Authors: Lisa Hilton
The Rosamund episode has been used as an explanation for the fact that, by 1168, Henry and Eleanor had effectively separated but, once again, there was a simple, practical rationale behind an apparently emotional act. Eleanor’s childbearing years were now over and it made perfect sense for her to relocate to Aquitaine to manage her perennially unruly vassals, leaving Henry with greater freedom to concentrate on his other lands. Eleanor may well have welcomed the chance of autonomy, not to mention a more gracious mode of living than that experienced by Henry’s entourage, whose accommodation more often resembled a campsite than a court, but their marriage had always been based on business, and it was business that provided the primary reason for Eleanor’s removal from England. That the Plantagenets were a spectacularly unhappy family would be proved time and time again on the battlefield in years to come, but Eleanor’s presence in Aquitaine in 1168 was part of the loose administrative strategy through which Henry tried to govern his geographically and culturally disparate dominions. His territories — England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, which extended from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees — were collectively known as the Angevin empire, though they were never subject to imperial-style government. None of the Angevin kings called himself an emperor, all preferring to style themselves ‘King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and Count of Anjou’, and while Henry did introduce similar administrative structures to this ‘odd conglomeration of diverse powers’,
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he himself seems to have thought of, and intended to pass on, his lands as federated regional states rather than a single, centrally governed bloc. Royal authority varied greatly between the tightly controlled Anglo-Norman realm and the disparate, fluid and often mercurial loyalties of the south. Henry’s decision that Eleanor should return to Aquitaine was an attempt to increase his hold on those southern aristocrats who were inclined to disregard their overlord when he was not facing them with an army; in short ‘to calm and contain the Aquitainians, Henry gave them back
their
duchess’.
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In December 1168, then, Eleanor held her first independent Christmas court at Poitiers. This marked the beginning of the productive period
during which she operated as governor of Aquitaine. Based at Poitiers, where she had refurbished the Maubergeonne Tower, the former lodgings of her grandfather’s mistress Dangerosa, and surrounded by Poitevin, rather than Anglo-Norman counsellors, Eleanor was free to involve herself in the day-to-day management of her lands as she had never previously been able to do. Initially she was very much Henry’s regent, but after the investiture of her son Richard as Duke of Aquitaine in 1170 she associated two thirds of her known acts with him. Assisted by her sensechal, Raoul de Faye, and her two clerks, Jordan and Peter, Eleanor busied herself with granting and confirming donations to religious houses, directing taxes, tolls and rights over customs and commodities such as wheat, salt and wine and confirming the loyalty of her lords by receiving their homage at Niort, Limoges and Bayonne.
Eleanor was also able to cement what was to become a sixty-years patronage of the abbey of Fontevrault, which she had first visited in 1152. The house, whose links with the dukes of Aquitaine dated back to the time of William IX, was notable for accommodating men and women, with the monks providing the manual labour and the nuns fulfilling a contemplative role, as specified by its founder, Robert d’Arbrissel. Both orders were governed by an abbess who, it was stipulated, must be a widow rather than a virgin who had never known the world. Henry, too, had ancestral ties with Fontevrault: the couple had founded Fontevrauldine cells in England, at Eaton, Westwood and Amesbury. In 1170 Eleanor granted lands, timber and firewood to the abbey and she went on to build the huge octagonal kitchen, with its five fireplaces, that may still be seen there today. Positioned where Eleanor’s natal territories bordered Henry’s, Fontevrault was to become both power base and retreat for her in later years, as well as — at Eleanor’s designation, it has been convincingly argued
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— the great dynastic memorial to the Angevin line.
