THE DEMON’S BROOD
Also by Desmond Seward
The Hundred Years War
The Wars of the Roses
The Last White Rose
THE DEMON’S BROOD
DESMOND SEWARD
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2014
Copyright © Desmond Seward 2014
The right of Desmond Seward to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78033-177-5 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-47210-564-6 (ebook)
Printed and bound in the UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Cover design by Bob Eames
For Frederick, Kristin, William and Julian
Acknowledgements
Among those who helped, I should particularly like to thank my agent Andrew Lownie for encouraging me to persevere with so daunting a project. I owe another debt to my copyeditor, Elizabeth Stone, for helping me to make the book more readable. I am also grateful to the staff of the London Library for unfailingly courteous and imaginative assistance, and to the staff of the British Library.
Contents
Family trees
Introduction: The Demon and Her Heirs
Timeline
Part 1
The First Plantagenets
1 The First Plantagenets
2 The Eagle – Henry II
3 The Lionheart – Richard I
4 The Madman – John
5 The Aesthete – Henry III
Part 2
Plantagenet Britain?
6 The Hammer – Edward I
7 The Changeling – Edward II
Part 3
Plantagenet France?
8 The Paladin – Edward III
9 The Absolutist – Richard II
10 The Usurper – Henry IV
11 The ‘Gleaming King’ – Henry V
Part 4
Lancaster and York
12 The Holy Fool – Henry VI
13 The Self-Made King – Edward IV
14 The Suicide – Richard III
15 Postscript – The Kings in the National Myth
Notes
Index
Introduction:
The Demon and Her Heirs
The French Kings of England rose . . . to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all neighbouring nations.
Lord Macaulay1
In 999 a Plantagenet forebear, Count Fulk the Black of Anjou, had his young wife, Elisabeth of Vendôme, burned alive in her wedding dress in the marketplace at his capital of Angers, in front of the cathedral, after catching her in flagrante with a goatherd.2 A few days later, all Angers went up in flames, torched by unknown hands, and the townsmen suspected Fulk. There is no record of what happened to the goatherd.
The Black Count was just as merciless on campaign, slaying and destroying, robbing and raping. When, as an old man, he put down a rebellion by his equally ferocious son, Geoffrey the Hammer, he made him crawl around the floor in front of his courtiers, saddled and bridled like a horse, begging for mercy, while his father screamed, ‘You’re broken in, broken in!’ Yet on pilgrimages to the Holy Land Fulk ordered his servants to flog him through the streets of Jerusalem as he howled for God’s forgiveness. The Angevins decided that a devil’s blood must run in the veins of their sinister lord.
A story grew up that, while hunting in the depths of a forest, Black Fulk’s father or grandfather had met and married on the spot a lady of unearthly beauty but mysterious origin, called Melusine, who bore him four children. She shocked her husband and his court by rarely attending church – if she did, she left Mass after the reading of the Gospel, deliberately missing the most sacred moment, the Consecration. Finally, her husband ordered his knights to intervene: next time she tried to leave they seized hold of her cloak. Melusine reacted by slipping out of the cloak to fly up into the air, vanishing through a church window, with two sons under her arm. Neither the demon countess nor the boys was ever seen again.3 But she left behind the other sons.
This is the account given by Gerald of Wales, who was a courtier of Henry II and his son Richard I. Gerald’s friend, Walter Map, tells a similar tale in his Courtiers’ Trifles, but tactfully does not mention the Plantagenets. He describes the ‘loveliest of girls’ who captured the heart of ‘Henno with the Big Teeth’ and bore him four beautiful children. She too always left Mass before the Consecration, until, when bathing with her maid, her mother-in-law spied on her and, seeing them both change into dragons, had them sprinkled with holy water by a priest, whereupon they shrieked horribly and disappeared through the roof.4 (Behind this lie two very ancient European myths, those of the wood or water sprite and of the succubus – a female demon who seduces men in dreams.)
