Category Archives: The Normans

Richard Fitzgilbert-de Clare-Lord of Clare and Ceredigion. Forefather of the de Clare Earls of Hertford and Gloucester

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Cardigan Castle, National Library of Wales, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Richard of Tonbridge’s grandson Richard was the eldest son of Gilbert FitzRichard who was given the Lordship of Ceredigion by King Henry I provided he could take and hold it. After his father’s death Richard inherited assorted lands in England and Wales including the Lordships of Clare and Ceredigion. Richard paid a relief of £43 6s and 8d to enter Ceredigion(1) which interesting as it recognised the king’s authority to make the grant, which later marcher lords refuted, but whilst the records are very specific about the finances they are a little on the murky side as to whether Richard was the first Earl of Hertford or not but it’s generally accepted than neither King Henry or King Stephen elevated the baron to an earldom. Like his younger brother Gilbert, Richard was loyal to King Stephen and he benefited from that loyalty but not to the extent that Stephen was prepared to extend his land holdings in Wales – which was in ferment.

In 1136 Richard travelled through the borders in the direction of Ceredigion and was ambushed and killed . His body was transported back to Kent and buried in Tonbridge Priory which was his foundation. In between times Richard’s widow, the sister of Earl Ranulf of Chester, was forced to take shelter in Cardigan Castle before being rescued and returned to England.

Richard’s son Gilbert became the 1st Earl of Hertford whilst his younger brother Roger succeeded as the second earl. A daughter married into the Percy family. William Percy’s mother was a member of a Welsh royal family so the union had less to do with securing alliances in Yorkshire than establishing networks of kinship on the marches and in Wales. Other daughters married the earls of Lincoln and Devon reflecting the loyalties of the Anarchy between King Stephen and Empress Matilda. As the former was loyal to Stephen whilst the latter was created Earl of Devon by the Empress Matilda and turned pirate in the Isle of Wight on the empress’s behalf. Lucy de Clare was his second wife.

Richard’s descendants held the earldoms of Hertford and Gloucester until 1314 when Gilbert de Clare the 8th earl of Gloucester and 7th earl of Hertford was killed at Bannockburn. His widow, Maud de Burgh, protested pregnancy for the next three years until King Edward II called time on the possibility of there being a male de Clare heir to inherit the title.

(1) ed. White et al, p.255

White, Eryn Want, Jenkins, Geraint H., Suggest, Richard (eds.), Cardiganshire County History Volume 2: Medieval and Early Modern Cardiganshire. (Cardiff:University of Wales Press, 2019)

Walter Gifford – Lord of Longueville

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The Gifford arms – Gules (red) three lions passant (walking with right foot raised) argent (silver)

The Lord of Longueville in Normandy was a man who accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. He was granted 107 Lordships of which 48 were in Buckinghamshire. His son, also named Walter, is usually styled 1st Earl of Buckingham. It should be noted that father and son are sometimes confused because of the names and the lack of clarity about dates of birth and death. Suffice it to say there were two Walters and the records are a tad on the dodgy side leading to some confusion in the available secondary sources.

Walter like many of William the Conqueror’s trusted companions was a kinsman via Gunnor the wife (more Danico or hand fasted wife) of Duke Richard I of Normandy. William of Jumiéges provides the information about Walter’s mother. He was instrumental in the defence of Normandy. He may also have been a diplomat on William’s behalf as he can be found going on a pilgrimage to St Iago de Compostella in Spain – it may have been a cover for a visit to the King of Galicia. When Gifford returned from Spain he gave the duke a horse according to some sources. He was at the Council of Lillebonne where William revealed his intention to invade England and he provided thirty ships for William’s invasion fleet and a hundred men.

Despite Giffard’s advancing age by the time of the Norman Conquest, though we don’t know exactly when he was born, he was offered the honour of carrying the duke’s standard at the Battle of Hastings. Gifford declined the honour on the grounds of his age and because he wanted both hands free. Apparently William was suitably impressed with Giffard’s response and by the knight’s bravery on the field although he did require rescuing by William himself according to one story.

