The Angevin Empire by John Gillingham

Author:John Gillingham [Gillingham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Itinerant Household

Clearly it was in the king’s political interest to have a large and impressive court and in the interests of ambitious men to become members. None the less, the household could not simply grow ad infinitum; transport and catering problems were alone sufficient to see to that. The demands made by the household had a dramatic effect on local foodstocks and prices and created a situation wide open to abuse. The presence of the king imposed a heavy burden on any district through which he passed; only one or two particularly prosperous regions could endure him and his household for any length of time. So the king was constantly on the move. He travelled both for political reasons (in order to make his presence felt) and for economic reasons (to make his presence no longer felt). The sheer size of their dominions meant that in this respect the Angevin kings had to work very hard — though Henry II’s own courtiers explained the king’s incessant movement in terms of his fear of getting fat. At times the wagons of the household averaged twenty miles a day — and they went on moving, winter and summer. A system of household government meant, as Jolliffe put it, ‘a government of the roads and roadsides’.24

But which roads? An answer to this question might give us a clue to Angevin territorial and political priorities. Unfortunately it is only from 1199 that we can trace the king’s itinerary on something approaching a day-to-day basis. Fortunately, however, this means that there are at least a few years (1199–1202) in which we can follow the movements of a king who was still ruler of the whole Angevin Empire. From the beginning of his reign in April 1199 to the end of 1202 John spent roughly 45 per cent of his time in Normandy, 25 per cent in England, 22 per cent in Greater Anjou and 8 per cent in Aquitaine (see Map 3). Although the evidence for his predecessors’ itineraries is much less good, it seems likely that the basic pattern was a similar one. As Robert Bartlett has observed: ‘Any of the Norman and Angevin kings who were able to do so spent more time in France than in England. The only kings of England to spend prolonged periods in England were the military failures.’25

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.