The Man Who Walks Behind Satan: On the Trail of Henry of Blois

By Tracey Warr

The 12th century bishop, Henry of Blois, was the grandson of William the Conqueror. He attracted opprobrium from some contemporaries. Bernard of Clairvaux described him as ‘the man who walks behind Satan’ and ‘that old whore of Winchester’. For Henry of Huntingdon he was ‘a new kind of monster, composed part pure and part corrupt … part monk and part knight.’ Brian FitzCount accused him of ‘having a remarkable gift of discovering that duty pointed in the same direction as expediency’.

Henry of Blois, British Library Public Domain Image

Henry was probably the youngest of eleven children born to Count Etienne of Blois and Adela of Normandy, sister of King Henry I of England. As the youngest son Henry was superfluous to needs for the inheritance of his parents’ holdings and he was given to the monastery at Cluny as an infant.

Some elements of Henry’s history are well-documented and some may be apocryphal. Among the latter is that Henry went to Germany when he was around eleven with his eight-year-old cousin Matilda, daughter of King Henry of England, on her journey to marry Emperor Henry V. If this was Henry of Blois (rather than a different Henry), he was elected Bishop of Verdun in 1118 (aged around 20) on the recommendation of the emperor. The Pope arranged his consecration in Milan but, due to fierce controversy between the Pope and the emperor over who should appoint bishops, the emperor forbade the inhabitants of Verdun from receiving their bishop. Henry took refuge in the fortress of Hattonchatel. With military support, he was installed as bishop in 1120. If this story is true, we catch a glimpse of Henry’s willingness to switch allegiances to hang onto his power, which is repeated in later events in his life.

In 1120 the Anglo-Norman empire shuddered with the sinking of The White Ship in the English Channel. The ship was carrying the younger generation of Norman nobles including the 17 year-old heir to the English throne, Prince William Adelin. Henry of Blois’s sister Matilda, Countess of Gloucester, and her husband were also among the dead. Despite having at least twenty-four illegitimate children, King Henry was left without an heir and his new queen, Adelisa, appeared to be barren. The sinking of the ship led to a succession crisis in England.

In Germany, Verdun was stormed on the orders of Emperor Henry, the bishop was expelled, and escaped the emperor’s forces by swimming across the Meuse. If this story of Henry’s escapades is true it must have caused embarrassment to Empress Matilda since Henry arrived in Germany in her entourage and was then in defiance of her husband. The story has been questioned due to Henry’s age, however, there were other very young bishops who catapulted up the ranks through the power and wealth of their families. Furthermore, the incident seems in keeping with later events in Henry’s life when he took power and his loyalties twisted and turned as he clung onto the influence he had accrued and sought to expand it.

If Henry was in Verdun, it is possible that he was recalled to the Anglo-Norman empire in 1125 by King Henry, along with the Empress Matilda after the death of her husband. The king was contemplating his resources in the succession crisis and these included his widowed daughter and his nephews, Thibaut and Stephen of Blois, and their younger brother, Henry.

Once in England Henry rose rapidly in the Church, thanks to the patronage of his uncle. King Henry I was a youngest son who had climbed unexpectedly to power after the deaths and defeats of his older brothers and that may have been a source of inspiration to his nephew and namesake. In 1126 King Henry appointed Henry of Blois prior at Montecute in Somerset and  then abbot of Glastonbury. Glastonbury was the richest and foremost monastery in England. On 1 January 1127 Henry of Blois was very likely among the English lords who swore an oath at Westminster Palace to uphold the rights of Empress Matilda as the king’s heir.

A few years later, in 1129, the king appointed his nephew bishop of Winchester, when Henry was probably around 30 years old. Very unusually and by special papal dispensation, Henry was allowed to retain his abbot’s mitre at Glastonbury at the same time as receiving the bishopric at Winchester. The combination of these two positions gave him an income that was 37% greater than that of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Historiated initial letter from the beginning of the Song of Songs
from the Winchester Bible. Public Domain Image

Henry was a generous patron of the arts. He commissioned the Winchester Bible and the Winchester Psalter and is depicted on the Henry of Blois plaque (image at end of article). Matthew of Paris described a magnificent sapphire pontifical ring that Henry gave to Saint Albans Cathedral. His extensive building works included renovations to Winchester Cathedral, Farnham Castle and Wolvesey Castle.