As might be expected having spent his life on the battlefield Gifford was quite keen in atoning for his sins so founded a monastery at St Michel de Bolbec in 1079.

The family were powerful both in terms of running the state and the church. One of Walter’s sons became the Bishop of Winchester during the reign of King Henry I having served as William Rufus’s chancellor. His daughter Rohese married the second son of Richard of Tonbridge, another of William’s kinsmen and a key political player of the period. He died soon after 1085/86 and his son was a Commissioner for the Domesday Book of 1087. Rohese is another of the women mentioned in the Domesday Book as a landholder in her own right. Eventually half the honour of Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire which was originally part of her father’s English estates would be passed to her descendants. William Marshal became Lord of Long Crendon by right of his wife Isabel de Clare.

Just to add an extra note of caution Walter was not the only Gifford to arrive in England in 1066. His brother Osborne also took part in the Battle of Hastings and he received land in Gloucestershire. According to the Roll of Battle Abbey the Giffards of Brimsfield and Chillington descended from Osborne.

Burke, Bernard. The Roll of Battle Abbey, Annotated. (E. Churton, 1848)

Planché, James Robinson. The Conqueror and His Companions. (London: Tinsley brothers, 1874)

Medieval barons and earls – the Clare family

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Tonbridge Castle Gatehouse by N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Duke Richard I of Normandy had many illegitimate children – Godfey, the eldest of the the duke’s natural children received Brionne from his father – demonstrating the practice of using illegitimate children to build a network of loyalty. Godfrey died in about 1015 and Brionne passed to his own son Gilbert but the county of Eu which Godfrey received from his half-brother Duke Richard II passed to William, one of Duke Richard I’s other children.

Gilbert became increasingly important during the rule of William the Conqueror’s father Robert and adopted the title Count of Brionne. He continued to agitate for the return of Eu which he gained in 1040 with William’s death. Unfortunately for Gilbert he was assassinated the same year and his own sons Richard and Baldwin fled to Flanders. Brionne as well as Eu was lost.

The FitzGilberts took part in the Norman conquest of England and did very nicely out of it. Baldwin can be found as the Sheriff of Devon and held Exeter, Okehampton and many other manors in the West Country. Richard was even more influential. He served as chief justices with William de Warenne in 1075 and received large amounts of land including Clare in Suffolk which comprised something like 127 knights’ fees as well including estates in Essex, Surrey and Kent The Conqueror even found his kinsman a wealthy bride in the shape of Rohese Gifford – her dowry included lands in Huntingdon and Hertfordshire (I think they married before the conquest in about 1054?) The marriage to Rohese continued to pay dividends for the de Clare family as they eventually received half of the Gifford estates.

Richard built castles at Tonbridge in Kent, Clare (the Victorians tried to put a train line through it) and Bletchingly in Surrey. Richard FitzGilbert was called Richard de Clare after the vast honour of Clare but also known as Richard of Tonbridge after his castle in Kent – this was the Domesday’s Book preferred name for Richard. However, following William I’s death in September 1087 de Clare joined with his feudal overlord (and potential half-brother but let’s not go there) Bishop Ovo to rebel against William Rufus in order to place Rufus’s older brother Robert Curthose on the throne.

Tonbridge was besieged for two days and de Clare was forced to surrender. Tonbridge did not come out of the experience well. Rufus had it burned. de Clare was sent off to live in the monastery at St Neot’s in Huntingdonshire where he died in 1090-91. He and Rohese re-founded the priory shortly after the Norman Conquest.

After Richard died his estates were divided between his two sons – one held the land in Normandy whilst his younger son inherited the English estates – thus avoiding the difficulties of owing allegiance to both William Rufus and Robert Curthose.

