wound on the fallen one; with this blow... his crown, which was large, separated from his head so that the blood turned white from the brain yet no less did the brain turn red from the blood; it purpled the appearance of the church... The fifth – not a knight but a cleric who had entered with the knights... placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr and (it is horrible to say) scattered the brains with the blood across the floor, exclaiming to the rest, "We can leave this place, knights, he will not get up again."

Well, yeah. It doesn't take doctor to know that any man who's had his brains bashed in and whose said brains are now leaking all over the nice clean chapel flagstones is unlikely to rise again. I think I would concur with your diagnosis, Grim me old lad: no second opinion necessary.

Far from being annoyed that his words had been misinterpreted, probably just happy to see the back of the old bastard, Henry did not pursue any sort of case against these four knights, who in any case fled to Wales where they probably weren't too gone on Becket and had limited time for Henry. The king had more important things on his mind, and now that the main opponent to the Constitution of Clarendon was gone he... um, revoked them. Right. Sort of as a peace gesture to the pope and as a way of saying "Soz dude for not going after those most heinous killers of your top guy here. We cool?"

Now, to be fair, I said I would ignore any events in France involving Henry (or any subsequent monarchs) unless they impacted directly on the history of England, and while the king's next act was the catalyst for all our troubles down the centuries, I'm covering that in my History of Ireland journal, so no need to go over old ground, and let's just say Henry II's next move was to invade Ireland, and if you want to read more about the details you know where to head. Henry's invasion of Ireland had the papal seal of approval of Pope Adrian IV, so I guess can be seen as fence-mending between the king and the pope, not that this helped us at all.

[Trollheart]

This was, however, the first mark of the Normans in Ireland, and meant that we started seeing castles and fortified towns spring up all over the place, just as they had in England. It also meant that Henry II was the first English king to claim sovereignty over Ireland, though he would not be the last. But Ireland was small potatoes to Henry, a minor possession to be stamped with his seal of ownership, and he soon had bigger problems as his sons did what almost all sons of kings do eventually, rebel against him and try to seek power. This came to be known as the Great Rebellion, and looks mostly to have involved France, so perhaps nothing to do with us, move along, move along, nothing to see here. But it did sour his relationship both with Young Henry, who went crying to the pope that daddy was being too selfish with his lands and couldn't he make him give him more, and also with his wife, who supported her sons against their father, possibly because their father, her husband, had, to put it in words used by Edmund Blackadder, shacked up with a new pair of tights.

At the heart of this revolt was, you'll probably not be surprised to hear, a sulky teenager who wanted to do what he wanted and spend what he wanted, and whose friends were always saying to him "Dude! Your dad's king, like! Why don't you have like your own castles and junk?" Possibly. What is true is that the Young King (Henry the younger) chafed at being constrained by the restrictions his father put on what he could own, or inherit, and I suppose if you have the Crown of England plonked on your head at such an early age you probably consider yourself the actual king. So teenage rebellion was in the air, not helped when daddy gave away three of Young Henry's castle to his bro John as a dowry for his upcoming marriage, and nobles and barons, who could always be relied on to stir the shit if there was something in it for them, whispered "Dude, your dad totally gave away castles that were yours by right. You should, like, rebel, dude. Show him he can't push you around. And hey, we'll support you (till it suits us)."

Young Henry thought, "You know what, dudes? You're so right. That old man has been holding me back. Let's hie us to France, where the king will surely support us, or at worst we can cadge money and castles from him. He's always hated my pop anyway." Which he had, because, if you remember, Henry had snaffled his non-cooperating wife and Louis did not like that. Eleanor, trying to catch a ferry to Calais, was stopped by Henry. "Oh no you don't, my fine fucking beauty!" he snarled. "It's priz for you!" And into priz, or prison, she was thrown, which surely cannot have helped their marital relations one little bit. Another reason for the support Henry's son received was due to his name being not mud - god how he would have loved for it to be mud! If only! - but absolutely shit all across Christian Europe. Well, after all,, he had been the first sitting monarch to have had the man occupying the Church's highest post in England murdered AND in his own cathedral! Hard to shake that one off. So basically Henry was kind of Public Enemy Number One throughout all Christendom, perhaps even more so than the heathen, who were, after all, just heathen.

