WHAT WAS HENRY II REALLY LIKE?

Bruises on his shins, callouses on his hands and a head the size of a melon

I’m revisiting some familiar and beloved territory at the moment: the early Plantagenets. Specifically, I’ve been writing about Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Thomas Becket. And yesterday I came back to the famous description of Henry, written by Peter of Blois - lawyer, theologian and diplomat, who worked with the English king from the 1170s onwards.

His famous description of Henry is contained in a letter of 1177, addressed to the archbishop of Palermo, an old contact from Peter’s days on that island. The English translation I’ve used here is from the always-handy Fordham University Medieval Sourcebook.

After a scriptural preamble on the theme of humility, and thanks for some gifts of a ‘golden sash and silken girdle, and samite, and other exotic goods’ which the archbishop had sent, Peter recalls that the archbishop has ‘demanded from me with all insistence that I should send to you the shape and habits of the lord king of England in an accurate description.’ Then he gets going.

About David it was said [I Kings 16] to the commendation of his beauty, that he was red-haired; however you will know that the lord king has been red-haired so far, except that the coming of old age and gray hair has altered that color somewhat.

By the time Peter is writing, Henry is in his mid-forties, and has been king of England for nearly a quarter of a century. He’s been through the Becket affair, and his family have rebelled against him. You’d be going grey, too.

His height is medium, so that neither does he appear great among the small, nor yet does he seem small among the great. His head is round, just as if the seat of great wisdom, and specially a shrine of lofty counsel. Such is the size of his head, that so it matches with his neck and with the whole body in proportionate moderation.

I always picture Henry as quite short and stocky - I’d be casting Ed Sheeran if I was putting on a Broadway musical of his life. (Note to self: call Ed Sheeran and pitch musical.) How big is Sheeran’s head? I don’t know and have never thought about it. Let’s move on.

His eyes are round, and white and plain, while he is of calm spirit; but in anger and disorder of heart they shine like fire and flash in fury. His hair is not in fear of the losses of baldness, nevertheless on top there is a tonsure of hairs; his leonine face is rather square.

This was noted by more than one of Henry’s acquaintances - the flash of anger in his eyes when something riled him.

The eminence of his nose is weighed to the beauty of the whole body with natural moderation; curved legs, a horseman's shins, broad chest, and a boxer's arms all announce him as a man strong, agile and bold; nevertheless, in a certain joint of his foot the part of the toenail is grown into the flesh of his foot, to the vehement outrage of the whole foot. His hands testify grossly to the same neglect of his men; truly he neglects their care all the time; nor at any time, unless carrying birds, does he use gloves.

The physical strength is fairly conventional praise, but what gives Peter of Blois’ description the smack of truth is his willingness to describe Henry ‘warts and all’, or rather, bunions and cracked hands and all. He does a lovely job of fusing a description of Henry as demi-god with Henry as ordinary man. It’s the same sort of effect late twentieth-century writers like Gay Talese brought to magazine profiles of Hollywood celebrities. The imperfections humanise the subject; they also emphasise the writer’s intimacy with the great man. It’s a flex.

Daily in mass, in counsels and in other public doings of the realm always from morning until vespers he stands on his feet. And, he never sits, unless riding a horse or eating, although he has shins greatly wounded and bruised with frequent blows of horses' hooves. In a single day, if necessary, he can run through four or five day-marches and, thus foiling the plots of his enemies, frequently mocks their plots with surprise sudden arrivals; he wears boots without a fold, caps without decoration, light apparel.

Another frequently observed Henry trait here: he is a fidget. He also has the uncanny ability to show up when he’s least expected, long before his opponents think possible. Speed kills. Henry never slows down.

He is a passionate lover of woods; while not engaged in battles, he occupies himself with birds and dogs. For in fact his flesh would weigh him down enormously with a great burden of fat, if he did not subdue the insolence of his belly with fasts and exercise; and also in getting onto a horse, preserving the lightness of youth, he fatigues almost every day the most powerful for the labor.

Show me a medieval king who didn’t like getting into the woods and slaughtering sentient beasts. It’s the Peloton of its day. But NB this also hints at something that will become a political issue in its time. The early Plantagenets aggressively extended English forest land and enforced their rights over it. (Forest was subject to a different legal code to non-forest land.) Rolled up into the Magna Carta crisis of 1214-17 were complaints about royal forest policy; these eventually produced the Charter of the Forest in 1217, which is the lesser-studied ‘other half’ of Magna Carta.

Truly he does not, like other kings, linger in his palace, but traveling through the provinces he investigates the doings of all, judging powerfully those whom he has made judges of others.