Gilbert FitzRichard did not necessarily get on well with William Rufus but when King Henry I ascended the throne in 1100 following an unfortunate accident in the New Forest the de Clare family fortunes looked rather more rosy. One of the possible reasons for this hypothesised by various writers was that Walter Tirel who ‘accidentally’ shot William Rufus was married to Gilbert’s sister Adelize – there is no positive proof that there was a plot. It’s all very circumstantial but the de Clare did well out of Henry I’s reign.

http://www.tonbridgehistory.org.uk/miscellany/lowy_of_tonbridge.htm

Altschul, Michael. A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares, 1217-1314. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2019)

Round,J. H., ‘The Family of Clare’, The Archaeological Journal, Vol. 56 2nd series Vol 6 (1899)

C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Strange Death of William Rufus’, Speculum, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 645-46

Click to access 016-03.pdf

The Royal House of Wessex – Scotland’s and England’s Kings since St Margaret

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It’s sometimes helpful to see something in a diagrammatic form to make sense of what’s happening. Beginning with the Royal House of Wessex -King Æthelred was married twice. His second wife was Emma of Normandy who was the mother of Edward the Confessor . Æthelred had a brood of sons by his first wife but the one we need to look at is Edmund Ironside who briefly co-ruled England with King Cnut before being murdered in 1016 whilst in the toilet if the chroniclers are to be believed – and for those of you who like the gory details the assassin was given his orders by Edmund’s own brother-in-law Eadric Streona who was possibly one of the least pleasant political figures in English history, which is saying something as there’re plenty of contenders.

Cnut now claimed the whole of England and married the widowed Queen Emma. He may have hoped that Edmund Ironside’s sons Edward and Edmund would be quietly bumped off when he sent them overseas. Edward the Exile as he became known had three children, only two feature on my table. He was invited back to England by his uncle, Edward the Confessor who succeeded King Cnut’s sons Harold Harefoot (the son of Cnut’s hand fasted wife but now’s not the time to go into that) and Harthacnut (the son of Emma.) Edward the Exile died a very short time after landing on English shores and the suspicion is that he was also bumped off – but in a rather more subtle way than his father.

Whilst he was in exile he married Agatha of Hungary. The couple had three children (yes I know there’re only two on the diagram.) The child I’m interested in today is St Margaret. She married Malcolm Canmore after she fled to Scotland following the Conquest. Her daughter Edith married King Henry I, changed her name to Matilda and was the mother of the Empress Matilda. Every monarch since King Henry II has been descended from the Royal House of Wessex.

The descent of Scottish kings is more complex but it is, I think, also true to say that every king since King David I has been descended from the Royal House of Wessex. King David fathered a line that led to the eight-year old Maid of Norway who died after making the sea crossing from Norway to the Orkneys in 1090. There was no direct claimant to the Scottish Crown- but there were very many contenders. The First Interregnum began whilst King Edward I of England looked at the thirteen competitors who had a claim to the Crown. The man Edward chose, John Balliol was descended from King David on his mother’s side of the family tree. The House of Bruce was also descended from King David. Unsurprisingly the Stewarts are also descended from King David. One of Robert II’s ancestors was the base born daughter of William the Lion and another married the daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon – a title which King Henry I of England gave to King David and which he passed on to his son to avoid the complications of vassalage and overlordship

St Margaret’s ancestry – British Library BL Royal 14 B VI

The Earl of Cornwall –

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King Henry I

Reginald de Dunstanville, or Reginald FitzHenry, or Rainald rather than Reginald, was one of Henry I’s illegitimate sons by Sybilla Corbet.  The Complete Peerage calculates Sybilla´s identity from the charter under which “Reginaldus, Henrici Regis filius, comes Cornubiæ” granted property to “Willielmo de Boterell, filio Aliziæ Corbet, materteræ meæ” which he had granted to “Willielmo de Boterells in Cornubia, patri…predicti Willielmi” on his marriage, witnessed by “Nicholao filio meo…Herberto filio Herberti, Baldwino et Ricardo nepotibus meis, Willelmo de Vernun, Willielmo fratre meo…Hugone de Dunstanvill…”.