While as I say most of the fighting took place in France, what Scot worth his salt ever passed up the opportunity to sock it to the English? Not William the Lion, current king of Scotland, but once again he backed the wrong horse, as his attempts to take Northumberland failed, and as the army that had kicked his arse headed back south they ran into the Earl of Liecester,, who had been on his way to render aid to the Scots and was utterly defeated. On July 8 Henry (the king) arrived back from Normandy and immediately went to do his penance for his part in the murder of Thomas Becket, hoping to regain some of the support of the clergy I guess, or maybe it just seemed like a good idea to try to clear his name a little. and when King Henry II did something, he did not do it by halves! Here's what David Hilliam says in his highly entertaining book Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards: Who's Who in the English Monarchy from Egbert to Elizabeth II: "Henry walked barefoot into Canterbury, wearing nothing but a shirt. He knelt at the cathedral porch. Then, with bleeding feet, he made his way to the spot where the murder had taken place and kissed the stone where the archbishop had fallen. After a ceremony of penitence and absolution he submitted to being beaten: three strokes from each of the eighty monks, and five strokes from each of the various bishops and abbots. Still muddy and unwashed, he then spent the whole of the next night in the dark cathedral crypt, fasting and praying, and nearly catching his death of cold."

Whether God approved, or not, Henry's fortunes turned for the better as the Scottish king was again defeated and this time captured, and across the channel the boys realised daddy was in control and called off the revolt, heading home. In perhaps one of the finest pieces, not only of propaganda but actually turning a minus into a plus, Henry II actually used the popularity of the burgeoning cult that had sprung up around Thomas Becket to credit the saint with his victory, and managed to erase the black mark his unwitting (?) sanctioning of his murder had placed upon him. In effect, it seems people almost forgot the king was responsible for the man's death, that, had he just kept his royal mouth shut, Becket would have no need to be a saint, and would be walking around very much more alive than he currently was. But that's public opinion for you I guess: fickle and changeable. People believe what they want to believe.

When Young Henry died in 1183 (for which I give thanks to a god I do not believe in; I'm fucking sick of differentiating the two damn Henrys!) the king had to change his plans for the succession, and so turned to Richard, while John, who had already been made Lord of Ireland (thanks a lot dad!) was to be made Duke of Aquitaine. Had Henry known what a shit king his youngest son was going to turn out to be, he might have kept the keys of Aquitaine in his back pocket rather than give them to him, but of course he was trying to placate everyone and did not want another revolt on his hands. He had already imprisoned the kids' mother, after all, so things were obviously not going swimmingly between father and sons, and he was getting on himself at this stage. In fact, he would not last much longer, dying of a bleeding ulcer (surely an occupational hazard for any king) in 1189, dying mostly as he had lived, in his beloved France. The man to succeed him would be known as Lionheart, but would be more famed for his deeds abroad, and particularly in the Third Crusade, than at home.

[Trollheart]

(No, I haven't jumped forward in the timeline, nor have you accidentally clicked into my World War II journal. All will become clear...)

Chapter VII: Wolfshead: Eastern Promise, Broken Vows and the Death of Two Kings

To those who are familiar with the legend of Robin Hood (and who is not?) the reigns of both successors of Henry are inextricably linked. Richard, known to history as the Lionheart, spent most of his time on the crusade for which he had been preparing when his father fell ill and died, and left behind his younger brother, John, to rule in his stead. Not quite a regent, but he certainly had the authority of his elder brother, and used it to his own advantage. John is of course known as one of the worst English kings in history, and his lack of engagement with the common people, his love of riches and luxury, his cruelty and the injustices he practised upon England, all gave rise to the legend of the hero of Sherwood Forest. So this chapter will bring all three figures together, as they shared the same time period, and were, in one way or another, a direct product of each other, one the result of a king who was mostly absent, the other the wish-fulfilment (real or imagined, we will see) of a downtrodden people, and the third the very catalyst for the emergence of that saviour. We can't really deal with one without including the other two, and so we will.

