“From the Devil they Sprang and to the Devil they shall go”

 

“From the Devil they Sprang and to the Devil they shall go”

Ever since I started studying Medieval History in Sixth Form College, I became enamoured with the Plantagenet dynasty. This dynasty is best known for ruling England from the mid 1100’s until the end of the dynasty on the field of Bosworth in 1485. Although by that point it would hard to argue that this dynasty had much in association with its origins in the county of Anjou in central France.

The Plantagenet dynasty has a rather strange origin story, starting in the 10^th Century with the first count of Anjou Geoffrey I Greymantle, the fourth count of Anjou was so struck by the beauty of an unnamed women washing her hair in the river that he scooped her up on to his horse and they were hastily married soon after. As the legend goes, this woman was inattentive in mass and always left before the communion rites, when whispers of adultery started Geoffrey, had guards placed on the doors and had them locked. In the presence of the transubstantiated body of Christ the woman could bare no more and let out a deafening shriek transforming into a winged daemon and flying from the window never to be seen again. Other variations included that she had monstrous legs and stomped her way through the church floor back to hell. Or that is how my sixth form teacher told the story.

When I looked It up further I found this: The chronicler Gerald of Wales reported that Richard I of England was fond of telling a tale according to which he was a descendant of a countess of Anjou who was in fact the fairy Melusine.

 The Angevin legend told of an early Count of Anjou who met a beautiful woman when in a far land, where he married her. He had not troubled to find out about her origins. However, after bearing him four sons, the behaviour of his wife began to trouble the count. She attended church infrequently, and always left before the Mass proper. One day he had four of his men forcibly restrain his wife as she rose to leave the church. Melusine evaded the men and clasped the two youngest of her sons and in full view of the congregation carried them up into the air and out of the church through its highest window. Melusine and her two sons were never seen again. One of the remaining sons was the ancestor, it was claimed, of the later Counts of Anjou and the Kings of England.[1]

The Melusine story is linked with many royal origin stories from the Middle Ages and is linked heavily to the legend of Percival the Knight of King Arthur’s court.  As origin stories go it links the Plantagenets to a side of medieval superstition that runs parallel to the prevailing Christian dogma, this family had a grounding in the world of folklore and superstition. The black temper possessed by many of the Plantagenet kings of England was linked to the lingering blood of Melusine in the family and even the eldest son of Geoffrey Greymantle was known for his violent treatment of his wife and subjects and his viciousness in war, he was aptly named Fulk Nerra (Fulk the Black) on account of his mood and temperament. Again, it was Richard I who often said, "From the Devil we sprang and to the Devil we shall go."

Of course, the reality is more mundane with the legend supposedly generating from the success of the counts of Anjou who increased the size of their holding through the tenth and eleventh centuries to entering the higher echelons of French nobility. Afterall, what else could explain the success of these middling nobles to be competitors to the Norman Dukes, the Capetian Kings and the other great dukes of Champagne, Burgundy, and Brittany?

 What has always seemed intriguing about the Counts of Anjou is the number of interesting characters that the family generated, Fulk Nerra, the count with the ferocious temper was also a great builder of castles and four time pilgrim to the Holy Land. His son "Geoffrey, count of the Angevins, nicknamed Martel, a treacherous man in every respect, frequently inflicted assaults and intolerable pressure on his neighbours." Who fought with all of his rival counts and famously quarrelled and fought with William the Bastard prior to his death in 1060, leaving the county of Anjou without an heir and in relative stagnation for several years. When the Angevin star rose again in the early 12^th century with Fulk V, who abdicated his position as Count of Anjou to his son to Geoffrey the fair in 1128 to later become the king of Jerusalem in 1131.  Geoffrey the Fair through strident political negotiating on the behalf of his father and King Henry I of England resulting in him entering into marriage with Matilda FitzEmpress. Geoffrey’s skill as an administrator and soldier and Matilda’s claim to the throne, political skill learnt in the German court and stubbornness required to continue the civil war with King Stephen laid the foundations for the eventual Angevin succession to the English throne to 1154.