He was born circa 1110 , so after Henry vowed to give up mistresses when he married Edith/Matilda of Scotland.  His path followed that of many illegitimate children of the monarchy – his title and wealth came through a marriage arranged to an heiress in this case Beatrice FitzRichard the daughter of an important Cornish landowner. Reginald became Lord of Cardinham through the marriage. Having said that most sources indicate that the marriage took place in 1140 – five years after the death of Henry I. In 1141 Reginald found himself stuck in his castle in Launceston whilst Alan of Richmond roamed the county at the behest of King Stephen. There was also the small matter of an argument with the Church which involved knocking down some building work at Launceston Priory paid for by King Stephen.

Launceston Priory https://launceston-tc.gov.uk/the-council/town-council-properties-services/launceston-priory-ruins

But I’m jumping ahead of myself. When Henry I died in 1135 Reginald was fighting in the Contentin and did not return to England until 1138. Reginald was a key supporter of his half-sister Matilda in her claim to the throne according to the Orderic Vitalis which identified him as “fratre suo Reginaldo comite Cornubiæ.”  She named him Earl of Cornwall in 1141.  The earldom of Cornwall had originally been given by William the Conqueror to Robert, Earl of Morteyne but the Morteyne or Moreton family lost the title in the reign of Henry I. Reginald certainly fought for his sister. His presence is recorded at the rout of Winchester when Robert of Gloucester was captured. Some historians identify Robert as being Reginald’s full brother but Weir identifies Henry I’s favourite illegitimate son as the child of an unknown woman from Caen. Whatever the case the number of charters identifying Reginald as the son of the king demonstrate that Reginald knew that it was important to emphasise that his power and his land ownership came from his blood and that which was given to him by his royal father.

Empress Matilda

Reginald wrested power in Cornwall back when Stephen’s alternative earl – Alan of Richmond – was captured at the Battle of Lincoln. He very sensibly opted to apologise to the Church as well. Ultimately Reginald served not only his sister but also his nephew Henry II. Records show that Reginald held 215 knights fees in Cornwall – manors capable of supporting a knight, his family, his staff and providing equipment necessary for war.

Reginald had five legitimate children and two illegitimate ones but like his father before him died with out legitimate sons so the title went into abeyance before Henry II passed it to his son John. For a brief time Reginald’s illegitimate son Henry Fitz-Count held the title but he resigned it to Henry III in 1219.  

In 1173 he was granted a charter to free burgesses of Truro. It was a this time he also became Sheriff of Devon. Launceston Priory benefited from links to the Dunstanville family as can be seen in its chartulary. The name Dunstanville is from Reginald’s grandmother Adeliza de Dunstanville. Reginald witnessed six charters for the priory.

Reginald died at Chertsey in 1175 and was buried in Reading Abbey where his father was buried.

And as a complete aside the ruins of St Stephen’s Priory Launceston were completely lost after the dissolution until they were uncovered during the Nineteenth century when a railway was built.

 Thompson, Kathleen. “Affairs of State: the Illegitimate Children of Henry I.” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003): 129-51.

The Lion of Justice and his women…or rather his children

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King Henry I

Henry I sometimes known as the Lion of Justice was married to Edith of Scotland, the daughter of Malcolm III and St Margaret meaning that the royal house of Wessex once again sat upon the throne, or at least quite close to it. And if you’re wondering who Edith might have been, she is known in the history books as Matilda on account of the fact that the Normans found Edith a foreign sounding name.

Henry went on to have somewhere int he region of 24 illegitimate children, many of them born to mothers unknown to history. William of Malmsebury who was a fan of Henry’s noted that “Throughout his life he was wholly free from impure desires.” The statement implies that William must have led a very sheltered or blinkered life! Until we read on to discover that the only reason Henry had so many mistresses was for “the sake of issue.” Poor King Henry I – fancy having so many women simply to increase the numbers of children with royal blood in their veins. It was a tough job but someone had to do it. It’s interesting though that an illegitimate child was a useful commodity so far as the Crown was concerned. It reflects the fact that the status of illegitimate children changed with the passage of time.