But first, to the man who inherited the throne of Henry II, and who would become the middle king in a dynasty that his successor would destroy.

Richard I (1157 - 1199)

Again with the Jews!  Chaos at Richard's Coronation

It may seem odd that Henry's eldest son only outlasted his father by a mere decade, but then, his adventures in the Holy Land would certainly have taken their toll. However, rather like Henry himself, the new King of England would not die in battle, but suffer quite an ignominious death. His legacy, mostly - almost entirely - built on his exploits in the Middle East - would however far outlast him, and he would be remembered, unlike his younger brother, rightly or wrongly as one of England's finest kings. His reign, however, did not get off to the greatest of starts. For reasons which are, I assume, rooted in prejudices so ancient that they probably will never be understood, if they could be, Jews were forbidden at the coronation of any English king, and so when some Jewish leaders, running the gauntlet and perhaps I suppose hoping to curry favour with the new king and gain better terms for their people, brought gifts to the ceremony, they were welcomed with opens arms and ... well, maybe not.

Richard's courtiers stripped the Jews and had them flogged and thrown out of the city. That's gratitude for you! Maybe they didn't care for the presents they brought to the king. The rumour then began - you'd have to say quite understandably so - that the new king had given orders that all Jews in the city were to be killed, and a riot erupted. In a foreshadowing of a kind of kristallnacht, the Londoners attacked Jews and burned their houses. When it all settled down Richard is said to have punished the perpetrators - though whether this was mere propaganda I don't know; maybe he had given the order and then thought better of it - but I don't see any real accounts of any Jews being invited back to London (well, one, but surely that was a token gesture?) so maybe job done? To underline how useless his proclamations to, and I quote, "leave the Jews alone, guys: they're all right in my book. Now I'm off to the Crusades, so no sneaking Jew-killing while I'm away, right?" there was another riot soon after, this time in York.


Scapegoats and the Star of David: A (very) brief investigation into the reasons for the hatred of Jews

We owe it to the many dead Jewish people to check out if there is, or was, any sort of excuse (that the English/Normans used anyway) to have a beef with Jews, so let's do some research. I do recall a scene from an episode of Robin of Sherwood, one of the best ever interpretations of the legend of the outlaw of Sherwood Forest, when the Sheriff of Nottingham thundered angrily "I will not have Jews in Nottingham! Have them whipped to the city gates!" I thought at the time wow, that's harsh, but from the above it seems that yes, this is almost a retelling of the reaction of King Richard. This was actual English law. Or was it Norman? How far back do these prejudices against and hatred of the Jews go for Englishmen? Surely the Anglo-Saxons had no problem with them, and this was an imported bigotry brought by William and his men?

Yes, this does seem to be the case indeed, as Wiki tells me helpfully that there were, to its recollection anyway, no Jews in England before the Normans, and in fact they only remained there, as we would say here in Ireland, pissing time, in historical terms, as a mere two hundred years later the Edict of Expulsion was decreed by King Edward I which forced all Jews out of England! Therefore it was the Normans who hated them, and why I wonder? Well, amazing as it may seem, nine hundred years before a World War I corporal rose to power in Germany using almost the very same phrase, in Norman England we find it: international conspiracy, though thanks to the still-prevalent superstitions in England and France at the time (let's not forget how late in history these countries, and others, were burning people as witches, most believing that this is exactly what they were) the word "magic" is used too. Let's take a closer look at some of the accusations levelled against the most downtrodden and blamed people in history by the Normans.

