Dark History of the Kings & Queens of England E-Book

Brenda Ralph Lewis

• Herausgeber: Amber Books Ltd
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: Dark Histories
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 365

Beschreibung

Despite its reputation as the longest established in Europe, the history of the English monarchy is punctuated by scandal, murders, betrayals, plots, and treason. Since William the Conqueror seized the crown in 1066, England has seen three civil wars; six monarchs have been murdered or executed; the throne of England has been usurped four times, and won in battle three times; and personal scandals and royal family quarrels abound. Dark History of the Kings & Queens of England provides an exciting and dramatic account of English royal history from 1066 to the present day. This engrossing book explores the scandal and intrigue behind each royal dynasty, from the ‘accidental’ murder of William II in 1100, through the excesses of Richard III, Henry VIII and ‘Bloody’ Mary, to the conspiracies surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, William and Kate Middleton’s on-off courtship before they married, and Prince Harry’s years of partying, girlfriends and Las Vegas strip poker, before his 2018 marriage to American divorcée Meghan Markle. Carefully researched, superbly entertaining and illustrated throughout with more than 200 colour and black-and-white photographs and artworks, this accessible and immensely enjoyable book highlights the true personalities and real lives of the individuals honoured with the crown of England—and those unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Leseprobe

DARK HISTORY OF THE

KINGS & QUEENS OF ENGLAND

BRENDA RALPH LEWIS

This digital edition first published in 2012

Published byAmber Books LtdUnited HouseNorth RoadLondon N7 9DPUnited Kingdom

Website: www.amberbooks.co.uk Instagram: amberbooksltd Facebook: amberbooks Twitter: @amberbooks

Copyright © 2012 Amber Books Ltd

ISBN: 978 1 908696 36 6

PICTURE CREDITSBridgeman Art Library; Corbis; Fortean Picture Library; The Kobal Collection; Topfoto/The Heritage Image Partnership; Mary Evans Picture Library; Rex Features; Topham Picturepoint; TRH Pictures; Patrick Mulrey Map by Patrick Mulrey Family tree illustrations by Mark Franklin

All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purpose of review no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher. The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the author or publisher, who also disclaim any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

CONSPIRATORS AND CONQUERORS: A DIRTY BUSINESS – The Normans

CHAPTER 2

UNHOLY ALLIANCES – The Plantagenets Part I

CHAPTER 3

CRUSADING KINGS AND TROUBLESOME BARONS – The Plantagenets Part II

CHAPTER 4

LOVERS, LAND AND TREASON – The Plantagenets Part III

CHAPTER 5

INSANITY, CIVIL WAR AND CHILD MURDER – The Plantagenets Part IV

CHAPTER 6

CONSPIRACY AND BLOODSHED – The Tudors Part I

CHAPTER 7

DECAPITATION AND DIVORCE – The Tudors Part II

CHAPTER 8

TURMOIL, TERROR AND FATAL ILLNESS – The Tudors Part III

CHAPTER 9

GLORIANA AND GORE – The Tudors Part IV

CHAPTER 10

ROUNDHEADS AND REGICIDE – The Stuarts Part I

CHAPTER 11

A NOT-SO-MERRY MONARCHY – The Stuarts Part II

CHAPTER 12

MISTRESSES AND MADNESS – The Hanoverians Part I

CHAPTER 13

BATTLE ROYAL – The Hanoverians Part II

CHAPTER 14

SCANDAL BEHIND CLOSED DOORS – The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

CHAPTER 15

A LOOSE CANNON – The Windsors Part I

CHAPTER 16

A MODERN MONARCHY? – The Windsors Part II

Index

INTRODUCTION

The British royal family is considered by many to be the most prestigious in the world.

Yet its sensational and often lurid past contains deeds so dark and dastardly that they were covered up and remained secret for centuries.

Over the last thousand years or so, many of the kings and queens of England have played their part in betrayals, regicides, plots, treason, atrocities, and revolts. The English throne has been usurped four times. There have been five pretenders to the crown, two of them impostors. Four kings have been forcibly deposed. All were subsequently murdered. One of them was publicly executed.

Kings and queens of England have been responsible for thousands of executions and deaths. Tudor king Henry VIII set out to exterminate every surviving member of the Plantagenets, the dynasty that preceded his own. And Henry’s daughter, Queen Mary I, burned 300 Protestants at the stake.

English royalty was a regular target for conspiracies and assassination attempts. Queen Elizabeth I was at constant risk from plotters who wanted to kill her and replace her with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a Catholic conspiracy to blow up King James I, his government and the Houses of Parliament.