At first, Eleanor in Aquitaine continued her policy of support of and co-operation with her husband. In 1169, Henry the Young King and Richard met Louis VII at Montmirail and agreed upon a treaty which would give Normandy, Anjou and England to the Young King, Brittany to Geoffrey, in right of his betrothal to Constance, and Aquitaine to Richard, the latter two grants to be held in vassalage to Louis. It was also confirmed that Richard would marry Alys, the sister of the Young King’s wife and Louis’s second daughter by Constance of Castile. Richard was invested as Duke in 1170, a very satisfying development for Eleanor, who used the occasion to demonstrate her own power and augment it by her association with the future duke. At the cathedral of St Hilaire on 31 May,
Eleanor wore the coronet of Aquitaine over a silk mantle and a scarlet cloak embroidered with the three leopards of Anjou. In her hand was the sceptre she had carried at her coronation as queen of England. The coronet was placed briefly on Richard’s head, then substituted with a plainer silver circlet: Eleanor was making it clear that she was still in control. Richard was by her side at her Christmas court of 1171, and the next year they received King Alfonso of Aragon and King Sancho VI of Navarre on a diplomatic visit to discuss the county of Toulouse and the conditions of the Gascon-Pyrenean borders. Significantly, in three acts issued at Poitiers in 1172, Eleanor alters her previous form of address ‘to the king’s faithful followers and hers’ —
fidelibus regis et suis
— to ‘her faithful followers’
fidelibus suis
. In theory, her power in the duchy still devolved from Henry, and she was certainly limited geographically to a relatively small area around Poitiers, and economically by the fact that Aquitaine had no chancery of its own, but it does appear that during this period Eleanor was dissociating herself from Henry and reasserting her status as duchess in a manner whose significance would be revealed when the Angevin empire erupted in revolt the following year.
On the evening of 5 March 1173, the Young King crept out of the bedroom he was sharing with his father at Chin on and rode for Paris. From the Norman border, Henry II sent an envoy of bishops to ask Louis of France to return his son. ‘Who is it that sends this message to me?’ asked Louis, feigning bewilderment.
‘The King of England,’ they replied.
‘Not so,’ answered Louis. ‘The King of England is here.’
It was a declaration of war. For years, Henry and Eleanor’s beautiful son and heir had been chafing against what he saw as the unreasonable constraints placed upon him by his father. He might have been crowned twice, but all he had to live on were promises. Even his younger brother Richard had more power than he, while his father had cavalierly granted away his promised castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau as part of a planned marriage settlement for John without even asking his permission. Spoiled, lazy and greedy, the Young King refused to understand the exigencies under which his father was operating, and, encouraged by an opportunistic Louis, he was determined to fight for his rights. He was supported not only by the treachery of his brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, but by Eleanor, who chose to ally herself with her ex-husband against the father of her sons.
What were Eleanor’s motivations for this extraordinary step? Some writers have claimed that the assassination in 1170 of the archbishop of
Canterbury, Thomas á Becket, provoked her beyond endurance, but this has been dismissed by others as a ‘post-hoc contrivance’.
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Eleanor had actively supported Henry in his struggle against Becket, with whom she had had a distant personal relationship, and though she would have been as shocked as any conventionally pious person by his murder, she was nothing if not a pragmatist. Becket was set for sainthood, but she could make little political use of that. Another theory is that Eleanor wanted to assert herself against Henry as a consequence of the frustrations of her marriage, in particular her resentment at being overshadowed by his mother, Empress Matilda. Again, this is implausible, because Eleanor had been living independently since 1168, a year after Matilda’s death. These factors could well have informed her attitude to Henry, but why would she have waited five years to extract her ‘revenge’? A popular charge is that Eleanor was so jealous of Rosamund de Clifford that she raised Poitou for spite, which is as absurdly melodramatic as suggesting that she murdered Henry’s mistress. A likelier explanation is more prosaic: power. Eleanor loved Aquitaine and she wanted to ensure that it would pass intact to Richard. Her elder sons were respectively fourteen, fifteen and twenty, still young and in need of guidance. If Henry were to be defeated, Aquitaine, freed from his interference, would be much more governable, and Eleanor would have a considerably wider stage on which to exercise her control.
How far was Eleanor directly involved in the rebellion? William of Newburgh, Ralph Diceto and Roger of Howden all agree that she advised Richard and Geoffrey to ally themselves with the Young King and sent them to Paris to join him. Richard FitzNigel, too, asserts that Eleanor used her influence on the younger boys. A letter written to Eleanor by the archbishop of Rouen on Henry’s instructions confirms that the English king believed his wife was responsible for turning his sons against him — ‘the fact that you should have made the fruits of your union with our Lord King rise up against their father …’ — and acknowledges her capacity to sway them: ‘Before events carry us to a dreadful conclusion, return with your sons to the husband whom you must obey and with whom it is your duty to live … Bid your sons, we beg you, to be obedient and devoted to their father.’