Wang alert! Also, possible misinterpretation as child abuse in medieval art

[close]

It's actually chilling and scary how some of these beliefs, held at a time when, as I say, people believed in witches, literally thought Satan could walk into their room and claim their soul with not a metaphor in sight, and would blame bad harvests or deformed children on spirits and demons, are still held today, in a slightly different form. Jews were accused of killing the children of Christians to use in blood magic rituals. Ironically, the history of this fabrication (which is all it is; it has no basis in fact, there is no evidence supporting it and no accounts of anyone ever witnessing such things, but why let facts stand in the way of a good story eh?) is that it was originally levelled at the emerging cult of Christianity by the Roman Empire. Now, to an extent, you can understand that. If the Romans heard that Christians were abjured by their god to eat his body and drink his blood, well, you don't have to work too hard to fill in the blanks. And considering they themselves practised blood sacrifice (though only of animals) to their own gods, this would have been easier for Romans to accept, and believe, rather than see it as a metaphor, despite their intelligence and learning. Of course, even if they knew it to be so, it was a tool to use against the new challenge of the heretical One God, so why not?

Ever willing to adapt, Christians then decided to use this crazy accusation against their hated enemies, the Jews, whom many blamed for crucifying their saviour, a claim that I suppose can't be denied if you look only in shades of black and white, and makes a handy stick with which to beat the Jews with. Originating in the Norman-conquered England, these ideas pretty quickly made their way back to mother France, and from there to Germany, again quite scary when you consider what happened there almost a thousand years later. More silly (but earnestly believed) stories held that Jews needed Christian blood to bake certain cakes called matzos, which are eaten during Passover, that the Jews needed the blood to re-enact the crucifixion for some reason, and that, just to make it a little juicier (sorry) the best blood was that of Christian children.

This kind of nonsense came to be known as "blood libel", and was often used to explain the otherwise inexplicable deaths of Christian children (I suppose the unexplained death of Jewish children was seen as God taking His just revenge?) but as you might expect, the Normans were just resurrecting an ancient lie, which began all the way back in the tenth century, where a Greek historian writes:  "every seven years the Jews captured a stranger, brought him to the temple in Jerusalem, and sacrificed him, cutting his flesh into bits." What the basis for or source of this is, your guess is as good as mine, but as with all conspiracy theories, no common sense needed.  Once a story takes hold, especially if people want it to, that's it. Another Greek author (well, Greco-Egyptian, but you don't care about that) also swore that when the Hellenic king Antiochus Epiphanes entered the Greek temple in Jerusalem he saw one of his countrymen being held captive, and the guy told him he was being fattened up for sacrifice. Well, not exactly a unbiased source then, was he?

But all that goes back even further, to the first century, and in the fifth one author even said that the Jews had captured a Greek child, crucified him and scourged (whipped) him till he died. The real reason though, that these largely forgotten stories resurfaced with the arrival of the Normans in England had to do with that fella in the Vatican, you know him, always wears a white dress, big hat? Him and his Crusades. Pick your pope, any pope, didn't matter - whether he had called for a Crusade, presided over one or just thought they were a jolly good idea for keeping the heathen in their place (six feet under or rising as smoke from a pyre) every pope hated the Jews. And so with the anti-heathen rhetoric of the Crusades and Holy Wars came the idea, bound up inextricably with that, of the Jews being heretics and needing a damned good extermination. This, you'll probably know, persisted well into the Second World War, when it was common knowledge that the Catholic Church either stood by twiddling its holy thumbs while the chimneys at Auschwitz and Dachau and Belsen belched out thick black smoke into the skies over Europe, or actively sold out Jews to the Nazis. Even now, old enmities die hard.