Female children could be married off in exactly the same way as legitimate ones to cement an alliance or a treaty. Sybil, the daughter of Sybil Corbet, married King Alexander I of Scotland in 1107. Another daughter, Rohese, married Henry de la Pomerai. He was a loyal supporter of the king, so the marriage may have held an element of reward for loyal service in drawing him closer to the Crown by ties of blood. Interestingly the half siblings of the Empress Matilda can be identified as bolstering support for her in the West Country during the Anarchy reflecting the importance of family ties (somewhat at odds to my more usual Wars of the Roses theme.)

William de Breteuil had no legitimate children. One of Henry’s daughters – Juliane- was married off to Eustace de Pacy, William’s illegitimate son. The marriage brought with it promises of support for Eustace against any other of William’s relations. It was the children of this union who were blinded and their noses split on the orders of their uncompromising grandfather when one of William’s hostages, the son of Ralph Harenc was blinded. Juliane attempted to kill her father with a cross bow after her two daughters were cruelly maimed.

History Jar Podcast

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Those of you on my class mailing list or the History Jar Facebook page will already know about this. Thank you for the very kind feedback that I’ve received. The first episode is a sprint through Norman monarchs. There’s also a mnemonic included for those folk who are delving into their historical knowledge to do some home history schooling of younger school age children.

The school history curriculum in England and Wales includes the Norman Conquest in Year 7 (first year of secondary school) and it can also appear at Key Stage One or Two. The rest of the Norman period is unlikely to be covered until Key Stage 4 which may include Anglo Saxon society, the ways in which Edward the Confessor’s death was problematic and Norman government amongst other things.

Mnemonic’s are sentences that help you to remember a list. You take the first letter from each word in the phrase or sentence to help recall the list: e.g. Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain is the best known mnemonic which helps you to remember the order that the colours appear in the rainbow.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-history-jar-podcast/id1509714747

You should see the History jar and on the right hand side an arrow. Click on the arrow to listen. I can only apologise about the sound quality – I’m amazed the mic worked and as its the first one I’ve ever done I don’t think that I’m going to win any prizes for delivery. In future I shall position Paddington Bear in the front row before I start recording as a substitute for my lovely ladies and gentlemen. Hopefully I shall get better with an audience – even a solitary furry audience with a blue duffel coat and red wellies.

Good Queen Matilda – more on Edith of Scotland

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Edith of Scotland, or Matilda as became upon her marriage to Henry I on Sunday 11th November 1100 was an example of how a medieval queen was supposed to behave. One bishop described her as a mother to her people. Weir makes the point that traditionally she has been seen as a pious queen without much of a political role but as with much of history, over time this view has been reappraised.

She advised the king, attended his meetings and worked for the reform of the Church as well as working with Anselm and maintaining a balance between her husband and his principal cleric. There are thirty-three charters in her own name. Her seal, pictured above is the earliest seal in England for a queen. It is in the hands of the British Library.

It was Matilda in 1103 who persuaded Henry to repeal the curfew laws introduced by his father. The idea had been to stop Saxon plotting. At eight o’clock every night the curfew bell tolled and people were required to damp down their fires – it also prevented fires in towns made largely from wood.

In addition to being pious, caring for the poor and interceding on behalf of the wider population it was also essential for a medieval queen to have children. On 31 July 1101 she gave birth to a daughter called Euphemia who did not live for long. By the summer of the same year she was pregnant again. We know this because Henry summoned the Abbot of Abingdon, a renowned physician, to care for his wife. On 7th February 1102 Matilda gave birth to another girl who was baptised as Aethelice (Adelaide) but she is known to history as the Empress Matilda. The year after that William was born.

There was another son called Richard. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle says that he died young whereas other sources state that a second son of Matilda’s called Richard drowned with the sinking of the White Ship. The fact that Henry also had an illegitimate son called Richard doesn’t much help matters.

After the birth of a male heir (and possibly a spare) Matilda had no more children. William of Malmesbury says that the king and queen stopped sharing a bed by common consent. Perhaps Matilda wasn’t terribly impressed with Henry’s love of the ladies. Princess Nest gave birth to one of Henry’s children in 1103. Weir speculates that Henry may have been put off from the wife he was described as ardently desiring because of the fact she spent so much time caring for the ill and the poor. An early example of social distancing perhaps? Weir goes on to suggest several other possible reasons – all in the realms of speculation but it is evident that the couple fell out over Church matters when Anselm was forbidden to return to England in 1104.