Two kings of England went mad. One was kidnapped, and another was mercilessly bullied by his own nobles. King Henry VIII, who married six times, hounded his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to her death in 1536. Later, he executed his second and fifth wives.

While King George IV was Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, he incurred so many debts that he had to be bailed out – twice – by Parliament. His father, King George III, derived little pleasure from his family of 15 children, many of whom were enveloped in scandal. Two of his offspring were suspected of incest, and his sons provided him with an army of illegitimate grandchildren.

Henry VIII, shown here with Pope Leo X, was a sincere Roman Catholic, but that did not stop him from breaking his ties with Rome when the pope would not grant him a divorce.

Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, tried to raise the moral standards of royalty, but they were frustrated by their eldest son, the future King Edward VII, who enjoyed nothing more than drinking, gambling and womanizing to excess.

In 1936 King Edward VIII nearly wrecked the monarchy when he abdicated to marry the unsuitable, twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. More recently, the royal family has been rocked to its foundations by the Charles and Diana scandals.

This book pulls no punches in telling the whole shameful story of royal deeds that were never intended to be revealed.

A detail from the invitation to the fireworks display held to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.

A late fifteenth-century portrayal of the death of William II. The King is shown lying on the ground with the fatal arrow in his chest at the top left of the picture.

1THE NORMANS

CONSPIRATORS AND CONQUERORSA DIRTY BUSINESS

Exactly what happened in the New Forest in southern England on August 2, 1100, remains a mystery, despite the fact that it was broad daylight and there were several eyewitnesses.

On that morning King William II, nicknamed Rufus for his red hair, red face, and violent temper, ate an early breakfast and set off for the forest, equipped with bows and arrows for a day’s hunting. His close friend Walter Tirel went with him.

Once inside the forest, the royal hunting party spread out in search of prey. Tirel remained with the king and soon the beaters accompanying the hunt drove a herd of stags toward the pair. King William shot at them but missed. According to a witness named Knighton, the king shouted to Tirel: ‘Draw, draw your bow for the devil’s sake or it will be the worse for you!’ It has long been accepted that Tirel did as he was told, but his arrow ricocheted off a tree, missing the stag and striking the king in the chest.

The English chronicler and historian William of Malmesbury, writing a few years later, described what happened next.

An account of King William II’s death from ‘A Chronicle of England’, published between 1300 and 1325. William sits on a bench, an arrow in his chest, but still, curiously enough, very much alive.

‘On receiving the wound, the king uttered not a word; but breaking off the shaft of the weapon where it projected from his body, fell upon the wound, by which he accelerated his death.’

Horrified, Tirel rushed to the king, but he was dead. Now Tirel’s only concern was to escape. He leapt onto his horse and spurred it on through the dense forest, galloping furiously without stopping until he reached the English Channel and crossed to France. From there, Tirel vehemently denied killing the king and continued to deny it for the rest of his life.

A royal death foretold

When news of the king’s death spread, many people in Europe claimed they had experienced premonitions of the event. In Belgium, Abbot Hugh of Cluny revealed he had received a warning on the night of August 1 that the king of England would die the next day. A monk told that on August 2, while his eyes were closed during prayer, he had had a vision of a man holding a piece of paper bearing the message ‘King William is dead’. When the monk opened his eyes, the vision disappeared.

The circumstances of the king’s death remained shrouded in secrecy. Tirel, the prime suspect, was never punished in any way, and most people were inclined to believe his denials. Yet no further investigations into the death took place, nor was any evidence ever submitted. So the death of King William II went down in history as a tragic accident.

A murder in the family

The story quickly spread that the king’s death was really a murder that had been disguised as an accident. The disrespectful way in which the king’s body was handled after the fatal hunt seems to point to a murder plot. A lowly charcoal burner named Purkiss was ordered to remove the corpse. Purkiss placed the king on a wooden cart and covered him with an old work cloth. Then he trundled the cart to Winchester Cathedral where William was hastily buried by the monks. This was certainly no funeral fit for a king.

Motives for murder

While Tirel was generally presumed innocent, there were several suspects who might indeed have wanted King William dead. The king had never married, and the heirs to the throne were his two brothers: Duke Robert of Normandy, known as Curthose for his short legs, and Prince Henry, known as Beauclerc because he could read and write. Of the two, Henry was the more likely culprit. He had been one of the hunting party and had probably witnessed the king’s death.