The Angevin rise to the English throne in the mid twelfth century was successful in the regard that Geoffrey the Fair did not try to gain the throne for himself, and Matilda relented her claim in favour of her son , who was more acceptable to the English Nobility. With Geoffrey securing the Norman lands of much of the nobility Matilda could bring more of the English nobility to her cause and the incompetence of Stephen drew the nobles into the Angevin camp.

So within two centuries the Angevins had risen from rural counts, who married water spirits firmly grounded in rural tradition to the King’s of England.

I will firmly admit that my focus on the Angevin dynasty has always been the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and King John. Who I believe embody the spirit their Angevin predecessors, for better or worse. 

 The nature of the Angevins cross continental holdings I believe makes for some of the most interesting challenges faced by any medieval monarchs and the conflicts between the Angevins and their French Royal counterparts the Capetians formed the modern nations of England and France respectively.

The undoubted Godfather of the Angevin dynasty is Henry II, the energetic, clever, and domineering father of the Devil’s Brood. Who dominated politics in France and the British Isles for 35 years. Henry II schooled by his mother and in the mould of his father, was a great administrator, a capable and astute war leader and a King who developed the infrastructure of England, Normandy and Anjou to be expansive and capable at running a conglomerate of lands that were to be latter dubbed the ‘Angevin Empire’.

In the main regard Henry II never set out to be an empire builder and the crux of his problems faced in his reign stemmed from what was to be done with his lands when he died. The independence of the Aquitanian south never coalesced to Capetian rule in 1130s and 1140’s and nor would it easily accept Angevin control through the 1150’s to Henry’s death, but Henry II was capable enough to make it work allowing his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine to hold power through him in the Duchy in the early parts of his reign and placing capable administrators there, allowing for effective rule on a short leash as it were.

Ultimately Henry’s reign as the first Plantagenet king set the bar incredibly high, Henry II I believe rose to power and consolidated his rule, so effectively that it required the near constant dedications of himself and his most trusted advisors to continually be itinerant and active in dealing with the running of such vast holdings. Henry II took the initiative and scrambled effectively in times of crisis to ensure his presence was were it would be most effectively employed and that his most trusted men were in place and on his side to ensure his will was carried out. As a ruler he was not without setbacks or defeats, but he was able to respond and redirect his energies and maintain his position as the Great Statesman of Europe, even the Becket controversy only stymied Henry’s ambitions for a year or so, and the great rebellion of 1173-1174, only unsteadied the Henry’s rule for a matter of months. Even if it was his failure to ultimately resolve the familial issues that ate at the core of the Plantagenet dynasty.

Henry’s strong leadership over 35 years allowed for effective consolidation of power and for England to work as an effective autonomous entity within the Angevin holdings, just as Normandy and Anjou were able to do on the continent. Henry II I would say was the pioneer of micromanaging on a macro scale.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for his descendants, Richard I, I ultimately was a great warrior and inherited a kingdom that was capable of running itself, and like his father was effective at choosing the right men for the job in running the administration. But his focus was always on the more martial and courtly pursuits of Kingship, and to that end he was effective, he was a general in the Roman mould, who could campaign and win battles and sieges effectively, he was an effective leader of a coalition force on crusade who secured the crusader states’ survival for a century. His personality varies from what I have read with historians like John Gillingham applauding his cunning, wit and educated style, whilst others focus on his Angevin tendencies to be quick to anger, to hold grudges and to be excessive in his punishments.

However, what I believe stops Richard from being a truly great leader is that his constant warring with the rival Capetian Dynasty and his long absence on Crusade, left the Angevin dynasty in a holding position, his campaign against the Capetians was turning in his favour in 1199 but his unexpected death at a minor siege over either an unearthed roman treasure hoard or minor land dispute but an end to any hope of Richard matching his father.

