Free The Plantagenets by Dan Jones Page A

Richard and Geoffrey – by Christmas 1158 Henry and Eleanor had four healthy children below the age of four. Three more children would survive to adulthood: Eleanor (b.1162), Joan (b.1165) and John (b.1167). A gap of four years, in which Henry was away from his wife, managing the further reaches of his realm, separated the two bursts of procreation.
    While Eleanor devoted herself to her first long cycle of pregnancies, Henry travelled frequently about his kingdom, addressing issues of government and diplomacy whilst finding time to indulge his great passion for the hunt. As he travelled, Henry grew familiar with the best locations both for government and the chase. Very swiftly after his arrival, work began to transform the hunting lodges of Clarendon and Woodstock into full-blown palaces to match the sumptuous comfort of any in Europe.
    But all the palaces in the world could not answer the pressing question of the 1150s: how could the new king heal a country so deeply damaged by civil war? England had supplied Henry Plantagenet with what the chronicler Richard of Poitiers described as ‘the honour and reverence of his royal name’. But this rich land, with its ports and towns, its hard-drinking, hard-working populace and its ancient history, needed to be rescued from the doldrums. Henry must reimpose on his new realm the royal authority enjoyed by his grandfather Henry I. It amounted effectively to a mission of reconquest.

    The realm was a shambles. Under Stephen royal revenue had fallen by two thirds. Royal lands, castles and offices had been granted away, often in perpetuity. The county farm – a staple royal income collected by the sheriffs – was running dismally low. Earldoms with semi-regal powers proliferated, and in places the country was not only ungoverned but seemingly ungovernable. Relations between Church and Crown were in stalemate following a long-running feud between Stephen and Archbishop Theobald over their respective jurisdictions. Fortresses built as the Normans had conquered south Wales had fallen into the hands of barons and native rulers. The far north of England was effectively ruled by the king of the Scots.
    Henry’s first task was to stamp out the few embers of rebellion. His coronation charter had quite deliberately avoided confirming any liberties or possessions that had been granted by Stephen, either to churchmen or to lay magnates. Anything granted since Henry I’s reign was therefore held to be illegitimate, unless reconfirmed by the new king. He ordered the return to the Crown of all castles, towns and lands that had been granted away under Stephen, followed by an abolition of the earldoms that Stephen had granted to his supporters. In many cases, confiscated lands were granted back to their holders, but Henry was sending a clear message: lordship now began with him, and everyone owed their position and their possessions to the Plantagenet Crown.
    At the same time, directly after Christmas 1154, Henry set in motion a rapid decommissioning programme to enforce the destruction of illegal castles and the expulsion of foreign mercenaries. Hundreds of castles fell in a juddering demolition project during the course of 1155. The sound of falling timber was accompanied by a rush from the shores of Flemish soldiers, so despised by the chroniclers and ordinary people alike.
    Henry had to take serious direct action only against a few of the magnates. William of Aumerle, who had cemented his position in Yorkshire so as to make it virtually untouched by royal influence, was deprived of his lands and of Scarborough castle, the towering stone stronghold that sat on a headland, dominating sea approaches andthe windswept north-east of the realm. Roger of Hereford, a Welsh Marcher lord of the sort disinclined to obey royal authority, was persuaded to surrender castles at Gloucester and Hereford by the sensible mediation of his cousin, Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford.
    Henry of Blois, bishop of