As he had been present at the grisly scene, Henry had had the opportunity to act quickly and grab what he most wanted – the throne of England – before Robert, or anyone else, could stop him. He wasted no time mourning his dead brother. Instead, he went straight to Winchester, where he seized the royal treasure, then raced the 60 miles to London and had himself crowned king. It was all over within three days. By August 5, Henry was England’s new sovereign.

Resentful and greedy, Henry had plenty of reasons for having wanted the king dead. When his father, King William I the Conqueror, had died in 1087, Henry had been overlooked and received neither titles nor land. Robert Curthose, on the other hand, was awarded the family duchy of Normandy, in France, and William was placed on the throne of England. All Henry received was £5,000 in silver. Although this was a huge amount of money in the 11th century, it was not nearly enough for a cunning, hard-nosed prince who felt he had been wronged.

Archers, seen here in a reenactment, were the ‘artillery’ of medieval armies. They could fire a barrage which filled the air with a mass of deadly barbs that could fell knights in chainmail – and kill their horses, too.

A CULT KILLING?

MANY CHURCHMEN BELIEVED that William, who was upheld as a Christian king, was really a pagan – a practitioner of sorcery and witchcraft. In medieval times people were terrified of witchcraft, so much so that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dared not even hint at such inflammatory gossip. This was all due to William’s grandfather, Robert, Duke of Normandy. The duke’s father, it was believed, was the devil. That is why the duke was nicknamed Robert the Devil, making King William II the great-grandson of the devil.

EVIDENCE OF BLASPHEMY

He certainly acted in a devilish manner. He was a blasphemer and often swore ‘by the devil’. Nor had he any respect for the Church. When he attended services, he spent his time doodling or gossiping with his courtiers. William was also homosexual. This was considered a scandalous sin in the 11th century. One chronicler described William’s ‘camp’ court in scathing terms:

‘…then there was flowing hair and extravagant dress, and was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mind their gait, to walk with loose gesture and half naked.…’

In 1094, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, publicly accused King William of sodomy and other ‘unnatural sins of the flesh.’ Most people tended to side with Anselm, who was later made a saint. With this in mind, it was easy to believe that the ‘devil’ king was indeed a secret pagan.

Centuries later, this belief formed part of a theory that William II was killed by a pagan cult that practiced royal sacrifice. In her book The Witch Cult in Western Europe, published in 1921, Doctor Margaret Alice Murray wrote that this cult was widespread throughout pre-Christian Europe. According to the author, the Norman family itself belonged to a cult that demanded the ritual killing of the monarch for the good of the community.

This seems in line with King William’s strange behavior on the night before his death. He behaved as if he knew that he was going to be the target of a cult killing. On the evening of August 1, 1100, the king ate and drank more than usual and slept badly.

AN UNWELCOME GIFT

Next morning, William was given a surprise gift of six newly made arrows. He gave two of them to Walter Tirel, saying cryptically: ‘Walter, take good care to carry out the orders I gave you.’ Some have suggested that Tirel, too, belonged to the pagan cult. A monk named Serlo warned the king not to go hunting that day, but William ignored his advice. Minutes after he reached the forest, he was dead.

Sensational gossip about William’s death continued for many years. In 1107, the tower of Winchester Cathedral collapsed. The fact that William was buried there was blamed for the disaster. God, it was said, had cursed the king for his many sins.

The twelfth century was a very superstitious time, in which the remains of holy men were believed to have supernatural powers. This 15th-century chronicle shows Norman knights at prayer before the relics of Saint Valery.

ROUGH JUSTICE

HENRY’S CRUELTY WAS LEGENDARY throughout the country. For instance, in 1118, he demonstrated his idea of justice when he refused to execute one Herbert, a treasurer in the royal household. Herbert had been plotting against Henry, but the king was fond of Herbert so, instead of executing him, he had him blinded and castrated. With a king capable of such rough justice, even powerful men such as the landowning barons thought it best to defer to his wishes.

A representation of King Henry I. Though more refined and educated than other Normans, he was just as brutal.

Robert Curthose was also suspected of wanting the king dead, but it is unlikely that he was involved in the affair. Robert dearly wished to rule England and had been deeply disappointed when his father chose William to succeed him on the English throne. After all, Robert was the elder brother. Twice Robert had tried to seize the kingdom – at the start of King William II’s reign in 1087, and again in 1088 – and twice he had failed.

But William the Conqueror had had good reason for passing Robert over. William had won his crown at the battle of Hastings in 1066, and from then on ruled England by force. He considered Robert weak and easily led. It would have been far too easy for his stronger-willed barons to get the better of him – and that was the last thing William the Conqueror had in mind. The Conqueror wanted a brute like himself to succeed him. That brute was not Robert. It was William.

