Henry the Young King is Crowned
On 14 June 1170 Henry II crowned his successor. Rather than secure the Angevin realm, it set the stage for rebellion.
What better way for Henry II to secure the succession than to crown the next king while he himself still lived? The plan came to fruition on 14 June 1170, when his eldest surviving son, another Henry, was 15, in a ceremony performed by the archbishop of York. After the coronation, the king served his son at table. The archbishop marvelled at the sight, but young Henry was contemptuous. ‘Why are you astonished?’ he said. ‘He is lower in rank than I, the son of a queen and a duke, while I come from royal blood on both sides.’
Henry refused to give his son land and authority: he wished to teach the responsibilities of power first. But the young king chafed at what one contemporary chronicler, Roger of Howden, called ‘the gentleness of his father’s castigation’. For him, kingship was the distribution of favour. That he did lavishly: he ‘considered that he had lost a day when he had not secured the attachment of many by various acts of liberality’, Gerald of Wales wrote. There is a flavour of his largesse in the Christmas banquet of 1172 attended only by knights named William, all 110 of them.
In 1173 the young king escaped from his father’s court at Chinon and fled to his father-in-law, Louis VII, in Paris. Henry demanded his return. ‘Who asks?’ Louis said. The king of England, he was told. ‘What nonsense’, Louis said. ‘The king of England is here. His father may still pose as king, but that will soon be remedied.’
The young king’s ensuing rebellion was the greatest of Henry’s reign and took 18 months to quell. He spent the next years in chivalric tournaments on the continent – ‘French contests and lavish expenditure’ Ralph of Diceto said – before a dispute with his younger brother Richard, the future king, led him into renewed conflict with his family. He died of dysentery in Aquitaine while campaigning in June 1183.
There was a brief attempt to foster a cult in his memory; stories of miracles circulated. ‘As it is written, the number of fools is infinite’, the chronicler William of Newburgh retorted. He might have had the young king in mind.
