The family firm
RICHARD BARBER is drawn in to a fast-paced account of how Plantagenet family tensions engulfed medieval England in civil war
The Restless Kings: Henry II, His Sons and the Wars for the Plantagenet Crown by Nick Barratt Faber, 336 pages, £20
As an expert on family history, with training as a medieval historian, Nick Barratt is well placed to consider the most notorious royal family in English history – that of Henry II. Henry was remarkably successful in assembling a vast array of territories: his rule, direct or indirect, extended from Scotland almost to the Mediterranean, and was put together in only a couple of decades. The lands he ruled have often been described as an empire: Nick Barratt shrewdly likens them to a family firm. What he doesn’t add is the saying that the first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it; in Henry’s case, for ‘generation’ read ‘ king’.
Henry’s so-called empire depended entirely on personal power, and fell apart as quickly as it had been created. He spent 20 years acquiring his domains, and the next 20 trying to ensure a succession which would hold them together. Henry had his eldest surviving son – Henry ‘the Young King’– crowned king of England during his lifetime so that there could be no doubt as to his heir, and seems to have envisaged a system whereby his brothers would hold their lands from the new king. But his sons were just as restless and ambitious as himself and – frustrated by their lack of real power – their ambitions exploded into civil war in 1173. In this, they were encouraged by their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Yet this apparently formidable allegiance was no match for Henry’s skills as a military commander and devious negotiator.
Henry had built a very advanced state system in England, and replicated some of it in Normandy. However, the duchy of Aquitaine and the Celtic lands lay outside the scope of that formidable machine; Nick Barratt explains the workings of this very clearly, as well as the impossibility of holding everything together. Henry himself was never certain as to how it was to be done.
Equally, it was never certain that it would all fall apart. Richard was the greatest military commander of the age, and even John showed surprising military skills. Several times he came near to success in his struggle with the barons, and unforeseen events as much as his own personality were his downfall.
It is a tangled tale, and not easily told: the author does not help his readers by highlighting great events out of sequence, and then going back to explain how they had arisen. He describes the Angevin kings as “racing around” and tends to do the same himself. At other times, he works like a novelist, embellishing the bare facts with imaginary adjectives and details. Elsewhere, he uses original sources to good effect, but fails to take bias into account: Gerald of Wales, whose vivid pages about Henry he often cites, wrote with bitter hatred; earlier historians have called his account “blinkered” and “wildly partisan”.
Overall, however, this is a tale well told, with an interesting take on the central issue.
Richard Barber’s books include Henry II (Allen Lane, 2015) and Edward III and the Triumph of England (Allen Lane, 2013)
Henry’s sons were just as ambitious as himself, and frustrated by their lack of real power