Again, what may sound like conventional praise is something more than that. Henry’s territories comprised England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine; he also spent time trying to enforce his rule in parts of Wales and Ireland. That meant he was always on the move, and to mitigate the effects of his perpetual motion, he created government systems that could operate efficiently when he wasn’t there. The extension of a writ-based, institutionalising central government, and the abuse of that system as a money-making machine by Henry, Richard and John underpinned some of the complaints levelled in Magna Carta.

No one is more cunning in counsel, more fiery in speech, more secure in the midst of dangers, more cautious in fortune, more constant in adversity.

Flattery, move on.

Whom once he has esteemed, with difficulty he unloves them; whom once he has hated, with difficulty he receives into the grace of his familiarity.

Yup, ask Becket about that one. The hostility with which Henry pursued that vendetta was astonishing. It’s not just what happened in 1170 - I’ve been looking at accounts of Becket’s 1164 trial in Northampton Castle, which was directed personally by Henry. It was a show-trial designed to identify supposed abuses perpetrated by Becket when he was Henry’s chancellor. The ultimate aim (at the outset) seemed to be to apply sufficient political pressure to Becket that he would resign as archbishop of Canterbury (or, less likely, break and acquiesce with Henry’s controversial Church policies as laid out in the Constitutions of Clarendon). But it got nasty, and personal, very quickly. By the end of the week, Henry was gunning for treason charges to be levelled against Becket, and seems to have decided that the archbishop should not only be ruined, disgraced, defrocked and humiliated, but jailed for life. Ouch.

Always are in his hands bow, sword, spear and arrow, unless he be in council or in books. As often as he is able to rest from cares and anxieties, he occupies himself by reading alone, or in a crowd of clerics he labors to untangle some knot of inquiry. For while your king knows his letters well, our king is more literate by far. Truly I have judged the abilities of both in learned matters. You know that the king of Sicily was my student for a year, and had had from you the basic arts of versification and literature; he obtained more benefit of knowledge through my industry and solicitude. However as soon as I had departed the kingdom, that one turned himself over to abject books in imperial leisure. But yet in the household of the lord king of the English every day is school, in the constant conversation of the most literate and discussion of questions.

The Sicilian king mentioned here is William II, whom Peter had tutored as a child. William would go on to marry Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Joanna. When he died in 1189, Joanna was treated rather roughly by the new Sicilian usurper-king, Tancred. This invited the wrath of Richard the Lionheart, Joanna’s big brother, who freed her and took her on to the Holy Land, where he briefly tried persuading her to marry Saphadin, brother of Saladin. Fun facts!

No one is more honest in speech than our king, more polite in eating, more moderate in drinking; no one is more magnificent in gift-giving, no one more munificent in alms-giving: and therefore his name is like poured oil, and the entire church of saints describes the alms of such a one…

At this point the letter turns into an immense and boring litany of conventional flatteries - Henry is so great, so wise, so kind, so blah blah blah. But it gets interesting again towards the end.

Because however you asked about the death of the blessed martyr Thomas, I say in the word of the Lord and in the order of deacon to you, that in conscience I believe in no way that the king was guilty of this thing… Also you will have learned that the lord king has made the glorious martyr his chief patron in all his needs. For in fact on the very day when he first visited the tomb of the martyr, he subjected the king of Scots, persecutor and attacker most strong in prison chains. Thereafter he has triumphed most gloriously with the continual favor of successes by the help of the martyr over all his enemies.

Hell of a spin, but very much the Henrician line, ie Henry wasn’t to blame for Becket’s death, and in fact, his devotion to the nascent cult of poor old Thomas has helped him get out of all sorts of sticky situations. What Peter is referring to here is Henry’s iconic self-abasement before Becket’s tomb at Canterbury in 1174, which seemed to convince God to deliver him William the Lion of Scotland as a prisoner, hastening the end of the great war of 1173-4.

Indeed the kingdom of England, which he won by the sweat of war from King Stephen, most strong in arms, although but a youth and of no account, his sons, with the counsel and aid of the neighboring princes, have thrown into confusion by grave sedition.

We’re still on the war here.

That one however, destitute of his men, and attacked by foreigners, with the martyr helping him, in whose virtue one alone has put to flight ten thousand, prevailed over all, and the Lord delivered into his hands his enemies, "To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron". [Psalm 149:8] That one therefore, who turned the hearts of the sons toward their father, himself stirred up or sent filial and devoted affection to the sons of our king; may he himself establish the seat of our father for a long time, and may he bring peace.

Bit tortured, but it leads to a good line…

For I know that if they stir up wars against their parents, the Lord will mow them down. For by the judgment and fatal law of God it is sanctified, that whenever they presume to assault that one from their own blood with wars, he will not even have half his days. This however we read in the book of experience now about many people, and we know it by visible proof.

Mic drop. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did! See you on the flip.