The Man who Made William Marshal

by Helena P. Schrader

Everyone familiar with the story of William Marshal knows that he was born the fourth son of John Marshal — and that at a very early age learned about his dispensability.  When he was no more than five or six, his father not only gave him up as a hostage, he then broke his word, and added insult to injury by explicitly inviting his enemies to hang young William because he had the “hammer and anvil” to forge “betters sons.” So much for paternal love. Clearly, William Marshal was not born to destiny.

Nor were his first attempts at gaining fame and fortune auspicious. He famously fought so valiantly in his first engagement that his horse was fatally wounded but he failed to capture any hostages or booty.  He was forced to continue his search for fame and fortune on foot with his arms tied to the back of an ass — it doesn’t get much more humiliating than that in the 12^th century world of chivalry. Of course, Marshal soon won fame and booty at other tournaments, but the life of a “free lance” was not only risky it was looked down upon. In the 12^th century, every knight who was not himself a land-holder or heir to lands (no matter how humble) aspired to belong to a household, i.e. to be retained and so have an assured income and a hearth at which to eat and rest.

Knight errantry was glamorized
in 19th Century romances,
but the reality was quite different.

William Marshal, after a short period proving himself on the tourney fields of France, returned to England and applied for service with his maternal uncle, Patrick Earl of Salisbury. He was welcomed into the Earl’s ménage, and it should have been a comfortable and safe berth.  If it had been, we might never have heard of William Marshal, the faithful retainer of the Earls of Salisbury. But a quirk incident was to earn him the attention — and gratitude — of royalty. 

It was in the spring of 1168. The Earl of Salisbury was escorting Queen Eleanor of England to Poitiers with a small escort including William Marshal.  Suddenly the party was ambushed by “the Lusignans.” The Lusignans had recently been dispossessed of their lands for rebelling against Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine (and therefore her husband, Henry II). They hoped by capturing Eleanor to gain a bargaining chip for the restoration of their fortunes. The Earl of Salisbury turned over his own horse, which was stronger and faster, to Eleanor so she could escape, but while he was remounting he was fatally pierced from behind by a lance. William defended his dying uncle with all the desperation of innocence lost until he too was treacherously stabbed in the back of his thigh through the hedge he had backed up against. He was taken captive and denied even bandages for his wounds; only the kindness of a lady, who dared not openly help him but send him bandages in secret, saved his life. Being of no value (as his father had drummed home when he was six) and with his lord dead, William’s prospects were not good. Fortunately for him, however, Eleanor of Aquitaine did not forget that Salisbury and his nephew had prevented her capture. She ransomed William and so began his rise  — all the way to regent of England.

One of my favorite allegorical images of a lady
helping a knight in distress from the 15th century
Le Livre de cuer d'amour espris by Renee d'Anjou.

But who was the rogue who stabbed an unarmed Earl in the back?

According to the 13^th century biography of William Marshal, commissioned by his eldest son and based on the accounts of many of Marshal’s contemporaries, this ambush was led by Guy de Lusignan and his brother Geoffrey. Some sources claim that Guy himself wielded the murderous lance.

And what became of Guy de Lusignan?  Allegedly, the murder of Salisbury made Guy persona non grata in the courts of the Plantagenets and induced him to seek his fortune in Outremer. Maybe, but there was a gap of some 12 years, so maybe not. At all events, he arrived in Jerusalem in late 1179 or early 1180 at the invitation of his elder brother Aimery.

Aimery was making a career in Jerusalem, according to some, by sleeping with the Queen Mother, Agnes de Courtenay. At the time Guy arrived in the Holy Land, Baldwin IV was King — and clearly dying of leprosy. Since it was also clear that Baldwin IV would not sire heirs of his body, his nephew Baldwin was his heir apparent.

Seducing heiresses could
be a very lucrative pastime.