Ultimately the wily Henry I found it easy to outwit Robert. At the time of William II’s death in the New Forest, Robert had been halfway across the world in the Holy Land, fighting in the crusades. He returned to find his younger brother well and truly in the saddle. Besides claiming the throne, Henry had married Matilda, daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland, who would soon be pregnant with their first child, the heir to Henry’s throne.

There was no place for Robert at court, and eventually Henry imprisoned him for life until his death in 1134 at the age of 81. Robert never tried to escape, and spent his time learning Welsh and writing poetry.

Justice for the people

Other than the Norman royal family there were many ordinary people who would have been glad to see King William II dead. They had good reason. The Norman conquest of England after 1066 had been a savage business. Anyone who resisted Norman rule was cruelly punished. In the rebellious north of England, for instance, Normans burned crops and destroyed hundreds of villages. They slaughtered cattle and sheep, and killed inhabitants by the thousands. Only when the whole area was laid waste were the Normans satisfied.

Hand-to-hand fighting, as seen in this reenactment, was a bloody and barbarous business. Although Norman soldiers wore the chainmail, helmets and kite-shaped shields shown here, they were not immune to the blows of swords and axes.

Normans were just as brutal about the rights they claimed to English forests. Throughout history local peasants had relied on the forests to gather wood for their fires and kill animals for food. Now, anyone who entered the forests faced appalling punishments.

Poachers who shot deer had both hands cut off; even if they merely disturbed the deer they were blinded. And intruders who played music to draw the deer out into the open suffered the same fate. This, though, did not stop the peasants, who continued to enter the forest illegally. So it is possible that the arrow that killed King William II in 1100 was fired by a trespasser hidden among the trees.

Perversion, blasphemy and pagan sacrifice

The list of King William’s enemies did not end there. The English Church hated him, too. Churchmen wrote the chronicles and histories of the time, and took every opportunity to give William a bad ‘press’. This was the entry for the year 1100 in the most famous of all the medieval histories – the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

This nineteenth-century engraving of King William II Rufus bears a close resemblance to the picture of King Stephen on page 19. Neither picture was a contemporary portrait and no one really knows what either of these kings looked like.

‘He was very harsh and fierce with his men, his land and all his neighbours and very much feared. He was ever agreeable to evil men’s advice, and through his own greed, he was ever vexing this nation with force and with unjust taxes. Therefore in his days all justice declined … he was to nearly all his people hateful, and abominable to God.’

Divine retribution

William was not the only royal in his family to suffer. People believed that King Henry I and the entire Norman dynasty were also cursed by God. This seemed to be confirmed when Henry suffered the worst disaster that could befall a medieval monarch.

In medieval times, a king was required to be a warrior. This was why he needed male heirs to succeed him. Henry had sired around 25 children by eight or more mistresses. But they were illegitimate and therefore could not inherit the English throne.

So it was a terrible blow for Henry when his only legitimate son, Prince William, drowned in the English Channel on November 25, 1120. Henry’s courtiers did not dare tell him for two days. When they did, he fainted from shock.

That left Henry’s daughter Matilda as his only legitimate heir. This was a great problem for the king. The 12th century was dominated by men and war, and women were regarded as unsuitable to reign as queens. Henry’s first wife, Matilda, was dead, so he remarried, hoping to have more sons. But Henry, now 53, was unable to father more children. So the king resolved that his only heir Matilda would, after all, reign.

Although she was only 19, Matilda was very much like her father. She was intelligent, forceful, well-educated and self-confident. She was also highly disagreeable. Henry felt sure that Matilda could continue his policy of strong-arm rule. But the decision was not his alone. Matilda had to be accepted by the country’s powerful barons. The barons of England and Normandy were semi-independent, with their own private armies, fortified castles, and extensive landholdings. These were powerful men who were not afraid to voice their opinions to the king.

Henry realized that the barons were much too pig-headed to welcome the idea of a woman reigning over them, but he was desperate. So he commanded the nobles to swear an oath before God accepting Matilda as his rightful successor. Henry made them swear four times – in 1127, 1128, 1131, and 1133. Although the barons resented being forced to take the oath, they were only too well aware that Henry was not a man to be refused.

Matilda is betrayed

The barons, however, were just biding their time. As soon as King Henry died in 1135, they went back on their oaths, but not because Matilda was a woman. The barons knew she was more than a match for them and that they would never be able to get the better of her. They had their eyes on a far more malleable candidate.

King Henry I lost Prince William, his one and only surviving son and heir, when the White Ship sank in the English Channel in 1120. The tragic story was told in this manuscript produced two centuries later, in 1321.