The Annunciation to the Shepherds (top) and
the Magi before Herod (bottom), Winchester Psalter
British Library, Public Domain Image

Many of the English lords were not happy at the idea of a woman on the throne, and they were even less happy with this solution to the succession crisis when the king married Matilda to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. It is likely that Henry conspired with his brother Stephen and made plans for how they would act in the event of King Henry’s death. When King Henry died in Normandy in December 1135, Matilda was pregnant and unwell. She was unable to immediately claim the throne. The Anglo-Norman lords elected Thibaut of Blois as king of England, but his younger brother Stephen took swift action and usurped the throne from both Matilda and Thibaut. Stephen sailed from Boulogne in rough December seas. At Winchester the keys to the royal treasury were handed over by Bishop Roger, supported by Bishop Henry.

Henry of Blois attended the funeral of King Henry at Reading Abbey in early 1136, where he saw the hand of Saint James, which Matilda had brought back with her from Germany. Despite requests from the German court to return the relic, the empress had given it to her father, who had given it to Reading, his designated burial place. Henry of Blois ‘borrowed’ the hand of Saint James and took it back to Winchester where it doubtless attracted considerable revenue from avid pilgrims seeking cures. The reliquary was not returned to Reading Abbey until 1155, under the orders of Henry II.

With his brother as king of England, Henry could reasonably expect to rise further. When the archbishop’s throne in Canterbury became vacant in 1136 Henry coveted it. Orderic Vitalis claimed that Henry was elected archbishop. However, his expectations were thwarted since his candidacy was not supported by King Stephen and Henry did not receive papal confirmation. Stephen was probably pressured by other factions at court, including the queen and the twin earls of Beaumont and Worcester, who feared that Henry might exert too much influence on the king. Henry overcame this setback by getting himself appointed as papal legate to England in March 1139, which effectively gave him ascendancy over the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King.

Motivated, perhaps, by resentment, Henry called a church council in August 1139 to oppose Stephen’s dealings with Bishop Roger. Henry’s apparent championing of Roger on this occasion did not inhibit him from taking Roger’s role as Dean of St-Martin-Le-Grand, London and acquiring some of the disgraced bishop’s properties.

Henry of Blois had his fingers in the water at every turn of the tide during The Anarchy. The empress landed at Arundel in September 1139 with her half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester ready to begin her long-awaited contestation for the throne. Stephen allowed her to leave Arundel and Bishop Henry escorted her towards Bristol. He may have written to his cousin urging her to come to England and claim her throne. In 1140 Henry went to France to discuss the civil war with King Louis VII and Thibaut of Blois and organised an inconclusive peace conference attended by Stephen’s queen, Matilda and Earl Robert of Gloucester.

After Stephen was captured by the empress’s forces at the battle of Lincoln in 1141, Henry switched sides. He met the empress near Wherwell and she agreed to make him her chancellor and defer to him on church matters. Henry received the empress at Winchester Cathedral as Lady of the English, the prelude to crowning her queen and ending the civil war. However, the accord between bishop and empress was short-lived. She flouted her agreement with Henry to defer to him by appointing William Cumin as bishop of Durham. When the empress’s highhanded actions in London caused another downturn in her fortunes, Henry had to flee the city with her. Henry argued with the empress over his nephew Eustace’s inheritance and they parted ways. She went to Oxford and Henry went to Winchester.

Henry next arranged a meeting with Stephen’s wife, Queen Matilda and switched sides again. The empress marched on Winchester and besieged Henry. He appealed to Queen Matilda for aid. The siege went on for six weeks, during which Henry’s forces burnt large parts of the city. The siege ended with a rout, the capture of Earl Robert and the escape of the empress.

