Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior by Catherine Hanley

Book Review

Empress Matilda: power-hungry, haughty, arrogant, stubborn … or so we were once told. Modern lines of thought have now questioned this, however, and in her new book Matilda:Empress, Queen, Warrior Catherine Hanley gives us a fresh perspective on this fascinating character, providing a much-needed in-depth look at the life of Matilda, heir to the English throne, and the events that unfolded as a result of her being named as such.

The book opens with Matilda’s epitaph: ‘Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring. Here lies the daughter, wife and mother of Henry.’ Hanley then sets the tone for the rest of the book as she takes a gendered approach and rightly points out that memorialising Matilda in a way such as this defines her by the men that surrounded her – her father, her husband, her son – and is rather disappointing for a woman such as she, who accomplished a great deal in her own right. Yet, sadly, it is also rather unsurprising.  

The truth is that during this time women were defined by the men around them, though perhaps not solely. There were ideals and expectations for femininity and women (as there were for masculinity and men) and they did not include making your own mark on the world independent of the men around you. In fact, Hanley links this with the very crux of the issue surrounding Matilda.

Hanley makes an excellent point when she says that, on paper, there should not have been any issue regarding Matilda’s succession: she was of royal blood, the only legitimate child of the previous king, she was well-educated and had leadership experience and, perhaps most importantly, she had been named heir to the Crown by the king and the leading nobility had sworn oaths of fealty to her. If Matilda had been male, there would have been no question at all about her right to rule. However, she was not. And one of the primary concerns was that she was seeking to rule in her own right. There had been no precedent for this in England and, due to Matilda’s gender, it was deemed improper for her to actively pursue this for herself. As Hanley puts it, ‘it was impossible at the time not to view her situation through the lens of gender; she was not a person but a woman, and thus her ambitions became both unusual and unacceptable’.

Furthermore, Matilda went as far as to wage war in her pursuit to rule. And she was very much involved in the planning of her campaign, but this was a masculine ideal. Hanley noted that while it’s true women often took on more masculine roles in this period, it was only ever considered acceptable at this time when it was done on behalf of a man – a mother acting as queen regent, for example, or a wife overseeing the rule of her husband’s lands while he was away. As a result of this Matilda became condemned for her decisiveness in her campaign, her wartime leadership abilities and her authoritative manner – the very qualities she would have been praised for had she been a man.

This book therefore raises some interesting issues regarding gender and women in medieval England; however, at the same time it provides a much-needed biography of an often-overlooked person from our history, yet one who had a staggering impact upon it.

The book is generally chronological in structure, beginning with Matilda as a child and being sent away at the age of eight to marry the much older future Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. Hanley considers how hard this must have been for the young girl, but how very well she adapted to her new surroundings and later thrived in them. In fact, Hanley does a wonderful job throughout the book of really personalising the people she is writing about and making you think about how their situations affected them and their actions. This can be a hard thing to do with history. It can be easy to forget these were real people. Instead, Hanley makes us think how scary it must have been for an eight-year-old girl to be uprooted to a new country and culture and married to a stranger. Yes, this was common practice for medieval nobility, but it would nonetheless have been daunting. There are countless moments like this throughout the book where Hanley pauses to consider what a person may have been thinking or feeling, or contextualises the situation to help you understand their motivations better. The history she writes is more than an account of names, places and dates; it is brought to life. Furthermore, she breaks down complex issues (such as the Investiture Contest) and explains them clearly and concisely. This approach makes the book easy to follow for the casual reader, but it is also informative and original enough in its content and arguments for those with a more specialist interest. It strikes a perfect balance.

'Medieval England countenanced the reign of several underage boys and at least one lunatic – to say nothing of various men who were alleged to have been murderers, rapists, or both – but never of a woman.' 

The narrative progresses throughout the next couple of chapters to discuss key events such as the disaster of the White Ship, Henry I’s succession dilemma, Emperor Henry’s death and Matilda’s return to court and, of course, his eventual naming of her as heir to the English throne and the oaths the barons swore to uphold this, including Stephen of Blois, future Stephen I.

Stephen’s usurpation of Matilda’s throne is covered in its own chapter. Hanley points out that a lot of this was luck on Stephen’s part: he was geographically closer than Matilda, meaning news of the king’s death reached him first, and he was also at a location where the shortest possible crossing of the Channel could be made, again granting him the benefits of additional time. It is possible that Stephen arrived in England as soon as one week after the king’s death.