Stephen de Blois, Matilda’s first cousin, was a gentleman. He was kind-hearted, good-natured, and tolerant. In other words, he was a promising soft touch. This did not mean, though, that Stephen lacked cunning. As soon as he heard that his uncle, Henry I, was dead, he left France for England. Within three weeks he had raised enough support for his claim to the throne among barons, government officials, and the Church. He also seized the royal treasure. On December 22, 1135, Stephen had himself crowned king.

The result was civil war, because Stephen was a usurper with no legal right to the throne. Also, Matilda had her supporters among the barons who believed in her legal succession. They soon lined up against Stephen but they had to wait for Matilda. She finally brought her army across the Channel to England from Normandy in 1139.

The civil war was a miserable affair. Neither Stephen nor Matilda was strong enough to win a final victory. So, the war ended as a succession of long sieges of castles and other strongholds. The effects on England were devastating. Towns and villages were pillaged by both sides. Refugees wandered the countryside, seeking shelter in monasteries and nunneries. Trade slumped and the barons took advantage of the anarchy caused by the civil war to raid, rob, and rape. A contemporary chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, described the scenes of suffering:

In December 1142, Empress Matilda and four of her knights escaped from confinement in Oxford Castle wearing white robes to disguise themselves against the thick snow. King Stephen’s guards were too busy carousing to notice them.

‘There was universal turmoil and desolation. Some, for whom their country had lost its charms, chose rather to make their abode in foreign lands; others drew to the churches for protection, and constructing mean hovels in their precincts, passed their days in fear and trouble.

‘Food being scarce, for there was a dreadful famine throughout England, some of the people disgustingly devoured the flesh of dogs and horses; others appeased their insatiable hunger with the garbage of uncooked herbs and roots…. There were seen famous cities deserted and depopulated by the death of the inhabitants of every age and sex, and fields white for the harvest… but none to gather it, all having been struck down by the famine. Thus the whole aspect of England presented a scene of calamity and sorrow, misery and oppression….

‘These unhappy spectacles, these lamentable tragedies…were common throughout England.… The kingdom, which was once the abode of joy, tranquillity, and peace, was everywhere changed into a seat of war and slaughter, and devastation and woe.’

Henry Plantagenet: a new hope for England

The obnoxious Matilda cared nothing for the sorry plight of the population. In June 1141, while she was in London preparing for her coronation, she demanded huge sums of money from the citizens. But the civil war had ruined them and they could not pay.

When officials and bishops tried to explain the situation, Matilda cursed and swore at them. Very soon, London had had enough. A raging mob burst in on Matilda’s pre-coronation banquet at Westminster. They drove her out of the city. She never returned.

The civil war dragged on, but Matilda’s chances of success were fading. In 1148, she finally gave up and returned to Normandy. King Stephen, it seemed, had won. But within five years, fate gave a bitter twist to his success. His eldest son and heir Eustace died suddenly in 1153. His wife, Queen Matilda, had died the year before. Losing his wife and son was too much for Stephen. Although he had other sons, he was too heartbroken to groom them for the throne. Instead, in 1153, he made a deal with Matilda and her 20-year-old son, Henry Plantagenet. Henry was named as Stephen’s successor on the condition that he allow Stephen to remain king in England while he lived.

But Henry did not have to wait long. Less than a year later, on October 25, 1154, Stephen, the last of the Norman kings, died. Now, Henry Plantagenet became the first monarch of the new Plantagenet dynasty.

Henry was a lot like his mother – hot-tempered, masterful, and stubborn. He was also like a time bomb waiting to go off. What followed was the most vicious royal family quarrel England had ever seen. And it was a fight to the death.

This strong, determined-looking king, dressed in armour, is King Stephen. The portrait is somewhat flattering: the soft, gentlemanly and sensitive Stephen wasn’t nearly as resolute as the picture makes him appear.

Canterbury Cathedral, the scene of the brutal murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Henry II was thought to have ordered his knights to kill Becket.

2THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET PART I

UNHOLY ALLIANCES

When Henry II became King of England in 1154, he was just 21 years old. But he was neither an ordinary man, nor an ordinary king. Despite his youth, he had a natural air of command. He was greatly admired and also greatly feared.

Yet 35 years later, Henry was a worn out, sick old man. He died deserted by his family and his barons, and humiliated by his great rival, the king of France. The monk chronicler Gerald of Wales wrote that Henry was ‘without ring, sceptre, crown and nearly everything which is fitting for royal funeral rites.’

