King Henry I dies after eating too many lampreys
England is thrown into a succession crisis and a destructive civil war
At 360 million years old, lampreys pre-date the dinosaurs. However it is not the origins of these small, eel-like, jawless fish that makes them famous, but their culpability in the death of the last Norman monarch of England.
In late November 1135, King Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, was at Lyons-la-Forêt near Rouen in Normandy on a hunting trip with his court. But on 1 December, his 35-year-long reign was cut short by his unexpected and dramatic death. According to the contemporary chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, Henry I “had given peace to the realm, and was the father of his people”. Huntingdon attributed the king’s untimely demise to his last meal, “a surfeit of lampreys”.
In the Middle Ages lampreys were a veritable delicacy among the elite, and apparently a favourite dish of Henry I. However, their properties in traditional medieval medicine were considered to have caused all manner of problems for Henry. According to chronicler Roger of Wendover, the lampreys had “mortally chilled the old man’s blood”, which caused a “sudden and violent illness”.
To cool the blood in old age was considered by medieval standards a dangerous thing, based on the principles of the bodily humours. Humoral theory was standard practice in the Middle Ages, in the attempt to balance the body with four different physical states: sanguine (warm and moist), yellow bile (warm and dry), phlegm (cold and moist) and melancholic (cold and dry). Certain foods were believed to propagate various humours, so were meant to be eaten or avoided depending on personal needs. In old age, Henry I would have required warming foods – so his favourite dish of lampreys, which was considered cold and moist, was anything but healthy.
Despite the certainty of Roger of Wendover, it was not necessarily a mortal chill caused by the infamous lampreys that killed the king – it may have simply been a bad case of food poisoning. Whatever the truth of the matter, his death had significant consequences, resulting in a succession crisis that became a civil war in England. Lasting for more than a decade, this period became known to posterity as “The Anarchy”.