Once news eventually reached Matilda she failed to make a swift departure to England, as Stephen had. Hanley looks at the significance of this and questions the reasons for it. She makes the fascinating conclusion that she was very likely with child at this point – possibly eight to twelve weeks. This is another instance where Hanley really breathes life back into these long-forgotten figures, for she discusses that if this were the case Matilda would have been in her first trimester – a peak time for sickness. A sea journey simply may have been too much for her to bear. With a frustrating inability to travel for the most female of reasons, Matilda’s gender had hindered her once more.

Later chapters continue to proceed broadly chronologically, deviating from time to time to discuss significant individuals (such as Robert of Gloucester, Geoffrey of Anjou and, of course, the future Henry II) and matters of importance concerning them. The events of 1141 are so numerous that Hanley devotes two chapters to it, dividing it by the initial good fortune Matilda’s campaign took in this year (the Siege of Lincoln Castle and Stephen’s capture), to the spiralling downturn it ultimately took. Hanley does an excellent job of telling a complex tale in an easy to follow yet informative manner.

The final two chapters (there are ten in total) look at Matilda’s son Henry, the peace discussions and Matilda’s later years as queen mother. The ultimate agreement that Matilda’s son would become king is an interesting one, and another fine example of Hanley personalising the people she is discussing. She considers how Matilda must have felt at Henry being ‘adopted’ by Stephen in order to be named his heir. While it made a degree of sense due to the legalities (as Stephen had a son, by rights the Crown should have passed to him, but if the king named Henry in his own right then this would have undermined Stephen’s own claim), Hanley emphasises how much of a blow this must have felt like to Matilda. Henry was her son. His claim was through her blood. Yet he was being publically portrayed as Stephen’s son. It was, as Hanley puts it, as if ‘Matilda was written out of her own story’.

In all, this is a fascinating and little-discussed period of history. Matilda was a remarkable woman – intelligent, regal and full of determination and strength of character. Hanley’s well-researched, superbly written biography of her is both sympathetic to Matilda, yet also notes her shortcomings and failures. The gendered approach she takes when considering certain aspects of her story feels both natural and necessary. Matilda’s gender simply was a factor in her story. And what a story it was. 

***

Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior is available to purchase now. Click here to purchase a copy directly from the publisher's website.

Format: Hardback 

ISBN: 9780300227253

Imprint:Yale University Press 

Dimensions: 296 pages: 235 x 156mm 

Illustrations: 21 b-w illus.

Guest Post by Kathryn Warner: Edward II's Rustic Pursuits

As a part of the blog tour for her newly published book Edward II: The Unconventional King, I am delighted to welcome to The Medieval World historian Kathryn Warner, with a guest post on Edward II's Rustic Pursuits.




There were certain outdoor pursuits which most royal and noble men of the Middle Ages enjoyed: jousting, hunting and hawking.  Participation in these activities was conventional and expected for men of a certain rank, but one king, however, preferred much more unusual hobbies.  He was Edward II.

"From his youth he devoted himself in private to the art of rowing and driving carts, of digging ditches and thatching houses, as was commonly said, and also with his companions at night to various works of ingenuity and skill, and to other pointless trivial occupations unsuitable for the son of a king," commented the Lanercost chronicler disapprovingly.  Edward II also loved building walls, swimming, rowing, hedging, working with wrought iron and shoeing horses, and not only did he enjoy such hobbies, he showed talent for them: the Scalacronica, a chronicle written by the son of a knight who had known Edward well, called him "very skilful in what he delighted to employ his hands upon."

Most unusually for the fourteenth century, Edward II loved being around water, swimming and rowing.  In February 1303 before his accession, when he was eighteen, he had to pay four shillings in compensation to his Fool Robert Bussard or Buffard, because the two men went swimming together in the Thames at Windsor and Robert was injured in some way by "the trick the prince [of Wales] played on him in the water."  In the autumn of 1315, Edward II spent a congenial month in the Fens with "a great company of common people," swimming and rowing on various lakes and waterways.  To us this may sound like a healthy and relaxing holiday, but Edward's contemporaries were baffled and offended, and the Westminster chronicler talked of his "silly company of swimmers" and his "childish frivolities," and sarcastically declared that the king had gone to the Fens so that "he might refresh his soul with many waters."