How could such a brilliant monarch, one of England’s greatest, come to such a miserable end? It all came down to a single, fatal flaw: Henry’s ferocious temperament. First of all, his fiery nature involved him in the most sensational murder of his time. Later, it made his family and his nobles conspire together to destroy him.

A passionate pairing

Henry II was not only King of England. He also ruled Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Poitou in France. When he married Eleanor, a former queen consort of France, in 1152, he acquired his new wife’s own territory, Aquitaine, the largest duchy in France. Together, these lands made up the Angevin Empire. It stretched from England’s northern border with Scotland down to the Pyrenees mountains in southwest France. No monarch of England ever came to the throne with a more splendid inheritance.

The marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine was a marriage of two dynamic personalities. Sooner or later, a violent clash between them was inevitable. Eleanor was not a traditional royal wife. She was heiress to Aquitaine in her own right, and the former wife of King Louis VII of France. She had tasted power long before she married Henry, who was ten years her junior.

A page from a medieval history of England showing King Henry II, Richard I the Lionheart, King Henry III and King John. Each is holding a representation of a church with which he is associated.

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE: A SCANDALOUS QUEEN

ELEANOR’S FIERCE INDEPENDENCE and wayward nature led, naturally, to accusations of immorality. One of her courtiers, named Andrew, seems to have cashed in on Eleanor’s reputation in a piece of salacious fiction that he wrote in 1186. Andrew’s De Amore or The Art of Courtly Love, was set against the background of Eleanor’s court at Poitiers between 1167 and 1173. Here, according to Andrew, Eleanor and Marie de Champagne, one of her two daughters by King Louis VII, were the focus of a cult that practiced adultery.

Eleanor’s real love life was hardly less sensational. Gossip linked her with her father-in-law, Geoffrey d’Anjou, and with her own uncle, Raymond de Poitiers, the crusader Prince of Antioch. Eleanor’s affair with Raymond was supposed to have taken place when she accompanied King Louis on the second crusade to the Holy Land, where Christians and Muslims waged war over Christ’s birthplace between 1147 and 1149. The smears, however, went even further than this.

‘She carried herself not very holily,’ wrote Sir Richard Baker in A Chronicle of the Kings of England, published in 1643, ‘but led a licentious life; and, which is the worst kind of licentiousness, in carnal familiarity with a (Muslim) Turk.’

Beautiful, charismatic and clever, Eleanor of Aquitaine was too sexy to meet with the approval of the prudish clerics of her day.

None of these credentials equipped Eleanor to conform to the ‘ideal’ consort of her time – the type of wife who stayed in the background while her husband took the limelight, or was expected to put up with her husband taking mistresses. Sometimes, in such circumstances, the wife and mistress actually became friends.

Eleanor was most decidedly not that sort of woman. She was strong-minded, self-confident and very independent. She objected fiercely to King Henry’s numerous affairs and to his two known illegitimate children. When Rosamund Clifford, considered by some to be the great love of Henry’s life, died suddenly in 1176, it was hinted that Eleanor had had her poisoned. Whatever the truth of the matter, Eleanor seems to have paid back her husband in kind by taking lovers of her own.

Hot-headed and unkempt

Henry II was not a regular medieval king, either. In the 12th century, kings needed to be visibly impressive. Henry was hardly that. He had no interest in the out-ward show and fashionable finery that surrounded other kings. Known as ‘Curtmantle’ or ‘short coat’, he was squat, square and freckle-faced. He often appeared unkempt and even grubby, and thought nothing of appearing at court straight from riding his horse, his clothes and boots covered in mud.

King Henry II and Thomas Becket, once personal friends, argued fiercely about the rights of the Pope over the Church in England. In this medieval manuscript their hand movements represent their diametrically opposed opinions.

In a religious age, Henry cared nothing for religion. He frequently missed church services, and when he did attend, he spent his time sketching and chatting with his courtiers. All the same, beneath this rough and casual exterior, Henry II had a personality that hit people between the eyes. He was stubborn, autocratic and a powerhouse of energy, just like his mother. But also like his mother, his temper was terrifying to witness. When in a rage, Henry went completely over the top: his pale eyes became fiery and bloodshot and he would literally tear his clothes apart, fall to the floor and chew the carpet. Luckily for him, in medieval times, ‘carpets’ were made of loose straw.

Anyone who crossed King Henry II was taking a huge risk. The one man who did so, not once but many times, set the scene for an epic tragedy. Henry appointed Thomas Becket as Chancellor of England at the start of his reign in 1154. Although Becket was 15 years older than Henry, the two men were close friends. They went hunting, gaming and hawking together. Henry gave Becket so many estates and royal grants that Becket became a very wealthy man.