Despite this, Henry appointed Matilda as his regent when he went to Normandy that summer. Weir observes that William the Conqueror left his wife as regent and Henry now did the same – demonstrating that both men respected their wives abilities to maintain order in their absence. Henry gave Matilda the “power to judge crime.”

In 1110 Matilda’s daughter henceforth known as the Empress Matilda left England to marry Henry V- the Holy Roman Emperor.

Matilda died on the 1st May 1118 at Westminster Palace and buried in the abbey where she had spent much time in private prayer during her lifetime. She is also associated with Waltham Abbey and Malmesbury as both of them were part of her dower. Henry did not attend the funeral as he wasn’t in England at the time of her death.

Following Henry I’s death Good Queen Maud’s reputation took a bit of a battering when her nephew by marriage, Stephen of Blois, insisted that she had been a nun when Henry married her which meant that Matilda’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, was not the legitimate heir whatever her father said.

Edith/Matilda of Scotland

Weir, Alison (2017) Queens of the Conquest. London: Jonathan Cape

The Essex forest of Henry I

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The most famous Royal Forest is the New Forest in Hampshire created on the orders of William the Conqueror. Orderic Vitalis went so far as to suggest that the deaths of his son William Rufus and grandson Richard were essentially divine punishment for destroying the villages that were there before – William the Conqueror was admittedly dead himself by that point! The Anglo Saxon Chronicle also had something to say on the subject:

….established a great peace for the deer, and laid down laws therefor, that whoever should slay hart or hind should be blinded. He forbade the harts and also the boars to be killed. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if he were their father. He also ordained concerning the hares, that they should go free. His great men bewailed it, and the poor murmured thereat, but he was so obdurate, that he recked not of the hatred of them all, but they must wholly follow the King’s will, if they would live, or have land, or even his peace.’

Like his father and brother, Henry I enjoyed hunting. In 1136 King Stephen issued a charter saying that land which had been designated forest during the reign of Henry I would be returned to the status it had held prior to coming under Forest Law. Essentially whereas William Rufus had clung to the income from vacant bishoprics and abbeys, Henry had effectively increased his domain and taxation potential by turning lands into Forest which then came under the arbitrary control of the monarch.

From the above paragraph it should be evident that forest didn’t necessarily mean trees; it could include moorlands, waste ground and there were even townships that came under forest law. Forest comes from the Latin word “forests” which basically means “outside.” It was unenclosed land.

The key was that anyone living in an area designated as royal forest came under a set of regulations separate from common law and a set of fines and taxes different from elsewhere. if Stephen sought to win support by handing back land it wasn’t something that unduly bothered his successors. By 1189 something like a 1/3 of England came under Forest Law. The king appointed forest officials who seemed to have spent a lot of time collecting fines. There were laws against hunting, enclosing land, taking wood, grazing animals – all of them had penalties which the forest officials exacted on their master’s behalf. At its worst the penalty for hunting a deer or sheltering someone who had hunted a deer was death.

Some of England forests had been designated royal forests during the Saxon period. Edward the Confessor had a forest at Windsor and another in Essex. There were approximately 68 royal forests at the time of the Conquest. However, the laws were not as restrictive as they became after the Conquest.

Essentially William the Conqueror argued that no one owned the deer and the boar so therefore they must belong to the king. If they belonged to the king then if anyone else took them it was theft. He was however willing to grant royal licence to hunt. It also meant that if the king was chasing a deer, for example, it didn’t matter if the deer left the king’s land and fled across ground belonging to someone else. The animal was still the king’s and he had the right to chase it wherever he wanted. It is thought that the king deemed red deer, boar, hares and wolves as his. Later on the range of animals that could be chased only by the king was extended.