In June 1314, Edward II humiliatingly lost the battle of Bannockburn to Robert Bruce, king of Scotland.  A member of Edward's own household, Robert de Newington, was arrested for stating that nobody could have expected the king to win the battle when he spent all his time idling, digging and thatching. A clerk in Edward's service who wrote the Vita Edwardi Secundi (Life of Edward II) also wrote despairingly "If only he had given to arms the labour that he expended on rustic pursuits, he would have raised England aloft; his name would have resounded through the land." The king's willingness to "give himself up always to improper works and occupations" was deemed important enough to be mentioned at his deposition of January 1327 as one of the reasons for his unsuitability to be king, not only because such occupations were considered incompatible with his royal dignity, but because they led him "to neglect the business of his kingdom."

Some extant entries in Edward II's household accounts also provide a glimpse into his love of spending time with his common subjects and watching or taking part in their activities. In November 1322 near Doncaster, he stood by a river to watch ten fishermen fishing, shortly afterwards went to the forge at Temple Hirst in Yorkshire to chat to his blacksmith John Cole, and in May 1326 invited a group of shipwrights to stay with him at Kenilworth Castle. In August 1326, the king joined in when a group of men were hired to make hedges and a ditch in the park of Kenilworth Castle, and some weeks earlier had bought drinks for a group of men hired to clean the ditches around Edward's London manor of Burgundy "in the king's presence." There are many other such entries. All fourteenth-century chroniclers who describe Edward II's appearance comment on his enormous strength: "he was one of the strongest men in his realm"; "handsome in body and great of strength"; "tall and strong, a fine figure of a handsome man" and so on. Edward revelled in his strength and in his excellent health and fitness; he loved the outdoors and demanding physical exercise; he was as far removed from the caricatured feeble court fop he is depicted as in Braveheart and much modern fiction as any man possibly could be. Were he alive in our century, he would no doubt be admired as a king with the common touch and as an excellent role model to encourage his increasingly sedentary subjects to take up some exercise. Sadly for Edward II, he was born in the wrong era, and his favourite activities attracted little but bewildered and horrified contempt.

                                               

To find out more about Edward II  have a look at Kathryn's new book; a biography of this much maligned king.

History has not been overly kind to Edward; having been subject to cutting criticism throughout his reign, he garnered a particularly poor reputation in the many years that followed. Today he is typically remembered for his inadequacy as a king, likely homosexuality, and of course that red hot poker. In The Unconventional King, Kathryn sets out to right some of these wrongs regarding his reputation, and the rumours that have surrounded him for centuries. She achieves this with great success; the unconventional king with the myths around him cleared, emerges as a man in his own right with a captivating life story.

The book is meticulously researched, and this shines through in every chapter. It proves to be a fascinating read and makes a refreshing change to read about this king's virtues, as well as his weaknesses as a ruler. 

The book is available for purchase now directly from Amberley Publishing, or at Amazon UK, Amazon US, The Book Depository, and The Guardian Bookshop.

ISBN: 9781445641201 

Format: Hardback; eBook.

Visit Kathryn's blog here: http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.co.uk

She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter

Book Review: Defending the City of God, by Sharan Newman

Defending the City of God: A Medieval Queen, The First Crusades, and the Quest for Peace in Jerusalem

By Sharan Newman

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
ISBN: 978-1137278654
Format: Hardcover; eBook

After the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1099 AD, the surviving crusaders had two choices: either return to Europe, or create a home in the Holy Land. A large number chose to stay and forge a new life in one of the newly established Crusader States. This book, written by Sharan Newman, focuses on these people, and in particular, the lives of the children that they raised there.  

Newman has chosen Queen Melisende of Jerusalem to represent the children of the first crusaders who were born and raised in the East. The queen’s parents were:  Morfia, an Eastern Christian and member of the Armenian nobility; and Baldwin of Le Bourq, a French crusader who settled in the Holy Land and was given the title of Count of Edessa, before eventually being elected King of Jerusalem in 1118. Newman frequently emphasises this to the reader throughout the text. She also highlights the fact that Melisende was born and raised in the Holy Land; it’s a good point that provides a fresh perspective, and something that can easily be forgotten when historians write of the ‘Franks’ in the Crusader States.

The lives of Melisende and her sisters are the backbone of this book, and the queen’s lifespan c.1105-61 AD provides a natural time frame. The chapters progress roughly chronologically, with a few deviations when necessary. They are divided according to significant events in the Latin States, or personal ones related to the lives of Melisende and her sisters. They also touch upon the impact of these events on the lives of the local population during this period. As a result of this the narrative is unsurprisingly required to flit from place to place, or between events. Inevitably this does hinder the flow of the book somewhat, and can make it a little confusing at times. However, Newman holds things together well by writing very clearly, and makes a confusing subject for those new to it less so as a result.