When the prisoners, Robert of Gloucester and King Stephen were exchanged, Bishop Henry was obliged to patch things up with his brother. He called a council in London to declare Stephen the rightful king. In 1143, Pope Innocent II died and Henry lost his position as papal legate. He visited Rome in an effort to regain his position but was unsuccessful. In a further bid to secure ascendancy he proposed that Winchester be created a new archbishopric but was again unsuccessful. In 1149 Henry was King Stephen’s envoy in a mission to persuade King Louis of France to support Stephen against the advances of the empress’s son, Henry FitzEmpress, in Normandy. In 1154 King Stephen died and Henry FitzEmpress became Henry II, King of England.

William of Malmesbury, a friend and beneficiary of Henry of Blois’s patronage, described the bishop’s actions during the civil war in a favourable light, claiming that he was trying to do the best by the kingdom. Nevertheless, even allowing for the biases one way or another of the various commentators, a picture emerges of Henry of Blois as a man who might define the word tergiversator. He appears intent on wielding power by any means possible, hoping perhaps that first his brother King Stephen and then the Empress Matilda might be his puppets, or at least that he would have the foremost position in either court, depending on who emerged as the victor. Brian Fitzcount complained against Henry that ‘[my] main offence consisted in refusing to change sides as often as himself’.

Henry of Blois plaque, showing kneeling, tonsured figure. Inscription reads:
'Art comes before gold and gems, the author before everything. Henry, alive in bronze, gives
gifts to God. Henry, whose fame commends him to men, whose character commends
him to the heavens, a man equal in mind to the Muses and in eloquence higher than
Marcus [that is, Cicero]' Image Credit

Bishop Henry assisted at the coronation of Henry II as king of England, but perhaps trepidatious about how the new king might view his equivocations and his wealth, he left England without the king’s permission and retired to Cluny for a few years, sending his treasure on before him. King Henry promptly ordered the destruction of Bishop Henry’s castles. After his cautious return to England, Henry of Blois had a part to play in one more significant episode in English history. He was amongst the bishops forced to sign the Constitutions of Clarendon by King Henry II against Thomas of Becket and presided over Thomas’s trial at the same time as secretly supporting the archbishop’s family.

Another of the possibly apocryphal stories associated with Henry is Francis Lot’s controversial theory that Henry was the author of the Gesta Stephani (an account of the life of King Stephen) and that Geoffrey of Monmouth, the author of The History of the Kings of Britain, was his nom de plume.

Bishop Henry died in his seventies in 1171. King Henry II visited him as he lay dying. When Henry’s body was discovered in 1761 in a sepulchre in Winchester Cathedral it was ‘wrapt in a brown and gold mantle, with traces of gold round the temples’. Henry of Blois emerges from the traces of history as a man who lived sumptuously and who was impressively presumptuous.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tracey Warr’s novels are set in early medieval Europe. Almodis was shortlisted for the Impress Prize and the Rome Film Festival Book Initiative. It is based on the life of Almodis de La Marche, who was described by William of Malmesbury as being ‘afflicted with a Godless female itch’. The Viking Hostage recounts the true story of a French noblewoman kidnapped by Vikings. Warr’s trilogy Conquest follows the tumultuous life of the medieval Welsh princess, Nest ferch Rhys. It was supported by a Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary. Warr’s next project, Three Female Lords, has received an Author’s Foundation Award and is a biography of three sisters who lived in 11th century southern France and Catalonia. She is Head of Research at The Dartington Trust and teaches on MA Poetics of Imagination at Dartington Arts School. Her latest novel Conquest III: The Anarchy is published by Impress Books on 2 June.

Purchase link: Amazon 

social media links:
Facebook
Twitter - @TraceyWarr1

website links:
TraceyWarrWriting
http://www.impress-books.co.uk

A Norman Frontiersman in Wales

by Tracey Warr

Old style histories merely recounting one king after another do not deliver the full freight of human emotions and actions through time. Charting experiences of lesser people can give more sense of the daily complexity of lived history. Gerald FitzWalter of Windsor, for instance, was a minor Norman knight, a pioneer in Wales at the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th. A clever and resourceful man, he survived and thrived amidst the vagaries of life under two Norman kings: William II, and then his brother, Henry I – the sons of the Conqueror.

