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INTRODUCTION Anglo-Norman England Has HOSLER_f2_1-7 1/17/07 9:36 PM Page 1 INTRODUCTION Anglo-Norman England has long been a fertile subject for the study of medieval military history. Its preeminence is due in large measure to the events of 14 October 1066, during which William, duke of Normandy, wrested control of England away from Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The result was a wave of changes that permanently altered the land of the Anglo-Saxons. Many of these changes directly influenced the methods by which the English crown conducted warfare, including the advent of a baronage and the importation of a feudal system of military obligation, both introduced after William’s coronation on Christmas 1066. William brought a policy of conquest and domination to England that defied compar- ison to the former Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The Old English kings fought primarily defensive battles to preserve the Heptarchy against Viking and Danish expansion from the ninth to the eleventh century. In these endeavors the Saxons were only partially successful; the strong West Saxon-Kentish state built by Alfred (879–899) grew to include lands in the uncertain regions of Northumbria and Mercia, but the advent of the Danelaw and the return of Viking invasions in the late tenth century eroded the stability of the country. By the eleventh century Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) and his earls were struggling to maintain England’s borders in the rebellious west and north. In the years after Hastings, William solidified his reign through military operations such as the 1070 ‘harrying of the north’ with the Scots, as well as diplomatic moves that gained him the fealty of Welsh princes in 1081. Furthermore, because William retained his ducal rights to Normandy, under his rule England’s interests were formally linked to the Continent. Following his death in 1087, the Anglo-Norman royal line would mirror the hereditary success of the French Capetians, and until the deposition of Richard II on 29 September 1399 England’s crown enjoyed, with only one exception,1 1 This was the reign of Stephen of Blois, the nephew of Henry I (1100–1135), who ruled during the ‘anarchy’ in which he struggled with Henry I’s daughter and co-claimant Matilda; her son, Henry fitz Empress, gained the crown in 1154 and restored the original line of succession, albeit through a female. There were also HOSLER_f2_1-7 1/17/07 9:36 PM Page 2 2 introduction direct familial succession through its Anglo-Norman, Angevin, and Plantagenet kings. These and other achievements followed the Norman conquest of England. William the Conqueror’s victory at Hastings has captured the imaginations of student and soldier alike, for it was one out of a rel- atively small number of major, decisive battles fought during the Middle Ages. Harold’s defeat meant the loss of life and crown as well as the transfer of England to an already-powerful duke, and few moments in history were encapsulated in the course of such a singular event. William’s career in Normandy and Brittany before 1066 set the stage for England’s entrance into the context of conti- nental warfare. The first proper encounter between the Anglo-Saxon infantry and the Norman bowmen and cavalry in 1066 has likewise been regarded as a case study for the conduct of eleventh-century warfare, and the tactics applied at Hastings have been the foci of Anglo-Norman military study for decades. William’s disputes with the Capetians and other local rulers in Brittany, Maine, and Normandy did not disappear after his coronation; king or not, he was still legally a vassal of Philip I of France (1060–1108), so the governance of these other provinces remained points of contention.2 Yet the English crown offered resources enough for William to improve his military footing and retain his holdings in Europe, and for the first time England became directly involved in continental politics. William’s sons William Rufus (1087–1100) and Henry I both intervened in continental lands with varying degrees of success, but the military nature of those struggles departed significantly from the decisive Battle of Hastings. Instead, long campaigns were settled bloodlessly in treaties, pitched battles were forsaken in favor of land-scourging tac- tics, and castles replaced armies as the effective measure of territo- rial control.3 These changes and others have encouraged the historical study of warfare during the remainder of the Anglo-Norman period and beyond. The present study addresses a portion of this timeframe succession disputes between William Rufus and his brother Robert Curthose (1087), Robert and his other brother Henry I (1100), and between John and Arthur of Brittany (1199). 2 For his warfare pre-1066, see D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (Berkeley, 1964), 133–55; and J. Gillingham, “William the Bastard at War,” in ANW, 143–60. 