According to Gerald of Wales, the tale of Melusine was frequently told by King Richard, who said that with such an ancestor it was not surprising that he and his brothers quarrelled. ‘We come from the Devil and we’ll end by going to the Devil’, joked the Lionheart.5 What might be termed diabolical genes were part of the family inheritance. ‘The things we call aristocracies and reigning houses are the last places to look for masterful men,’ John Buchan suggested, just after the First World War. ‘They began strongly, but they have been too long in possession. They have been cosseted and comforted, and the devil has gone out of their blood.’6 Yet until the very end the devil never abandoned Plantagenet blood.
The royal family who reigned longest over the English, descendants of Fulk and the demon, had a strange surname – Plantagenet – which they took from a twelfth-century count who wore a sprig of broom-flower (Planta genista in medieval Latin) on his cap. Although the family did not adopt it as a cognomen until 1460, it is used throughout this book to stress the continuity of the line. Academics restrict ‘Plantagenet’ to the kings from Henry II to Richard II, but the Lancastrians and Yorkists were no less members of the dynasty.
These men from Anjou, who ended as the most English of the English, not only spearheaded the merger of Normans and Anglo-Saxons into a nation but saved the country from disintegrating into separatist parts. Henry II rebuilt England after the anarchy left by King Stephen, although there were further attempts to undo this good work, not least with the revolt of Henry’s sons in the 1170s; and even as late as the fifteenth century rebel magnates allied with the Welsh leader Owain Glyndwr to divide England between them, to be defeated by Henry IV. The Plantagenets began the colonization of Ireland and conquered Wales, if they failed to absorb Scotland. During the Hundred Years War they overran north-western France, creating an Anglo-French dual monarchy – Paris was occupied for nearly fifteen years, Normandy for thirty. However, it all ended in defeat abroad and bankruptcy at home. Divided between Lancaster and York, the family was destroyed by the series of dynastic murders and battles that became known as the Wars of the Roses, its last king dying at Bosworth in 1485.
Although they produced gifted rulers, four Plantagenets were murdered, two came close to deposition, and another was killed in battle by rebels – as Richard I had predicted, t
here was a diabolical streak until the end. Shakespeare’s tragedies have shaped the way in which we see no less than six of them.
This book is an attempt to provide non-specialists with a short, readable, easily accessible overview of the whole dynasty in one volume. It is based on the major contemporary sources and also reflects recent research – I use quotations from earlier historians when they are more telling than those from modern academics. At the same time, it is a very personal interpretation of my reading across the years – and no doubt, some people may disagree with how I see Henry V or Richard III.
Timeline
1152
Henry Fitz-Empress marries Eleanor of Aquitaine
1153
Treaty of Wallingford – King Stephen recognizes Henry as heir to the English throne
HENRY II
1162
Thomas Becket becomes Archbishop of Canterbury
1164
Constitutions of Clarendon
Thomas Becket goes into exile
1166
Assize of Clarendon
1170
Murder of Thomas Becket
1172
Henry conquers Ireland
1173
Rebellion of Henry’s son, the ‘Young King’
1174
Defeat of the Young King’s rebellion
1187
Henry quarrels with his son and heir, Richard
1189
Richard openly rebels, aided by Philip II of France – death of Henry II
RICHARD I
1190–2
Richard on Crusade
1193
Richard, a captive of the emperor
1194
Richard’s return to England
1194–9
Richard’s war in France against Philip II
1199
Death of Richard I
JOHN
1203
John murders his nephew, Arthur of Brittany
1204
Philip II conquers Normandy, Anjou, Maine and most of Poitou
1205
English barons refuse to help John reconquer his lands in France
1207
