Henry I: The Father of His People by Edmund King

Author:Edmund King
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141978994
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2018-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

4

Infertility

Henry and his court returned to England on 25 November 1120. The king had made the Channel crossing, in one direction or another, at least twenty times. The sea crossing itself was a matter of routine. What marked out this journey, initially, was the scale of the operation and the sense of fulfilment as the company set forth. After four years of diplomacy and one day of military triumph, Henry had secured his objectives. And everything that he achieved had been for his son. As he sailed, he could look forward, a few weeks hence, to celebrating a triumphant Christmas court at Westminster, his son at his side. But after he sailed from Barfleur on that winter evening he would not see his son again, and he would celebrate Christmas not in state at Westminster but at his hunting lodge at Brampton near Huntingdon, with a small household and some close family members, including Theobald, Count of Blois. It had fallen to Theobald to inform the king of what had happened. Reluctant, even afraid, to tell Henry to his face, he arranged to have a child brought into the king’s presence and innocently blurt out the news.1

One of the vessels in the convoy, the White Ship, had foundered. Many of the passengers were young men. Not a few of them had been drinking before embarkation, which is not unusual. They had shared their drinks with the crew, which is inadvisable. They had set out to race the king’s vessel, which had sailed before them, and in doing so they had strayed from the navigation channel. That at least was how men tried to make sense of the disaster which followed. They struck a rock, the craft fell apart, and all but a couple of the two hundred and more souls on board perished. William, the king’s son and heir, was one of them, along with two other of the king’s children, Richard and Matilda, Countess of the Perche; also Richard, Earl of Chester, and his wife Matilda, the daughter of Adela of Blois. Adela’s son, Stephen, Count of Mortain, had initially boarded the vessel but had disembarked, because he was suffering from diarrhoea; many young men from his county, expecting to settle in England, were lost. The list seemed endless: there had been ‘new men’ on board, including Geoffrey Ridel and Robert Mauduit, and in total eighteen women of comital rank. The loss of the vessel was the more distressing because only a few bodies were recovered. Their families would lack the consolation of a place of burial, where they might pray for their souls.2

The loss of the White Ship would become a defining image of the reign, the king grieving over the loss of his son (plate 7). His grief was shared by the whole court. The Archbishop of York, Thurstan, a former royal chaplain, formidably well networked, commented simply that he had lost many friends. He spoke for them all.3

They were soon back to work. There was a

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