Claudia Gold - King of the North Wind

All this year King Henry stayed in Normandy because of the war with the king of France and the count of Anjou and the count of Flanders. Because of these hostilities the king was very much distressed and lost a great deal both in money and also in land. But those who troubled him most were his own men, who frequently deserted and betrayed him and went over to his enemies and surrendered their castles to them to injure and betray the king. England paid dear for all this because of the various taxes, which never ceased in the course of all this year.35

Henry could not afford repeated unrest, both on his lands on the continent and among his barons in England, jostling for position should Henry display any weakness. Now it was useful to him, and far more important than his daughter’s desires, that she marry into the Angevin family – the House of Anjou.

Meanwhile William Clito’s star was in the ascendant. Louis the Fat not only arranged a brilliant marriage for him to Joanna, daughter of his queen’s cousin, Rainer of Montferrat; he also gave him Flanders, after the murder of Count Charles the Good in March at the castle church in Bruges.36 It was now imperative to Henry I that his nephew not increase his already bloated power base, and be prevented from forming an alliance with the Angevins. Matilda’s marriage to Geoffrey was the only way to secure the loyalty of the count of Anjou. She had no choice but to agree.

There was an impediment, however. Fulk V, Geoffrey’s father, still ruled in Anjou. It was vital to both Matilda and her father that she marry a count, and not the son of a count. And so to enable Geoffrey’s marriage to Matilda, Henry executed a masterstoke of diplomacy. With Louis the Fat, in a brief shifting of alliances, he persuaded Baldwin II of Jerusalem that the widowed Fulk was the ideal candidate to marry his daughter Melisende. Fulk had already been on crusade, in 1120, and had extensive knowledge of the politics of the region. Fulk, they promised, would rule the crusader kingdom jointly with Melisende when Baldwin died. It is doubtful that Melisende in Jerusalem had any more choice than Matilda in England in deciding her future husband.

The promise of Jerusalem was enticement enough for Fulk. In May 1127, Hugh of Payens, the Master of the Knights Templar, set out from Jerusalem for Anjou, to discuss the marriage.37 Meanwhile Matilda’s half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, and her friend, Brian Fitz Count, travelled with her to her formal betrothal to Geoffrey. The wedding was delayed while Fulk settled his plans to take the throne in Jerusalem and waited for the envoys to arrive; they did so in the spring of the following year.

On 10 June 1128, King Henry knighted Geoffrey in Rouen in preparation for his lofty marriage. One week later the wedding was celebrated at the Angevins’ lavish Romanesque Cathedral of St Julian at Le Mans, Geoffrey’s capital. It had been consecrated when Fulk left for his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1120 and now, eight years later, Fulk obligingly departed for Jerusalem for good, enabling Geoffrey to become the new count of Anjou.

Pope Honorius II wrote to King Baldwin, describing the selflessness with which Fulk left his domains to Geoffrey; he ‘set aside his barons and the innumerable people under his rule in order to serve God’.38 Fulk and his children then travelled to Fontevraud Abbey, to allow him to say goodbye to his daughter Matilda too, who had retired there, and he left for his new kingdom. He was married to Melisende as soon as he arrived in the Latin Kingdom. Fulk would never see his son Geoffrey or his other children again.

Just a month after the wedding, Henry I’s nephew and enemy, William Clito, obligingly died in battle, at the end of July. For Henry, the succession issue appeared to have passed its crisis.

What was Matilda’s new husband like? He was very good-looking – Geoffrey was called ‘Le Bel’ or ‘the Handsome’ by his contemporaries. But as he was not a king or churchman, we know little of his personality other than what we can infer from his actions and the sources.

He was one of four legitimate children born to Count Fulk V of Anjou and his wife, Aremburga of Maine. His siblings were Matilda, William Atheling’s widow; Sibylla; and their younger brother, Helias. Geoffrey and his brother were brought up together, in the charge of his father, close friends and allies, and tutors. When he was very young, Fulk began to teach him to govern; he witnessed his first charter when he was only three years old. Once Fulk made his decision to leave Anjou for Jerusalem, he embarked on a period of intensive ‘ducal’ training for Geoffrey.39

We know that Geoffrey became an exceptional military tactician, honed by years of war with his own barons, fighting the Normans, and even his fending off a rebellion by his brother Helias in 1145. We know of his admiration for the classics, of his interest in learning and of his desire to ensure that his sons received the best education available. We know of his loyalty to his closest supporters, above and beyond that of simply furthering his own power base, and that he preferred to surround himself with immensely capable men. We also know that he fulfilled only the conventional notions of piety and was most likely not a religious man.

But these character traits were to reveal themselves only later. In the first year of her marriage, Matilda was unhappy and dissatisfied, probably with Geoffrey’s extreme youth and inexperience. He may have treated her with arrogance and disrespect. She is more or less absent from the Angevin charter records. She did not fulfil the role that Geoffrey’s mother Aremburga had, witnessing her husband’s charters, issuing her own, and acting as his regent.

Matilda did not remain with her husband for long. She waited for Henry I to leave Normandy for England the following summer, and then she fled. She and Geoffrey had been married for little over a year.

We can only speculate as to why the marriage broke down after just thirteen months. The Durham Chronicler said that it was Geoffrey who ‘repudiated’ Matilda; she presumably would have had the political sense and experience to stay in her marriage, however loathsome.40 Medieval royal and aristocratic marriages were rarely about love and personal choice, but rather about political and territorial gain.41 Even modern historians such as Josèphe Chartrou tell us that, as Matilda had a ‘detestable’ character, the fracture must have been her fault.42 Matilda’s biographer, Marjorie Chibnall, however, believes that it was a youthful and inexperienced Geoffrey who asked Matilda to leave.

The couple were soon forced together again. At a great council held at Northampton on 8 September, it was agreed that Matilda should return to Geoffrey. The dissolution of a marriage with the heiress to England and Normandy would not have been in the interests of the count of Anjou. Now he asked for Matilda to come back to him, and promised to treat her with respect.43 Before she departed, the king coerced his magnates once again to swear to make her queen on his death.

Matilda and Geoffrey had been made to reconcile; now they determined to make their marriage work, at least politically. Two years later, at Le Mans on 5 March 1133, a son was born. His parents chose 25 March, Lady Day – the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin – as his christening day. For much of the medieval period Lady Day, one of the four quarter days, was celebrated as the New Year. On this auspicious day at the Cathedral of St Julian in his parents’ capital city, Le Mans, he was baptised by Bishop Guy of Ploërmel. Matilda and Geoffrey named the boy after his maternal grandfather: Henry.

III

For a medieval audience, the occasion was drenched in symbolism. It was New Year; but it was also a commemoration of the day narrated in the Nativity, when Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that Jesus had entered her pure body, just as baby Henry was now entering the pure body of the church. And just as Jesus had a very special mother, so this baby had a special mother too – Matilda. The source of Henry’s power would come from both Geoffrey and Matilda’s inheritance to him. But its mystique would not be through his father, a count, but through his mother, an empress and daughter and named successor of a king. Henry would style himself ‘FitzEmpress’ (son of the empress) for the rest of his life.