Chapter One sets the scene with a discussion chiefly of the first crusaders and those who settled afterwards, and an outline of recent events in the area. I thought it was excellent that Newman pointed out that there had been countless wars in the region between many different peoples; the crusaders were just another overlord in a long succession. She writes: ‘To the shepherds, farmers, and their families life didn't change much. There was a time of tumult, punctuated by terror, then a new master who wanted the same taxes.’ This touches upon recent lines of thought, but a footnote or comment upon other works was rather missed. Nonetheless, it was very encouraging to see it discussed as it is important in understanding the dynamics of the newly formed Latin States. The second chapter spends a good proportion discussing Melisende’s mother, Morfia. Very little has been written of her before, so this well-researched section makes particularly interesting reading. The following few chapters proceed with a narrative of Baldwin II’s role in political events between the states, and the constant struggle at the time to defend their borders. Throughout, Newman comments upon the daily lives of people living in Jerusalem in particular, and how the continuous struggles impacted upon them.

From Chapter Ten onwards the focus of the narrative shifts from Melisende’s parents to the soon-to-be queen, and her sisters. The future arrangement for Baldwin and Morfia’s four daughters (Melisende, Hodierna, Alice, and Yvette) are discussed, and with this comes the decision of Fulk V of Anjou for Melisende’s husband. An insightful contextual background of Fulk is provided, along with an account of the lengthy marriage discussions between him and Baldwin II. Throughout the following few chapters Newman discusses key events connected to Alice, and the rebellion and subsequent murder of Hugh of Jaffa, and how this impacted upon the dynamics between Fulk and Melisende. She rightly places a constant emphasis upon Melisende’s right to rule; the royal bloodline was through her and not her husband.

During the final three chapters the text shifts focus once more, this time to relations between the queen and her firstborn son Baldwin (III). Fulk had died unexpectedly in a hunting accident leaving Melisende with two sons, both of whom were under the age deemed fit to rule (15). Upon Baldwin II’s death, Melisende, her husband Fulk, and their son Baldwin were all named joint heirs to the throne. Therefore when Fulk died, technically Melisende and Baldwin III were equal rulers in the eyes of the law; with Melisende acting foremost due to Baldwin being under age. Newman comes at this situation with a refreshing argument. She frequently stresses Melisende’s right to rule once more, and reasons that the later power struggle between the queen and her son was more to do with his lack of apparent military ability, and therefore a concern for her kingdom, than a desire to cling on to power. The latter is something that has been argued with vigour by Hans E. Mayer in his article ‘Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem’.  Newman makes good use of both charter evidence and the chronicles (particularly William of Tyre), to make a convincing counter-argument to Mayer.

Newman uses a good mixture of the limited available sources, including Islamic accounts of events in addition to the much used Latin/French and Greek ones. I found it a slight shame that the final chapter dealt with a period much longer than the rest (1150-61). In my opinion, this was the period in Melisende’s life that was most relevant to one of the central proposed themes of the book; the suggestion that Melisende’s actions were based upon a belief that her son was not yet ready to rule alone. In addition to this, Newman wrote that she believed negative portrayals of Melisende were a result of what has been written about her by historians, and not by her contemporaries. The negative qualities written about her have been largely based upon her actions during the period of the final chapter, and so it might have been more satisfying if Newman had spent more time addressing events such as the following in greater detail: the civil war in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; and the arguable side-lining of Baldwin III through her second son Amalric’s inclusion in the charters at this time, and his appointment as Count of Jaffa. Despite this the book is very thorough in its detail and is written in a casual manner that is easy to read. Newman frequently raises minor points that really paint a vivid picture of the time in the reader’s mind; little details that humanise the people she is writing about. For example, when commenting upon the fall of Edessa she reminds the reader that this was Melisende’s childhood home. Whilst some of these details are merely speculative, some do have a sound basis and they provide good food for thought.

Overall, this is a thoroughly researched and clearly written book, and a much-needed recent contribution to the secondary works on Queen Melisende of Jerusalem.  It provides a refreshing perspective on the internal and external troubles of the Latin States in the early twelfth century, by considering how these struggles impacted upon its residents. A general reader with an interest in this period would find the book extremely insightful.