Henry I

 

The name Plantagenet comes from the flower worn by Geoffrey of Anjou. Geoffrey of Anjou was the husband to the Empress Matilda. The couple would produce the future king of England Henry II and the Plantagenet dynasty that would rule over England for in excess of 300 years. Matilda would have to struggle to secure her birthright however and indeed would have to sacrifice her own, legitimate claims to the throne to ensure that at least her son would succeed king Stephen. She did not come to that conclusion lightly and had spent the best part of two decades trying to remove Stephen from the throne he had usurped. Matilda was the daughter of Henry I and the granddaughter of William The Conqueror. Henry I himself didn't have the easiest path to power and indeed there are some question marks over how he did succeed as king. In 1087, his father, William The Conqueror, died. Henry's oldest brother Robert was made Duke of Normandy and his other surviving brother William became king of England. Henry inherited financially but very little else.

William II, as he now was, is regarded as one of the weaker kings of England but his reputation has largely been sullied by his poor relationship with the clergy. The most significant event of William's reign came in 1095 when Pope Urban II whipped up Crusading fever across Europe in what would become known as the First Crusade as Christians answered the call from the Eastern Roman Emperor Alexios I Komnenos for aid against the Turks. Alexios soon had regrets about asking for help as he was soon overwhelmed by the numbers of respondents now flooding into his empire. Duke Robert of Normandy, Henry and William's brother, also answered the call and would become one of the leaders of the crusade. However, crusading was not a cheap venture and in order to help finance his expedition, Robert would essentially hand over control of Normandy to King William in exchange for payment. He would never have control over his Duchy again.

 As he spent his 28 years in prison from 1106 to his death in 1134 aged about 80, Robert may have considered it a price worth paying. Yes, he had fought incredibly hard to regain Normandy on his return from the East and ultimately failed but the Christian mission in the Holy Land had succeeded in regaining Jerusalem and this would have offered him a great deal of comfort as he sat in his long confinement. Whilst Robert was away, the political situation changed dramatically. In early August of 1100, William was out hunting in the New Forest. Hunting was a favourite pastime of the nobility and William was no different but this outing would prove to be fatal. A man by the name of Walter Tyrell was taking aim at what was supposed to be a stag. He pulled back his bow and fired. Smack. Right into the heart of King William II. William lay prostrate on the ground and lingered for a time before eventually expiring.

Was this murder? I think it's a distinct possibility. Tyrell, if he had indeed spotted a stag, must too have seen the king in his line of vision. And the accuracy of his aim seems to have been a little too perfect. Ultimately we are basing our opinions of this particular incident on circumstantial evidence but perhaps the most damning of all was the fact that in the forest at that particular time was the brother of the dead king, Henry. Henry didn't bother, for too long anyway, to pretend to mourn for the king and he departed immediately. Three days after the death of William II, Henry I was crowned king. Henry I went on to become a well regarded king. The laws he established are referenced by Magna Carta. The nobles of the early 13th century sought to make the hopeless King John restore to the country the justice of the reign of Henry I. But Henry I was not without his flaws. With his first wife, he produced his son and heir William the Aetheling as well as a daughter, Matilda. Matilda would be married off to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V and would only return on the death of the Emperor in 1125. She would continue to style herself as Empress; something that which, according to hostile sources, added to her lofty esteem of herself. Matilda's mother, Matilda of Scotland, died in 1118. This became a major problem a couple of years later in 1120. Henry I liked the women and spent more time with mistresses then actually trying to produce legitimate heirs. As a result, he had something like twenty illegitimate children and only one male heir, William Aetheling. This soon came back to haunt him.

The royal court had been in Normandy and was to set sail from Barfleur and return to England. Henry I was on one ship and an extremely lively young party containing William on another. The king set sail first while William and his crowd get rapidly more drunk. A count by the name of Stephen of Blois, perhaps fearing where this was going, made an excuse of an upset stomach and so disembarked from the ship. This proved both a wise and fateful decision as Stephen would go on to become king in 1135. If he hadn't had that bout of illness, the anarchy of his reign would have been avoided and perhaps Matilda would have succeeded Henry I. Anyway, the drunken crew on the White ship now had the novel idea of trying to overtake the ship carrying the king whilst they were completely intoxicated. This spelled disaster. Almost immediately after departing the harbour at Barfleur, the White Ship ran into some rocks. The drunken revelry soon turned into fear and panic as the ship began to sink and with it a generation of the English nobility.

William Aetheling could have saved himself and he in fact was put into a lifeboat but he nobly turned back to try and save his drowning half sister Matilda (not be confused with his full sister the Empress Matilda). Others attempted to reach the lifeboat too and it soon overturned. William, along with almost everybody else on the White Ship, died. Back in England, Henry I was unaware of the dynastic disaster that had unfolded off the coast of Normandy. When the news had started to filter back to the nobility, no one could bring themselves to inform the king. So, in an act of sheer cowardice, grown men ordered a young boy to tell the king instead. When he heard what had happened, Henry I was distraught. First of all, for his son but also for the future of his kingdom and his legacy. He had no legitimate male heir to succeed him.

Whilst he recovered from the shock of this devastating loss, Henry would have to weigh up his options. He would now realise that he had to try and marry and produce at least another male heir. So he married a young girl called Adeliza of Louvain. This marriage proved fruitless however. After Henry's death in 1135, Adeliza married again and produced seven children so it's safe to assume that the fact there was no heirs produced with Henry was certainly through no fault of her own. Henry was, by the time of his marriage to Adeliza, well into his fifties and paying the price for his indulgent behaviour in his younger years. This ultimately left him with two options. He pondered making one of his illegitimate sons his heir or making his daughter his successor. He opted for Matilda, with her now back in the country after Henry V's death. Henry I must have known this was far from ideal.
The nobility were not likely to support a woman. A woman ruler was not the ideal. In times of trouble, it was considered essential for a monarch to be capable of riding into battle. That was not expected of a woman and Matilda's succession was always going to be disputed. Matilda's second marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou was popular with neither of them but they did the duty expected of them and they produced children, including the future Henry II. The baby Henry did in fact meet his grandfather who is said to have been extremely fond of his grandson and delighted in his presence. Perhaps in the young Henry, the old king saw a potential, long term solution to the dynastic problems that he, by the time of Henry's birth in 1133, must have seen as inevitable.

Henry I died in 1135. Having started out with nothing, he had gained everything. From the mysterious death of William II, Henry had acted swiftly and ruthlessly and claimed the crown of England. On Robert's return from crusade, Henry had fought off his oldest brother's attempts to reclaim Normandy. At Tinchebray, in 1106, Henry met Robert in battle and decisively defeated him. Robert would live out the rest of his long live as the captive of Henry and would, in fact, only die a year before the king himself. But for all Henry I's brilliance, his legacy is tarnished by what was to come after his death. The nearly two decade long period of Stephen's reign, known as the Anarchy, was almost entirely avoidable. If Henry had focused on producing, not only an heir but also spares, England would have been spared a disastrous civil war. Obviously, he can't be blamed entirely for that. The nobility's inflexibility and reluctance to support Matilda's claim was a bigger factor in the crisis. And then Stephen's usurpation of the throne. If Stephen had proved to be a strong and capable king, his usurping of the throne may have been more forgivable but he was weak and, though he tried, he could never escape the threat of Matilda claiming what was rightfully hers.