 And on a side note, the Victorian use of Richard as a noble crusader and keeper of justice in the realm, made to act as provenance for the 19^th centuries imperialist expansionism and romanticism of the middle ages has only served to muddy the views of Richard, who I believe would embody very little of the narrative and character that later writers have build around his character. [2] Being King of England was useful to Richard, but I don’t believe that he embodied England, more it was his reservoir of wealth to continue his campaigns against the Capetians.

I will end this article by looking at the last of the first two generations of Plantagenet kings, John, whose reign unceremoniously took the idea of the ‘Angevin Empire’ and undermined it so fully that it would never successfully rise again. John’s reign can be best described as one of those scenes in a cartoon in which a character causes an accident and you hear it all the disastrous clattering and banging happening off screen whilst we see the characters hunched and grimaced reaction. In my early days of studying the Angevins I will admit that I was one of those people who tried to salvage John’s reign, but I realised that the only way to do this was by picking at aspects of Richard’s reign and saying that John did this aspect slightly better.

I now know better and will fully admit that John’s reign was a disaster, he lurched progressively from one disaster to the next, fought his ministers, the Church and the Capetians and his own nobles with little skill or guile. In flashes he could be successful, or at least find people who could achieve his goals, but his constant agitation of his own nobles and the church and everyone else for that matter meant that very few people were willing to stand by him in times of crisis. Henry II and even Richard always had a cadre of leading Nobles, prelates and ministers who were ready to standby them in times of crisis, John did not. John was a king who created his own problems and responded by enflaming the situation, then fell into a malaise as things started to burn down around him. The loss of the Angevin holdings of Maine, Touraine, Normandy, Brittany amongst others speaks of the levels of John’s capabilities. These territories had withstood Capetian aggression and encroachment whilst Richard was imprisoned in Austria but crumbled in John’s presence.

What is the opposite of the Midas Touch again?

The fact that William Marshal one of the top nobles and wisest voices in court side stepped John to maintain his continental possessions form Philip II Augustus the King of France, highlights the fact that John lacked authority in his King after the disasters of 1203 and 1204. As England fell into further chaos in John’s reign with his Baron’s turning to the French Prince Louis the Lion, later to be Louis the VIII of France, it can only be said that the greatest service to England was his death[3]. Which at least allowed England to stabilize under the governance of the top nobles and prelates who fortunately maintain the skills that had provided King Henry II and Richard I with effective governance in the absence of direct monarchic authority. John’s main achievement could therefore be said that he helped to crystallise France and England into two separate entities which would later form the rival nation states of the Early modern and industrial eras.

By the time of John’s death, the Plantagenet dynasty has risen to its zenith with territories from Scotland to the Pyrenees and then returned England back to back to a similar position it had been on the death Henry I in 1132, but instead of an Anglo-Norman realm it was now an Anglo-Gascon realm. Unable to recapture the skill of Henry II later Plantagenet kings would not be able to effectively straddle a cross channel Kingdom, even the English domination of Paris and large sways of France in the 15^th lasted less than a generation.  But I fully stand by the idea that the Plantagenets are England’s most interesting Kings. And as a History teacher myself I only wish they had the same position in the culture zeitgeist as the Tudors and the Stuarts. Bernard of Clairvaux may have been correct when he said, “From the Devil they Sprang and to the Devil they shall go”.

Calum Campbell,

History Teacher & 
MA in Renaissance and Medieval Studies, University of Liverpool

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[1]  Huscroft, R. (2016) Tales From the Long Twelfth Century: The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire, Yale University Press, pp. xix–xx

[2] The statue of Richard outside the Houses of Parliament stand as testament to this 19^th century Narrative, Richard had no affinity for England, and was supposed to have said before leaving on crusade that he would have sold London if he could have found a buyer.

[3] The signing of the Magna Carta doesn’t count as he immediately reneged on it and got the Pope to declare it as signed under duress. Bad Barons leave your tyrannical king alone!