But back to medieval England. In 1144, around the time of the Anarchy, coincidentally or not, a boy was found stabbed to death in the woods of Norwich, and the local Jews accused. This was mostly due to a guy called Harold Loudmouth sorry Monmouth, who, without any shred of evidence, wrote that every year Jews had to choose a country in which to kill a Christian child so that they could be restored to the Holy Land by God. Now, logically, if you think about it (but who does that?) why would God want to restore lands to a people who had nailed his son up? The idea therefore holds no water, but as I say, logic goes out the window when it's inconvenient to humanity, and so it was taken, literally, as read that Jews held an international council every year at Easter, stuck a pin in a board and chose a country in which to murder a child. This one, the one in Norwich, whose name was William, went on to be canonised, while presumably his real killer went on to kill again, further deaths quite possibly again blamed on the local Jews.

Perhaps oddly (!), it seems this "international council" chose England again in 1168, 1181 and 1183. Odd, I say, that the dart or whatever landed in England almost two years running. Bad luck for England. Bad luck for the Jews, too, as this all then led up to the attack on the Jews at the coronation of Richard I. But while that brings us back full circle, there's more to explore in the reasons behind why Jews were hated in medieval England. Sadly, there's always enough hate to go round, and to spare.

Jews were also traditionally accused of poisoning wells, which led to many thousands of them being burned when the Black Death hit Europe, and also desecration of the Host, the Communion wafer held by Christians to represent (or even, if you believe strongly enough/are naive enough to actually become) the Body of Christ. It was said (again, without any evidence and often no witness but the accuser, who may have had a problem with the Jew accused by him or indeed all Jews) that they stole, stabbed or burned the wafer used as the Host, and when, usually after extreme torture, the Jews confessed, not only were they burned alive but their entire community. I can't help feeling that this is not what Jesus was about, if he existed. Where's the peace and love, brother?

In effect, then, we can chart the presence of Jews in England (at least during the Norman era) from 1070 to 1290, less than three hundred years. Although there were a few scattered settlements during the time of Cromwell (around 1656) and an attempt to enforce the Jewish Naturalisation Act in 1753 failed after a few months, the real "emancipation" of the Jews didn't occur until the nineteenth century, either 1829 or 1858, with the rise to power of Benjamin Disraeli as Britain's Prime Minister. So you can say that Jews were in England for less than three centuries, then basically absent for another six. While they were here though, in the Norman period, life was not easy for them. I guess Normans being such staunch Christians had an inbuilt hatred for the people they saw as crucifying - or allowing or orchestrating the crucifixion of - their Saviour, and being in power were not likely to be well-disposed towards those now living under their rule. The only real reason for their existence, toleration in the new kingdom was their skill with numbers: they were there as tax collectors, minters of coin, and other occupations to do with the royal treasury and finance.

Despite the violence and bigotry they suffered, it does seem that Jews in general prospered in the short time, historically speaking, they were in England. You can say a lot of derogatory things about Jews, but one thing that is used against them all the time but does seem to be true is that they are all good with money, and fortunes were made. The king needed his "money men", and so I expect the Normans and the Jews existed in a sort of uneasy truce; he needed them to sort out his money issues, they needed his protection. Hardly a mutually satisfactory situation, but it seems to have worked for the most part. Jews do, however, seem to have been treated almost as slaves in one way, seen as the king's property, his to send where he wished and they completely subservient to his will.

As I said earlier, after the riot at the king's coronation, the next major massacre of Jews was in 1190, in York, but rather strangely involved most of them dying by their own hands or those of their family. With the Third Crusade beginning, and anti-Semitic sentiment flaring up again, the Jews of York were attacked and begged sanctuary from the warden of York Castle, who agreed. But Clifford's Tower, where they had taken refuge, was besieged by rioters, demanding they convert. In what must surely be seen as a prime example of extreme and disproportionate response to these threats, the rabbi advised all his people to kill themselves rather than be converted, and the fathers began to kill the mothers and children. Once this was done, the rabbi set fire to the tower, so that those who did not kill themselves died in the flames, other than some who escaped and were murdered by the mob. So you would have to say, given that information, that the vast majority of the Jews killed in the York massacre were in fact killed by their own people.