It took the Normans more than 200 years to conquer Wales rather than the fortuitous (for them) one day in which they conquered England at Hastings. The challenges of Wales included its mountainous and often sodden terrain, tenacious resistance by the Welsh, the lack of a single Welsh king to overthrow. Wales was initially peripheral to Norman ambitions and William the Conqueror left its subjugation to his marcher lords: Roger Montgommery, Earl of Shrewsbury; Hugh, Earl of Chester; William fitz Osbern, Earl of Hereford. Welsh conquest proceeded erratically with the Normans taking territory and establishing castles which were often soon lost back to the Welsh.

Montgommery Castle, Wales, near the English border, was the seat of the Norman
 marcher baron, the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Montgommery family. By John Speed, 1552?-1629.

It was never a simple case of Welsh pitted against Normans. Sometimes a Welsh king allied with Normans to contest against another Welsh ruler. Welsh leaders exploited disturbances in the Norman state to their own advantage and vice versa. The initial Norman settlement in south-west Wales, where Gerald FitzWalter was active, was precarious. It clustered around the coastline where escape and supply could be effected by sea. ‘Periodic Welsh offensives from 1094 onwards made this province no place for the faint-hearted’, wrote Ifor Rowlands. Gerald FitzWalter proved himself to be a full-hearted frontiersman.

We see glimpses of Gerald in the primary sources including the Annales Cambriae and the Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes of Wales). He was the second son of a minor Norman lord, Walter FitzOther, the Forester of Windsor. When Gerald first appears he is in service to the powerful Montgommery family. Possibly he was sent to the household of Roger Montgommery, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the age of seven, to train as a squire, as was usual. Perhaps being of similar age with Arnulf, the youngest of the five Montgommery sons, he became a member of Arnulf’s conroi – his circle of close friends and bodyguards.

Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes of Wales), a translation of a lost
 Latin work based on the annals kept by churches and monasteries. National Library of Wales

In 1093 Rhys ap Tewdwr, the Welsh king in southern Wales, was killed and the Earl of Shrewsbury made a rapid, opportunistic march through Wales to establish Pembroke Castle on the southern-most tip, as a stronghold for his youngest son. Arnulf also possessed lands in England and he left Gerald as his steward to hold Pembroke for him. And that is exactly what Gerald did. At times - when repeated Welsh resurgences took back territory - he was the only Norman left clinging onto a toehold in south-west Wales. In 1094 Pembroke Castle and Rhy-y-Gors (near Carmarthen) were the only Norman castles to survive Welsh attacks. The commander of Rhyd-y-Gors, William FitzBaldwin, died soon after and the garrison was forced to withdraw. Gerald, however, hung on.

At this time Pembroke Castle was a mere stockade of wooden stakes and turfs with a small garrison. During a desperate, prolonged siege in 1096, fifteen knights deserted by boat, very likely from The Wogan, a cavern deep in the rock beneath the castle, that lets out into the millstream. Gerald transferred the lands of the deserters to fifteen men-at-arms and made them knights. He ordered the last four hogs jointed and the meat thrown over the fortifications, suggesting to Welsh besiegers that supplies were plentiful. He then put together a fake letter to Arnulf with his personal seal attached, saying he would not need reinforcements for at least four more months.

Henry G. Gastineau, 1791-1876 H.W. Bond, fl. 1827-1849

This letter was left outside the Bishop’s Palace at Lamphey, as if it had been accidentally dropped, where it was duly found by the Welsh attackers who called off their siege. The letter was presumably also planted by someone – perhaps Gerald – slipping in and out of the castle under the besiegers’ noses via The Wogan. Gerald’s grandson, the colourful writer, Gerald of Wales, was the source of this story, and perhaps it is embellished, nevertheless a picture emerges of Gerald as a wily and stubborn opponent.