This boy had been born to Baldwin IV’s elder sister Sibylla after the death of her first husband, William of Montferrat. Sibylla herself was thus a young (20 year old) widow. There were rumors, however, that she had pledged herself to the Baron of Ramla and Mirabel. The rumors were widespread enough for Salah-ad-Din to demand a king’s ransom (apparently in anticipation of Ramla becoming King of Jerusalem) when Ramla was taken captive on the Litani in 1179 — and for the Byzantine Emperor to pay that exorbitant ransom (that Ramla could not possibly pay from his own resources) in anticipation of the same event.

But suddenly at Easter of 1180, Sibylla married not Ramla (who was on his way back from Constantinople) but the virtually unknown and landless Guy de Lusignan.  The wedding was concluded in a hasty ceremony lacking preparation and pomp. According to the most reliable contemporary source, the Archbishop of Tyre (who was also Chancellor at the time and so an “insider,”) Baldwin rushed his sister into the marriage with the obscure, landless and discredited Guy because the Prince of Antioch, the Count of Tripoli and the Baron of Ramla were planning to depose him and place Ramla on the throne as Sibylla’s consort. Perhaps, but there is no other evidence of Tripoli’s disloyalty, and Ramla’s hopes of marrying Sibylla had been known for a long time — and all the way to Damascus and Constantinople. Why did that marriage suddenly seem threatening to Baldwin VI?

An illustration allegedly depicting
a royal wedding in Jerusalem.

Another contemporary source, Ernoul, suggests another reason for the hasty and unsuitable (for there is no way the third son of a Poitevin baron could be considered a suitable match for a Princess of Jerusalem) marriage: that Guy had seduced Sibylla. Aside from the fact that this had happened more than once in history, the greatest evidence for a love match is Sibylla’s steadfast — almost hysterical — attachment to Guy, as we shall see.  Meanwhile, however, the marriage alienated not only the jilted Baron of Ramla, but Tripoli as well. In short, it was not a very wise move and so hard to explain as a political decision.  Last but not least, even the Archbishop of Tyre admits the King soon regretted his decision. All factors that point to Ernoul’s explanation of a seduction, a scandal and an attempt to “put things right” by a King who was devoted to his sister.

Guy was named Count of Jaffa and Ascalon and appears to have been accepted by the Barons of Jerusalem as a fait accompli that could no longer be changed — until, in September 1183, Baldwin became so ill that he named his brother-in-law Regent.  As such, Guy took command of the Christian forces during Salah-ad-Din’s fourth invasion of the Kingdom. What happened next is obscure. Yet something did happen on this campaign because just two months later, when word reached Jerusalem that the vital castle of Kerak was besieged by Saladin, the barons of Jerusalem “unanimously” refused to follow Guy. King Baldwin had no choice but to take back the reins of government and command of his army himself.

The powerful border fortress of Kerak today

As a footnote, it was at about this time that William Marshal himself turned up in the Holy Land. Henry the Young King had died in agony, begging William to fulfill his crusading vow for him. William dutifully took Henry’s cloak with the cross on it and travelled to the Holy Land. One wonders if he started talking to members of the High Court about that incident with Guy de Lusignan so long ago? Certainly Marshal had not forgotten or forgiven.

After Kerak had been successfully relieved, Baldwin IV sought desperately to have his sister’s marriage to Guy annulled. This had nothing to do with personal grievances against Guy (although he had those too); it was necessary in order to find a long-term solution to the succession crisis. His heir, his nephew, was a sickly boy, and the kingdom needed a vigorous and militarily competent leader. Baldwin’s efforts to replace the discredited Guy were thwarted by Sibylla, who staunchly refused to consider a divorce — something she is hardly likely to have done if the marriage had been political in the first place.

Baldwin IV died in 1185 and was succeed by his nephew with Raymond de Tripoli as Regent.  The fact that Tripoli was made Regent — with the consent of the High Court — and the Count of Edessa was made the boy's guardian are both, again, indications of the intensity of the animosity and suspicion the bishops and barons of Jerusalem had for Guy de Lusignan by this time.