Today the Royal Forest that comprised all of Essex by the end of the reign of Henry I is recalled by the fragment that remains as Epping Forest which in turn was part of Waltham Forest. Hatfield Forest remains the only in tact royal hunting forest in Essex. There was also Writtle Forest near Chelmsford and Hainhault Forest which ultimately ended up in the hands of Barking Abbey until the the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

I find it fascinating that only about 20% of Essex was wooded at the time of Domesday but that by 1100 all of it was under Forest Law. King Stephen returned the land but Henry’s grandson also named Henry was swift to reclaim royal forests. In fact, Forest Law was one of the factors leading to Magna Carta.

Young, Charles R. (1979) The Royal Forests of Medieval England

The White Ship – history as poetry and moral message

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The sinking of the White Ship

I’ve posted about the sinking of the White Ship on 25 November 1120 before. The boat sank off Barfleur causing the death of Henry I’s only legitimate son the 21 year old William Adelin.

Henry returned to England from Normandy on a separate vessel leaving his son, other family members and younger court elements enjoying themselves – drink was involved. Two monks who should have travelled with the group decided not to journey with the group describing them as “riotous.” The Orderic Vitalis estimates that there were three hundred people aboard when it sank. There was only one survivor. Many, if not most, of England’s leading families were hit by the event. One theory put forward at the time was that the ship sank because there were no clerics on board…

As a result of this disaster Henry, who it was said never smiled again, had to marry for a second time in the hope of a male heir. Even so he was faced with the knowledge that even if he did beget an heir with his young wife that in all likelihood he would die before the child achieved adulthood. The only other alternative was his daughter Matilda. Ultimately Henry made his barons swear that they would support her after his death.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti was sufficiently inspired by the episode to put pen to paper. The result was published in 1881. It is not a short ballad! It can be found here: https://excellence-in-literature.com/the-white-ship-by-dante-gabriel-rossetti/

I’ve also discovered this poem by Felica Hemens written in 1830 portraying Henry living out the rest of his life in the knowledge that his son was dead – which just goes to show that there’s always something new to find!

HE NEVER SMILED AGAIN

The bark that held a prince went down,
The sweeping waves rolled on;
And what was England’s glorious crown
To him that wept a son?
He lived—for life may long be borne
Ere sorrow break its chain;—
Why comes not death to those who mourn?—
He never smiled again! 

There stood proud forms around his throne,
The stately and the brave,
But which could fill the place of one,
That one beneath the wave?
Before him passed the young and fair,
In pleasure’s reckless train,
But seas dashed o’er his son’s bright hair—
He never smiled again! 

He sat where festal bowls went round;
He heard the minstrel sing,
He saw the Tourney’s victor crowned,
Amidst the knightly ring:
A murmur of the restless deep
Was blent with every strain,
A voice of winds that would not sleep—
He never smiled again! 

Hearts, in that time, closed o’er the trace
Of vows once fondly poured,
And strangers took the kinsman’s place
At many a joyous board;
Graves, which true love had bathed with tears,
Were left to Heaven’s bright rain,
Fresh hopes were born for other years—
He never smiled again!

            Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans, 1793-1835

Poets who drew on historical events not only wanted to tell a story they wanted to draw on deeper emotional truths. In the case of Rosetti, Boos makes the point that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner probably had a part to play. Essentially Rosetti is using the event to look at the deeper darkness of the world. i.e. the perils of princes forgetting God and going on booze fuelled rowing activities. This is of course not so far from the medieval chroniclers of the period who were keen to chronicle current affairs from the point of view of fitting God into the overarching message or to frame their work as moral fables.

These days we are more likely to look for a conspiracy theory which is exactly what can be found in Victoria Chandler’s article – and very interesting reading it makes.

 “The Poetical Works of Mrs. Hemans : electronic version”, University of California, British Women Romantic Poets Project. Retrieved 2020-03-04.

Boos, Florence S. The poetry of Dante G. Rossetti: A critical reading and source study

Chandler, Victoria, “The Wreck of the White Ship: A Mass Murder Revealed?”, The Final argument. The imprint of violence on society in medieval and early modern Europe, eds. Kagay, Donald J., and Villalon, L. J. Andrew (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998)