The Wogan cavern beneath Pembroke Castle which shows evidence of prehistoric
 occupation. ceridwen [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

The Norman kings and nobility were as prone as the Welsh to familial dissension. William the Conqueror had to quell a rebellion led by his brother and members of the Montgommery family. William Rufus and Henry dealt with rebellions from Normans who viewed their older brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, as the rightful King of the English. Henry, William the Conqueror’s third son, was a man of tremendous energy. He became king in 1100 after the unexpected death of his brother William Rufus (but that is another story). Henry immediately began a strategy of getting the Norman nobility thoroughly under control. The powerful and arrogant Montgommery family had been implicated several times over in rebellion and Henry decided it was time to dig them out of their strong, entrenched position.

Pembroke Castle, south-west Wales. In Gerald’s day the castle was a moated,
wood and earthwork fortification. Chris Downer [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

In 1102 Henry accused the Montgommery brothers of treason. The overwhelming evidence against Robert de Bellême, now the Earl of Shrewsbury, was provided by Henry’s spies. Robert at first denied the charges, then escaped from the court in Winchester, and fought a series of sieges against Henry throughout the summer, before finally losing his English earldom and fleeing to his lands in Normandy. His brother Roger chose not to risk King Henry’s ire, taking self-exile on his wife’s lands in France, and losing his vast holdings in England. Arnulf initially fled to Wales and sent Gerald to Ireland to negotiate with  Muirchertach ua Briain, King of Munster, for men and ships. Arnulf then fled to Ireland, where Gerald’s negotiations had included Arnulf’s marriage to Muirchertach ua Briain’s daughter, Lafracoth. Arnulf lost all his lands in Wales and England. Gerald was obliged to hand over Pembroke, which he had defended so well for ten years, to King Henry’s loyal representative, a knight named Saer.

For the next few years Henry sought to control south Wales through Welsh allies (Iorwerth ap Bleddyn and Hywel ap Goronwy). Then he began recolonising Wales with new Norman lords, firmly loyal to the crown, as the marcher earls had never been. These new lords included Richard of Beaumaris, Bishop of London, governing Shrewsbury and the former Montgommery lands; Henry, Earl of Warwick in the Gower; and Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, at Kidwelly.

Gerald might easily have been attainted a traitor along with the Montgommerys, but he managed instead to survive the disaster. He was rehabilitated into King Henry’s good graces (no easy task) and by 1105 Henry was sufficiently reassured of Gerald’s loyalty to reconfirm him as steward of Pembroke. Gerald, after all, knew the lay of the land there as no other Norman did. It is possible he learnt to speak Welsh and had made himself familiar with Welsh laws and customs. Henry strengthened Gerald’s position further by giving him Nest ferch Rhys as his wife. Nest was the daughter of the former king of Deheubarth, of south Wales, and Henry’s own former mistress. (Henry had an exceptional number of mistresses and illegitimate children - at least twenty-two – but that’s also another story.) Nest, as a member of the southern Welsh royal family, lent an air of validity to Gerald’s authority in the area. Gerald was also granted Moulsford in Berkshire and lands in Pembrokeshire, including Carew, which may have been his wife’s dowry. After the plummet of 1102, a few short years later, he was very much on the up again.

Cilgerran Castle, the possible site of Nest's abduction - William M. Connolley
[CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6920493]

Between 1104 and 1109 Henry was preoccupied in Normandy where he finally succeeding in ousting his older brother Robert to become Duke of Normandy as well as King of the English. Despite his absence, he did not neglect matters in Wales. Around 1108 Henry settled a community of loyal and pugnacious Flemings in the Rhos district, the hinterland of Pembroke Castle, and Gerald built the castle of Cenarth Bychan (probably modern day Cilgerran) close to the border with Powys. Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, King of Powys, had dominated mid-Wales and been the leading light in Welsh resistance for thirty years. Both the Flemish community and Cenarth Bychan Castle may have been intended as a provocation to Cadwgan, or as a forward-thinking defensive strategy against him. Either way, it is possible that Gerald (as the man on the ground) suggested this strategy to Henry. If so, his strategy backfired spectacularly.