At the death of Baldwin V roughly one year later hostility to Guy had not substantially weakened. As was usual following the death of a king, the High Court was convened to elect the next monarch. Some modern historians have made much of the fact that Tripoli summoned the High Court to Nablus rather than convening it in Jerusalem itself. This is interpreted as a sign of disloyalty, but there is nothing inherently disloyal about meeting in another city of the kingdom. High Courts also met in Acre and Tyre at various times.  Nablus was part of the royal domain, comparatively close to Jerusalem, and the Templars under their new Master, Gerard de Ridefort (surely the worst Master the Templars ever hand) were said to have taken control of the gates and streets of Jerusalem. The Templars did not have a seat in the High Court, but they controlled 300 knights and the decision to hold the High Court in Nablus can just as easily been explained as the desire to avoid “undue” influence from the Knights Templar.

In any case, while the bulk of the High Court was meeting in Nablus, Sibylla persuaded the Patriarch to crown her Queen in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  In addition to the Patriarch (allegedly another former lover of her mother) and the Templars (whose Grand Master had a personal feud with Tripoli), Sibylla was supported by her uncle Joscelyn Count of Edessa and the colorful and controversial Reynald de Chatillon, Lord of Oultrejourdan by right of his wife.  We know of no other supporters by name, but we know that Reynald de Chatillon sought to increase Sibylla’s support by saying she would be Queen in her own right without mentioning Guy.  And even Bernard Hamilton, one of Guy’s modern apologists, admits that: "Benjamin Kedar has rightly drawn attention to sources independent of the Eracles[e.g. Ernoul] and derived from informants on the whole favorable to Guy de Lusignan, which relate that Sibyl's supporters in 1186 required her to divorce Guy before they would agree to recognize her as queen.” (The Leper King and His Heirs, Cambridge University Press, 2000 p. 218). 

According to these sources, Sibylla promised to divorce Guy and choose another man for her husband as her consort. Instead, once she was crowned, she chose Guy as her consort — and crowned him herself when the Patriarch refused.  Once again, Sibylla had chosen Guy over not only the wishes of her subjects but in violation of an oath/promise she had made to her supporters (not her enemies note, to her supporters). I repeat: this is not the behavior of a woman who had been forced in to a hasty and demeaning marriage by her brother out of political expediency; it is consistent with a woman who was passionately in love with the man who she had foisted upon her brother and her subjects against their wishes.

The coronation of Sibylla and Guy as
depicted in Ridley Scott's Film
"The Kingdom of Heaven"

With this dual coronation, Sibylla and Guy had usurped the throne of Jerusalem, but without the Consent of the High Court they were just that — usurpers.  The High Court (or rather those members of it meeting at Nablus) was so outraged that, despite the acute risk posed by Salah-ad-Din, they considered electing and crowning Sibylla’s half-sister Isabella. To risk civil war when the country was effectively surrounded by a powerful and united enemy is almost incomprehensible — and highlights just how great the opposition to Guy de Lusignan was. In retrospect, it seems like madness that men would even consider fighting their fellow Christians when the forces of Islam were so powerful, threatening and well-led.

Then again, with the benefit of hind-sight, maybe it would have been better to dispose of Guy de Lusignan before he could lead the country to utter ruin at Hattin?

In the event, Humphrey de Toron, Isabella’s young husband, didn’t have the backbone to confront Guy de Lusignan, and so the baronial opposition collapsed.  Ramla, however, preferred to quit the kingdom altogether rather than pay homage to Guy.  He turned over his lucrative lordships to his younger brother and went to seek his fortune in Antioch. Tripoli simply refused to recognize Guy as his King and made a separate peace with Salah-ad-Din.