3 S. Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), 1–2. HOSLER_f2_1-7 1/17/07 9:36 PM Page 3 introduction 3 referred to as the Angevin period of English history, which is traced loosely from the coronation of Henry II in 1154 to the death of King John in 1216. The transition from Anglo-Norman to Angevin is something of a misnomer. King Stephen, the grandson of William the Conqueror through his mother Adela, died in 1154 and was succeeded by Henry fitz Empress, the grandson of Stephen’s prede- cessor Henry I (and thus great-grandson of William). Both kings were Norman through their mothers’ side, not their fathers’: Stephen’s father was the reluctant crusader Stephen, count of Blois (d. 1102), and Henry’s father was Geoffrey le Bel, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy (d. 1151). From the beginning Henry fitz Empress was groomed for the chores of governance and battle that surely lay in his future. The death of Henry I’s only legitimate son William Adelin in the White Ship disaster of 1120 prompted the king to accept a baronial oath in 1126 to the effect that, should his daughter Matilda (d. 1167) ever bear a son, they would pledge their commitment to that boy’s future, legitimate kingship.4 Fully expecting that her son would one day reign as king, Matilda gave birth to the young Henry in 1133 and procured for him an education befitting a future monarch. Henry’s schooling was never intended to be comprehensive, as a noble had little need for advanced education, and his instruction was therefore to be broad in scope but shallow in content. Before the age of seven the boy probably listened to epic stories such as Beowulf in his mother’s household. Such stories offered excellent models of bravery, loyalty, and eloquence and were commonly used in the instruction of the nobilitas. After seven he received basic instruction in letters and the basics of knighthood in his father’s household in Angers, as was the custom in the twelfth century.5 Henry’s first proper lessons were grammatical in nature, and his teacher Peter of Saintes may have been a sort of freelance instructor.6 From Peter he learned 4 Gesta Stephani, 10–13. 5 M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), 144; N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: the Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy 1066–1530 (London, 1984), 182. Knighthood training consisted of riding, hunting, swimming, fighting, and other skills; F. B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages (Reprint, Chicago, 1980), 311. 6 As proposed by R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (Reprint, New Haven, 1973), 196; see also S. Reynolds, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric, and the Classical Text (Cambridge, 1996), 61; and R. V. Turner, “The Miles Literatus in HOSLER_f2_1-7 1/17/07 9:36 PM Page 4 4 introduction the rudiments of Latin and French, two languages in which he became proficient.7 His tutelage under Peter ended before the age of nine in the waning days of 1142. Matilda’s plans for her son were initially thwarted in 1135 when her father Henry I died suddenly after feasting on a plate of lam- preys. Forgetting their 1126 oaths, the barons supported the coro- nation of Stephen, count of Blois, who claimed lineage through his mother Adela, the sister of the late king.8 England itself was split territorially as magnates chose the side seen as most beneficial to their own interests: The empress, or rather her protector the earl of Gloucester, held sway over a belt of territory in the west which varied greatly in extent from time to time, but of which the nucleus was formed by Somerset, Gloucestershire, the modern Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, and occa- sionally Worcestershire. Stephen ruled over a district which was roughly bounded, on the west by the Hampshire Avon and the Cotswolds, on the north and north-east by the Welland, the fens in the lower valley of the Ouse, and the river Waveney...But to the very end of the reign the territories of the rival factions interlaced and overlapped.9 The dispute over the succession transformed into outright civil war, sometimes called ‘the anarchy of Stephen’s reign’. In 1142 the young Henry actually traveled from Anjou to England with his uncle Robert, earl of Gloucester (d. 1147), a bastard child of the late Henry I, half-brother of Matilda, and an ally of the Angevin cause in the civil war.10 In the twelfth century noblemen such as Geoffrey of Anjou customarily turned their sons’ education over to a friendly and suit- able lord, and in this regard Robert of Gloucester was an excellent choice.11 The earl was the most powerful noble in England after Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England: How Rare a Phenomenon?” AHR 83 (1978): 943.
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