Soon after Christmas 1109, Cadwgan’s son Owain attacked Cenarth Bychan, setting it on fire and kidnapping Gerald’s wife, Nest, and their four small children: (probably) Henry (the illegitimate son of King Henry), William, Maurice and Angharad. Gerald escaped – according to the Chronicle of the Princes – down the latrine chute. The chronicler writes that this escape route was his wife’s suggestion. The image of Gerald wriggling down the privy in the dead of winter as his castle burned and his wife was stolen, might undermine him, make him look ridiculous, but it also seems in tune with his unusual method of defending Pembroke in 1096. The chronicle records that Owain was infatuated with Nest, however stealing her was undoubtedly a political act to undermine Gerald. The children were returned soon afterwards, whilst Nest remained with Owain for a further two years. She may have been an innocent victim in the kidnap, or she may have colluded in the attack. She was Welsh and a cousin of the rebels, making her suspect in Norman eyes.

Garderobe, Peveril Castle, Derbyshire. By Dave.Dunford 

King Henry sent the Bishop of London to negotiate Nest’s return and she was eventually reunited with Gerald. The Bishop astutely exploited rivalry amongst Cadwgan and Owain’s kin and both Cadwgan and his brother Iorwerth died as a consequence in 1111.

In 1113 Nest’s brother, Gruffudd ap Rhys, rightful Welsh king of south-west Wales, returned from Ireland where he had grown up. He spent time with Gerald and Nest at Pembroke; perhaps another wily move by Gerald: keeping the pretender under his eye.

In 1114 Henry led a determined expedition into Wales. Owain, by now King of Powys, was the last to submit but eventually reached agreement with Henry and accompanied him on an expedition to Normandy. On his return Owain may have acted as Henry’s agent against Nest’s rebellious brother Gruffudd ap Rhys, or he may have been in cahoots with Gruffudd, continuing to contest Norman rule. Gradually, however, a Cambro-Norman culture was emerging in Wales.

In 1115 Gruffudd was accused of rebellion against Henry. He fled to the court of the Welsh king of Gwynedd in the north who betrayed him to the Normans. He escaped, taking the King of Gwynedd’s daughter, Gwenllian, with him (yet another fascinating story I can’t tell here). In 1115 another of Nest’s surviving brothers, Hywel, escaped from prison in Carmarthen.

In 1116 Gerald finally got his revenge on Owain for Nest’s kidnap, when they accidentally met, near Carmarthen. Both men were accompanied by soldiers. Gerald’s party included Flemings who had reason to hate Owain for his brutal raids. Owain was killed in the skirmish. Gerald may himself have taken a mortal injury in that fight. He died sometime between 1116, when he disappears from the record, and 1130, when the Fleming Sheriff Hait is recorded accounting for Pembroke. Given Nest’s subsequent two marriages to Hait and Stephen de Marais, Constable of Cardigan, and her further children from these marriages, it seems likely Gerald died sooner rather than later.

Gerald and Nest’s children continued Cambro-Norman lives in Wales and Ireland. William FitzGerald inherited Carew Castle; Maurice FitzGerald became a lord in Ireland; David became Bishop of St David’s; Angharad married William de Barry of Manorbier. (They were the parents of the writer, Gerald of Wales).
If Gerald had not clung so fast to his moated rock at the tip of Wales, the picture might have been very different. In the early 12th century Gruffudd ap Cynan regained most of northern Wales from the Normans and Cadwgan ap Bleddyn had a solid hold in mid-Wales. The Welsh might have taken Wales back from the Normans altogether.

[all above images are in the public domain - unless otherwise attributed, and all via Wikipedia commons]

~~~~~~~~~~

Tracey Warr was born in London, lived in Pembrokeshire, Wales and studied MA Creative Writing at University of Wales in Carmarthen. She currently divides her time between the UK and France. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Impress Prize and the Rome Film Festival Book Initiative, won a Santander Research Award, a Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary and an Author’s Foundation Award. She is a tutor for residential writing courses in France with A Chapter Away. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society, Society of Authors and the Royal Society of Literature. She has published three historical novels with Impress Books, all set in the early medieval period: Almodis (2011), The Viking Hostage (2014) and her latest book, Conquest: Daughter of the Last King (2016), is the first in a trilogy about Nest ferch Rhys.

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Conquest - Daughter of the Last King