Stephen Langton made Archbishop of Canterbury – John refuses to accept him
1208
Pope Innocent III places England under an interdict
1210
John campaigns in Ireland
1211
John subdues Llewelyn ap Iorwerth in north Wales – Llewelyn counter-attacks
1212
English barons plot to murder John
1213
John becomes the pope’s vassal
1214
John’s campaign in France wrecked by his German allies’ defeat at Bouvines
1215
John forced to grant Magna Carta
1216
Civil war between John and the barons, who invite Louis of France to replace him
1216
Death of John
HENRY III
1216
Henry crowned at Gloucester
1217
William Marshal routs the barons and the French at Lincoln
Louis of France concedes defeat
1219
Hubert de Burgh becomes justiciar
1230
Henry’s unsuccessful campaign in France
1231
Systematic attacks on papal tax collectors in England
1232
Dismissal of Hubert de Burgh
Stephen de Segrave becomes justiciar – government run by Peter des Roches
1234
Henry rules as his own first minister
1242
Henry’s defeat at Taillebourg
1255
Henry accepts the crown of Sicily for his son Edmund
1258
The Provisions of Oxford
1264
The Mise of Amiens – Louis IX decides in favour of Henry
Simon de Montfort refuses to accept Louis’s decision
Henry defeated at Lewes by Simon, who rules
England as Lord Steward
1265
The Lord Edward defeats and kills Simon de Montfort at Evesham
1270
Edward goes on Crusade
1272
Death of Henry III
EDWARD I
1275
First Statute of Westminster
1277
Defeat of Llewelyn ap Gruffydd
1279
Statute of Mortmain
1282
Final conquest of Wales
1285
Statute of Merchants
1290
Expulsion of the Jews
1291
Parliament of Norham to discuss Scottish succession
1294
Philip IV invades Gascony
Rebellion of Madog ap Llewelyn
1296
Edward conquers Scotland
1297
William Wallace defeats the English at Stirling
Barons refuse to fight in Gascony
1298
Edward destroys Wallace’s army at Falkirk
1304
All Scotland submits to Edward
1306
Robert the Bruce revolts against English rule
1307
Death of Edward I
EDWARD II
1308
Exile of Edward II’s favourite, Piers Gaveston
1312
Murder of Gaveston
1314
Scots defeat the English at Bannockburn
1318
Edward accepts ordinances limiting his power
1322
Earl of Lancaster defeated at Boroughbridge and executed
1322
Edward defeated by Scots at Old Byland
1322
Despensers’ tyranny
1326
Queen Isabella and Mortimer invade – fall of the Despensers
1327
Edward II abdicates
EDWARD III
1329
Treaty of Northampton recognizes Scottish independence
1330
Edward III overthrows Mortimer
1333
English archers annihilate the Scots at Halidon Hill
1337
Edward claims the French crown
1340
Edward defeats the French fleet at Sluys
1346
English defeat the French at Crécy
English defeat the Scots at Neville’s Cross
1347
English capture Calais
1348
Black Death
1349
Ordinance of Labourers
1355
Black Prince’s campaign in France
1356
Black Prince defeats the French at Poitiers, capturing King John II
1360
Treaty of Brétigny gives Aquitaine to the English
1369
Charles V ‘confiscates’ Aquitaine
1372
Castilians defeat English fleet off La Rochelle
1373
Failure of John of Gaunt’s campaign – loss of Aquitaine
1376
Death of the Black Prince
1377
Death of Edward III
RICHARD II
1381
The Peasants’ Revolt
1387
Royal army defeated by Lords Appellant at Radcot Bridge
1388
The Merciless Parliament purges Richard’s supporters
1389
Richard regains control
Peace with France
1394
Richard’s Irish campaign
1397
Murder of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester
Richard’s revenge on the Lords Appellant
1398
Richard’s despotism
Gaunt’s so
n, Bolingbroke, is exiled
1399
Gaunt dies and his estates are confiscated
Richard’s new campaign in Ireland
Bolingbroke seizes the throne
HENRY IV
1400
Owain Glyndwr’s revolt
1403
Henry defeats the Percys at Shrewsbury
1405
Archbishop Scrope’s rebellion
Henry struck down by disease
1407
French invade Gascony, unsuccessfully
1408
Northumberland and Lord Bardolf defeated and killed at Bramham Moor
1409
Surrender of Harlech Castle – defeat of Owain Glyndwr
1411
English expedition to help Burgundians against Armagnacs
1412
Henry quarrels with his heir, Prince Henry