And there was one other man who also refused to serve King Guy: William Marshal.  Based on the fact that William joined the Knights Templar on his deathbed, it is quite probable that he had been one of many “lay” knights that joined the Templars on a temporary basis while in Outremer.  It would have been a perfect means to do penance for the sins he had committed in Henry the Young King’s service and still be the fighting man he was. Yet with Gerard de Ridefort’s election to Grand Master and his decisive role in Guy’s coup d’etat, Marshal appears to have been repulsed by Ridefort’s policies to the point where he left the Templars and returned to the other end of the earth — despite the acute danger the Holy Land was in.

Two months latter, Guy de Lusignan proved that Ramla, Tripoli and the majority of the High Court had rightly assessed his character, capabilities and suitability to rule. Guy led the entire Christian army to an unnecessary but devastating defeat that led to the loss of the holiest city in Christendom, Jerusalem, and indeed the entire kingdom save the city of Tyre. Only a new crusade would restore a fragment of the Kingdom and enable Christendom to hang on to the coastline for another century.

The slaughter at Hattin from the
film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

And Guy? Guy was taken captive at Hattin, but cravenly ordered the strategically important city of Ascalon to surrender to Saladin to obtain his freedom. The garrison refused. Saladin then let Guy go free a year later on a promise that he not take up arms against the Muslims ever again, and Guy promptly broke his oath to lay siege to Acre. When Sibylla and his daughters by her died, he refused to accept that his claim to the throne was also dead and, with the backing of his father’s liege Richard the Lionheart, clung to the title of “King” of the kingdom he had lost.  After two years of trying to impose Guy on the remaining fighting men of Jerusalem, even Richard the Lionheart acknowledged it was pointless and dropped his support for Guy. But he offered a consolation prize: the Island of Cyprus that Richard had conquered but could not possibly control. In 1192, Guy went to Cyprus to try to subdue the Byzantine subjects already up in arms because of the injustices suffered during two years of Templar control of the island. He died there in 1194 to be succeeded by his more competent elder brother, Aimery.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Helena P. Schrader is the author of numerous works of history and historical fiction.  She holds a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg.  The first book of a three-part biographical novel of Balian d’Ibelin, who defended Jerusalem against Saladin in 1187 and was later one of Richard I’s envoys to Saladin, is now available for sale.  Read more at: http://defenderofjerusalem.com, 
http://helenapschrader.com or follow Helena’s blogs: Schrader’s Historical Fiction and Defending the Crusader Kingdoms.

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Knight of Jerusalem
A Biographical Novel of Balian d’Ibelin

Book I

A landless knight,

                A leper King

                                And the struggle for Jerusalem.

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William Marshal in the Holy Land

by Helena P. Schrader

William Marshal has gone down in English history as one of the most famous non-royal heroes of the Middle Ages. He was famed even in his lifetime as one of the greatest knights of a knightly age and a “flower of chivalry.”

 Marshal loved and excelled at tournaments, depicted here in a 13^th century German manuscript.

His story is better than fiction. Indeed, if his biography were not so well documented, it would be easy to dismiss the stories about him as pure invention. But William Marshal really existed, and he really rose by merit alone from being a landless knight to regent of England. Even his wife, through whom he became a magnate of the realm, was won by his prowess and loyalty, for he was granted the rich heiress by the dying Henry II as a reward for his decades of service to the Plantagenets; the grant was confirmed by Richard I to secure Marshal’s loyalty in the future. But in addition to being a paragon of chivalry, Marshal was typical of his generation in that he was also a faithful son of the Holy Catholic Church. On his deathbed he renounced the world and took vows as a monk, a Templar monk. He was buried in the Temple in London.

Tomb of a Knight in the Temple of London, sometimes identified as William Marshal

He also went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Because Marshal was such a famous knight and powerful figure at the time of his death, we are lucky to have a long eulogy in the form of a poem or song that was commissioned by his eldest son and intended to record his life for posterity. The poem is nineteen thousand nine hundred and fourteen verses long, and it is a remarkable document in itself, both lively and evocative.  Perhaps even more astonishing, the poem identifies sources and distinguishes between hear-say and verifiable fact, points out when sources are contradictory, and recounts many events first hand, stating explicitly “this I have seen” in many places. The latter suggests that the author was an intimate of William Marshal, or at least a trusted member of his household. This document, otherwise so rich in detail, however, tells us almost nothing about Marshal’s stay in the Holy Land.

