The eagle's brood
ACCORDING to Gerald of Wales, one panel in Henry II's fine painted chamber in Winchester castle was blank. In his later years the king filled it with his own design: an eagle and its four young offspring. One eaglet on the parent bird's back and two on its wings were tearing at its flesh; the fourth was sitting on its head waiting to peck out its eyes. Henry said that the picture portrayed him and his sons, who would never cease persecuting him until he died. The youngest, his favourite, would, he foretold, hurt him the most cruelly.
Henry's eldest surviving son by Eleanor, Henry the Young King, was born in 1155; his second, Richard, in 1157; his third, Geoffrey, in 1158 and his last, John, in 1167. Following the example of the great French princes who frequently divided their lands among their sons -- the eldest receiving the patrimony, the younger ones any acquisitions -- all four would have expected to be given some portion of their father's vast and unwieldy dominions. In 1169 Henry made and arrangement to this effect. The Young King was to take Normandy, England and Anjou; Richard was to have the duchy of Aquitaine, his mother's lands; Geoffrey was to hold Brittany as the vassal of the Young King, who was crowned king of
England in 1170. John was excluded from the equation and thereby acquired the nickname 'Lackland'.
In 1173, however, the young Henry, a vain, idle and bellicose youth, rebelled against his father because the king was unwilling to allow him to enjoy his own lands and power. John's inheritance was a further bone of contention within the family: Henry II wanted his youngest son to have the Angevin strongholds of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau but the Young King opposed the plan. With Eleanor's support, a plot against Henry II was hatched with Louis VII of France, to whom the three elder brothers fled. Many of Henry's barons on both sides of the Channel declared for the Young King, and it took all of Henry II's political, diplomatic and military skills to defeat this dangerous coalition in 1174.
Below Thomas Becket crowning the
Young King, on the left, and Henry II
serving his son at a banquet. Although the
coronation of the new king while his
predecessor was alive was intended to
secure the succession and gain the court's
loyalty, it was not successful in this case.
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