Eleanor was threatened with the full anger of the Church if she did not obey, but she paid no mind to the archbishop. She was determined to see the struggle through. She was not, however, acting alone. Although Gervase of Canterbury presents the whole rebellion as being planned and carried out by Eleanor, Louis and it was claimed, Eleanor’s seneschal,
Raoul de Faye, were also deeply involved. What Eleanor did was to skilfully manipulate a varied set of regional grievances against Henry into a concentrated movement, using the ambitions of the French King and the ever-turbulent lords of the south to bolster the strength of her sons. This was not revenge, but an exceptionally cold-blooded political gamble. Eleanor’s readiness to make use of Louis, and to be of use to him, suggests that she did not permit emotion to play much of a part in her strategies. She could put aside whatever feelings she still had for Henry after twenty years together if disloyalty would get her what she wanted. The scandalous events of Eleanor’s life have often led to her being depicted as a creature of emotion rather than reason, a portrayal that emphasises her ‘feminine’ willingness to allow her heart to rule her head. Nowhere is this more untrue than in her promotion of the 1173 rebellion. Eleanor was not jealous, or peeved, or frustrated: she was ruthless.
In May, she decided to join her sons at Louis’s court, changing into men’s clothes on her journey the better to avoid capture. Gervase of Canterbury mentions her arrest almost as an aside to his expressions of disgust at this transgression, the fact that Eleanor was prepared to adopt such a sinful disguise being yet more evidence of the lengths to which she would go to snatch power. It is not known where Eleanor was taken, but since four Aquitaine men, William Maingot, Porteclie de Mauzé, Hervé le Panetier and Foulques de Matha, all received grants of land from Henry it is suspected that she was betrayed by people who were close to her, who could have fed information to Henry and informed him of her itinerary. Maingot and De Mauzé were ducal castellans who between them had witnessed seven of Eleanor’s charters during her period in government of Aquitaine from 1168 to 1173. De Maingot was appointed to Le Faye’s former post of Seneschal in 1174. If they were the traitors, Eleanor was hardly in a position to blame them.
It is intriguing to speculate how events might have gone had Henry not captured his queen so early in the game. The Young King and Louis had assembled an impressive force, including the counts of Flanders, Champagne, Boulogne and Blois, a number of lords from Anjou and Maine who had renounced their homage to Henry and a group of English barons. The Young King had made an unpleasant little deal with the King of Scotland, rashly promising him Northumbria in return for an attack from the north and, by September, the Count of Angoulême, Eleanor’s crusading companion Geoffrey de Rançon and the powerful Poitevin lords Guy and Geoffrey de Lusignan had also joined the rebels. Henry was attacked by a hydra-headed enemy, facing over the course of eighteen
months fronts in Normandy, the Vexin, the south-east of England and its northern marches, Poitou and the Atlantic coast of Aquitaine. He had the advantage of his swift army of Brabantine mercenaries, the loyalty and military skill of his bastard son Geoffrey and the tactical inadequacy of Louis, in command of the disparate rebel forces, who, though personally brave, was no general. Recalling Eleanor’s complaints about Louis’s monklike tendencies, would she have advised the Young King differently had she been free?
By the end of September 1174 it was all over. The uprising had mostly consisted of sieges and castle-taking, and as usual the real victims were the peasants and townspeople, with Normandy being hit particularly hard. Henry’s settlement with his sons, decided at Montlouis near Tours, was a combination of generosity and viciously brilliant diplomacy. He forced the King of Scotland to pay homage to him as a vassal and to surrender five important castles, gave half the revenues of Poitou and Brittany to Richard and Geoffrey respectively and granted the Young King a more substantial allowance and two castles in Normandy — but none of the power he craved. Richard was given the task of subduing the rebels in Aquitaine, where he began to acquire his magnificent martial reputation. Henry was magnanimous, however unwisely It was only Eleanor who remained unforgiven.