What we do know is that William Marshal was bequeathed the crusader cross – the vow to go to Jerusalem and pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – by his liege, Henry the Young King. Henry had taken crusader vows sometime in 1182 or 1183 – which did not stop him from sacking churches and monasteries to pay his mercenaries. William Marshal appears to have been a witness – if not a participant – in the sack of Rocamadour, where the Young King stole the sword of Roland and much other treasure.  Returning from this disgraceful act, the Young King fell abruptly ill. In a high fever and fearing for his soul (at last), he sent messengers to his father begging for forgiveness, and turned over his mantle with the crusader cross to William Marshal.  He begged Marshal to fulfil his vow in his stead, then lay on a bed of ashes with a noose around his neck and died. It was June 11, 1183.

 According to Marshal’s biographer, William spent “two years” in Syria, serving the King of Jerusalem, doing great deeds of arms and winning the respect of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller. However, he was back in Europe by 1187, months before the devastating Battle of Hattin, and he brought with him two white, silk shrouds for his own burial.  He also returned having vowed to join the Knights Templar before his own death. These are the only known facts we have about William Marshal in the Holy Land, but even these facts are intriguing. 

Marshall most probably reached the Holy Land, travelling by either land or sea, in the spring of 1184. If he spent two years there he departed at the latest in the autumn of 1186.

The Crusader Kingdoms were defended by a network of castles such as this: Krak de Chevalliers

Those two years were years of dramatic change in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. On the one hand, the Muslims, which had long been bitterly divided between the Sunnis loyal to the Caliph of Baghdad and the Shiites of the Fatimid Caliphate, had been united under the strong and charismatic leadership of the Kurdish leader Salah ad-Din.  Saladin, as he is known in western writings, had called for jihad, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was more threatened than it had been since the early years of its existence. At the same time, the Kingdom was weakened from within because the king, Baldwin IV, was suffering from leprosy and slowly dying. His heir was a young boy, the son of his sister Sibylla, by her first husband.

Not long after William Marshal arrived in Jerusalem a delegation headed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Grand Masters of the Templars and Hospitallers was dispatched by King Baldwin to the West. The delegation carried with it the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the keys to the Tower of David: effectively the symbolic keys to the kingdom. The three men sought first the aid of Philip II of France and then Henry II of England, begging the later to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, turn his Western lands over to his adult and capable heirs, and take up the cause of Christendom by defending the Holy Land. If he would not do that, the delegation pleaded, then he should send one of his sons in his stead.  One has to wonder if it was pure coincidence of timing, or if William Marshal, who knew the Plantagenets so well, had not recommended – or at least encouraged – the appeal.

Meanwhile, Baldwin IV, in anticipation of his death, made his vassals vow an oath with regard to the succession.  If his nephew did not live to manhood and sire heirs of his own, they were to send to the Kings of France and England and to the Pope, who were then to jointly name a successor. Baldwin IV expressly excluded his sister Sybilla and her second husband from the succession.  

In the summer 1185, in the midst of Marshal’s stay in the Holy Land, Baldwin IV died.  His nephew was crowned Baldwin V, and the High Court of Jerusalem chose Raymond of Tripoli, an able and experienced man, as his regent. Tripoli immediately secured a new truce with Salah ad-Din.

Baldwin V, however, was sickly, and in August 1185, with Marshal still in the Holy Land, he died. The regent and the High Court of Jerusalem met in Tiberius to deal with the interregnum, but the dead king’s mother and her husband staged a coup. Sibylla had herself crowned Queen in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and placed a second crown on her husband’s head as her consort. Her second husband was a certain Guy de Lusignan, the younger son of a Poitivin baron and possibly an accomplice in the murder of Patrick, Earl of Salisbury, William Marshal’s uncle.