Excess and extravagance

Unlike the king, Becket had a taste for the high life. When Henry sent him on an embassy to Paris in 1158, Becket took with him 250 servants, 8 wagons full of provisions and expensive plates, and a wardrobe of 24 different outfits. In England, Becket kept a personal household of some 700 knights and employed 52 clerks to manage his estates. Devoted to the finest foods, he once ate a dish of eels that cost 100 shillings – at the time a phenomenal price for a meal.

Friends become foes

Henry came to trust Becket absolutely. In 1162, Becket became the most important churchman in England when he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. But this was more than just the latest in a long line of royal gifts. Ever since the time of William the Conqueror, the kings of England had tried to diminish the power of the Pope over their realm. Making Becket Archbishop of Canterbury was Henry’s way of putting in place a man who would fend off the Pope’s demands. But if this was what Henry believed Becket would do for him, he was completely wrong.

Instead, a complete change came over Becket. He at once resigned as chancellor. He abandoned the good life and all its pleasures, giving away his expensive wardrobe, his fine plates and exquisite furniture. Instead, he devoted himself to study, prayer and acts of charity.

The fact that Henry’s luxury-loving friend had become an ascetic was startling enough. But Becket’s conversion went deeper than outward show. Instead of backing up Henry in dealings with the Pope, he obstructed the king at every turn.

Accusations and insults

The crunch came when the king demanded that clerks found guilty of crimes in the independent church courts should be handed over to the ordinary, secular courts for punishment. Becket turned this down flat. His relations with Henry, already strained, turned from friendship to black hatred. Henry hit out at Becket by fabricating various criminal charges against him. These included embezzling public funds while serving as chancellor.

When Becket appeared in court, dramatically carrying a large cross, he claimed that, as a churchman, the secular judges had no right to try him. He also appealed directly to the Pope for assistance. Even for Becket, this was going too far. In 1164, realizing his life was in danger he fled to Sens in France.

An engraving of a 12th century crown, which was meant to fit across the wearer’s brow. It might have been worn in battle over the king’s head armour in order to identify him to his soldiers – and his enemies!

Becket’s exile lasted six years. During that time, the king of France and the Pope managed to patch things up between the former friends-turned implacable enemies. This allowed Becket to return to England on December 1, 1170. But deep down his quarrel with the king was not resolved. Once home, Becket proved even more recklessly defiant than before.

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL

AT AROUND 5:00 P.M. ON DECEMBER 29, 1170, Henry’s four knights marched into Canterbury Cathedral where they found Becket at prayer before the altar. In front of a large, frightened crowd of worshippers, they demanded that he cancel the excommunications. Becket ordered them to leave, in no uncertain terms.

Nearby, a young monk, Edward Grim, was watching the scene from behind the altar. Later, he wrote the following account of everything he saw and heard on that tragic evening.

‘“You shall die!” the knights threatened Becket, only to receive the answer: “I am ready to die for my Lord that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace.”’

‘Then,’ wrote Edward Grim, ‘they laid sacrilegious hands on him, pulling and dragging him that they may kill him outside the church, or carry him away a prisoner.… But when he could not be forced away…one of them pressed on him and clung to him more closely. Him he pushed off…crying, “Touch me not, Reginald; you owe me fealty and subjection! You and your accomplices act like madmen!”

Archbishop Thomas Becket was unarmed and at prayer when King Henry’s four knights burst into Canterbury Cathedral and attacked him as he prayed at the altar.

‘The knight, fired with a terrible rage…waved his sword over (Becket’s) head. “No faith,” he cried, “nor subjection do I owe you against my fealty to my lord the king.”

‘Then (Becket), seeing the hour at hand which should put an end to this miserable life…inclined his neck as one who prays and, joining his hands, he lifted them up and commended his cause and that of the Church to God…. Scarce had he said the words than the wicked knight, fearing lest he should be rescued by the people and escape alive, leapt upon him suddenly and with his sword struck him on the head, cutting off the top of the crown…. (Becket) received a second blow on the head, but stood firm. At the third blow, he fell on his knees and elbows…saying in a low voice: “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.”

‘Then the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay (on the ground) by which the sword was broken against the stones and the crown, which was large, was separated from the head.… (Another) knight…put his foot on the neck of the priest and, horrible to say, scattered his brain and blood over the stones, calling out to the others: “Let us away, knights. He will rise no more”.’