The murder of Patrick of Salisbury had been a highly significant episode in William Marshal’s young life. As a landless knight in his uncle’s entourage, he had been escorting Queen Eleanor through her own territories, when they were attacked by the Lusignan brothers, then in rebellion against her. Accounts vary on which of the Lusignans was present (there were four brothers: Hugh, Geoffrey, Aimery and Guy), but there is no disagreement on how the Earl of Salisbury was killed.  Namely, he was pierced from behind by a lance; he was neither armored nor defending himself.  This was clearly an “unchivalrous” act, a despicable crime, that outraged the young William Marshal.  William himself was severely wounded in the encounter, taken captive, and ill-treated by the Lusignans.

Given this history, it is hard to imagine that William Marshal was partial to Guy de Lusignan, whether he had been personally responsible for the Earl of Salisbury’s murder or not.  (Indeed, it may have been his opposition to Guy de Lusignan that inspired him to suggest the above mission to Henry II – assuming he had anything to do with it.) Furthermore, Sibylla and Guy’s coup preempted the rights of Henry II, Marshal’s liege, who should have been involved in naming the next King of Jerusalem.  Marshal must have been appalled by their behavior, and it would probably have reinforced his dislike for the Lusignans. Since Marshal appears to have left the Holy Land not long after Lusignan’s usurpation of the throne, it is probably fair to postulate that it was Lusignan’s rise to power that induced Marshal to quit The Holy Land.

This hypothesis is supported by the fact that William appears to have spent his years in the Holy Land as one of the many secular knights who temporarily served with the Templars.  These knights did not take the final vows of poverty and chastity, but for the period of the voluntary service, submitted themselves to the discipline and Rule of the Knights Templar.  Indeed, in William’s case we know that he vowed to join the Temple at a later date – as he eventually did. The timing, however, is significant. The Grand Master of the Templars, who had been sent to plead with Henry II to come to the Holy Land died during his mission and was replaced by a man who supported Guy de Lusignan.  So Marshal’s decision not to take his final vows and stay with the Templars in their hour of need, may have had to do with his unwillingness to serve Guy de Lusignan, leaving it to his deathbed to finally join the Templars.

An illustration from Matthew Paris’ “Greater Chronicle” depicting Knights Templar.

We will never know, but Marshal’s very silence to his household and family about this episode in his life suggests that he left the Holy Land with a bitter taste in his mouth – or opinions he felt he should best keep to himself.

Biographies of William Marshal available today include:

·         William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England, by Sidney Painter, 1933.

·         William Marshal, Flower of Chivalry, George Duby, 1985.

·         William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, by David Crouch, 2002.

·         William Marshal Earl of Pembroke, by Catherine Armstrong, 2007

Recommended works of historical fiction featuring William Marshal:

·         Christian Balling’s Champion is delightful, but it only covers a tiny slice of Marshal’s life. 

·         Elizabeth Chadwick’s The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion are well-researched and well-written tributes to William Marshal.

Helena Schrader is writing a series of ten novels set in the Age of Chivalry. For more information, visit her website: http://tales-of-chivalry.com or watch the video teaser Tales of Chivlary. She also has a blog devoted to the crusader kingdoms: http://DefendingCrusaderKingdoms.blogspot.com. 

One of these novels is set against the backdrop of the destruction of the Templars in the early 12^th century:

The English Templar

An English knight en route to Cyprus is caught up in the mass arrest of French Templars on the night of Friday October 13, 1307. Tortured until he confesses to crimes he did not commit, he wants only to die, but fate puts him in the hands of two people determined to keep him alive – and resist the injustice of the French King.  A novel of faith, fortitude, and the power of love set against the backdrop of one of the most appalling instances of state terrorism in Western European history.