The ‘meddlesome priest’, his skull hacked to pieces, his brains splattered on the cathedral floor, was dead. But Henry was still not rid of him. Becket dead became just as irksome for the king as Becket alive. The murder caused anger and outrage throughout Christian Europe. In 1173, Becket was made a saint and a martyr. Canterbury became a place of pilgrimage and the cathedral a shrine to the murdered archbishop.

The scene of the crime can still be seen today, at the altar in Canterbury Cathedral, Kent. Becket’s death was known as The Martyrdom, since he was regarded as a martyr who died for the Church.

Bloodthirsty, headstrong and then remorseful in equal measure, Henry II was a far more hot-tempered and hasty character than this nineteenth-century portrait suggests.

Defiance leads to death

On June 14, 1170, Henry’s eldest surviving son, eight-year-old Prince Henry, had been crowned by the Archbishop of York and became known as the Young King. The crowning of an heir in his father’s lifetime was a failsafe device: it was meant to deter powerful rivals and would-be usurpers. What King Henry had forgotten, or more likely ignored, was the fact that archbishops of Canterbury had a monopoly when it came to crowning English monarchs. As archbishop – even a disgraced archbishop – Becket’s rights had been usurped. He was not prepared to let the insult pass. Instead, he excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the six bishops involved in the Young King’s coronation.

Henry was in Normandy that Christmas, and when the news reached him he flew into one of his terrifying rages, shouting:

‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk? Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’

Four of Henry’s knights, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracey, Reginald FitzUrse and Richard le Breton, took Henry at his word. They crossed to England, arrived at Canterbury whereupon they stormed into the cathedral, fully armed, and slaughtered Thomas Becket. Far from being rewarded for their deed, the four knights were disgraced. They were forced to do penance by fasting. Then they were banished to the Holy Land. But the greatest display of remorse had to come from the king. Soon after the murder, Henry went to Ireland and laid low for a year or more. But the Angevin Empire could not, of course, be properly ruled by a fugitive, so eventually King Henry had to return to England and face the music.

Canterbury Cathedral became a place of pilgrimage after the murder of Thomas Becket. Becket’s shrine was visited by thousands of pilgrims, until it was destroyed by King Henry VIII in the 16th century as an unwelcome reminder of how a subject had defied a king.

King Henry II was made to suffer for the murder of Thomas Becket. Here he is pictured doing penance at Becket’s tomb in Canterbury, a public demonstration of remorse demanded of him by the Pope.

A king is humbled

His punishments were grave, but they were not too damaging, except perhaps to the royal ego. Henry was not excommunicated, though he was banned from entering a church. This would hardly have troubled Henry, who was not particularly religious anyway. In addition, his lands in France were laid under interdict: this meant the protection of the Church no longer applied there. So any rival could invade them. And if that happened, Henry could not seek aid from the Pope. But there was more to come.

On July 12, 1174, King Henry walked barefoot through the streets of Canterbury dressed in sackcloth, the traditional garb of humility. He prayed at the cathedral and was afterwards scourged by 80 monks, who beat him with branches. Sore, bleeding and half-naked, the king spent the following night in the freezing crypt where Thomas Becket was buried. Only after this was Henry given a pardon for the sin he had committed.

Unfortunately, King Henry did not learn very much from the Becket affair. He certainly made no attempt to tame his temper or to think before speaking. Far from it. Three years after Becket’s murder, his fiery nature led him into another, much more damaging, quarrel. This time, it led to disaster.

Apple of the king’s eye

In 1169, at Montmirail, some 40 miles east of Paris, King Henry shared out his vast empire between three of his four surviving sons. Prince Henry, heir to the throne and now aged 14, would have England and Normandy. Richard, 12, the future King Richard the Lionheart, received his mother’s Duchy of Aquitaine. The fourth surviving son, Geoffrey, aged 11, was to have Brittany in France. The youngest, John, received no lands, for he was only two years old when the arrangements were made. But this was not due to any lack of fatherly affection.

John, who was given the nickname of ‘Lackland’, was Henry’s best-loved child. The king made several efforts to provide for him. These efforts included marriage to a wealthy French heiress, but it never came about. In 1177, when John was aged 10, Henry made him Lord of Ireland. Eight years later, John visited Ireland. But he spent his time frittering away his father’s money on luxury living, and annoyed the Irish by poking fun at them.

Family feud

As for Henry’s other sons, they fully anticipated ruling the lands they had been given. They also expected to receive the revenues their lands produced. But King Henry had never intended his sons to have any real power in his lifetime. They were simply figureheads. All power and revenues remained in their father’s hands.