Knowing I have amassed a large collection of books - both fiction and non-fiction - about King Stephen and The Anarchy, my son hit a jackpot when he gave me Charles Spencer's The White Ship for my Christmas present. Although I have toyed with buying a couple of Spencer's books previously - Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier (2007) and Blenheim: Battle for Europe (2004) - I didn't take the plunge, as I already had several very good biographies on Rupert (a hero of mine) and Christopher Hibbert's The Marlboroughs (2001). Like Hibbert, Spencer has been called a 'popular historian'. Well, it's better than being an unpopular one!
William Collins first edition - 2020
Any reader who has studied the period will know why the Plantagenets have been called the Devil's Brood - well promulgated by a range of Historical novelists: including Alfred Duggan (1957) and Sharon Kay Penman (2008). They were sired by the Normans and Angevins, who seem equally to have been spawned by the Devil!
Spencer's subtitle bookends the period he is writing about: Conquest - the 1066 invasion of England by Henry I's grandfather, William I 'the Bastard'; and Anarchy - the nineteen years of Stephen's reign, 1135-1154, when Christ and his Saints slept. They were rarely awake between 1066 and 1154. Spencer writes fluently and makes the most of the grisly stories from the early medieval chroniclers. William the Conqueror's unfortunate end - struck hard in his stomach by the pommel of his saddle - led to an even more grisly funeral. The coffin proving too small for his immense body, he had to be squeezed into the tomb, whereupon his guts burst open in a putrid cascade. The stench surged through the abbey, assaulting the nostrils of the congregation, causing widespread nausea... Nice.
William I (top left); William II (top right)
Henry I (bottom left); Stephen (bottom right)
A period of conflict between his three sons followed.
The eldest son, Robert Curthose (nicknamed for his short legs) seems to have been the Rab Butler of his time, twice failing to achieve the prize of England. Although proving a brave Crusader, he appears to have made a mess of ruling Normandy and ended up, captured by his youngest brother, imprisoned in Devizes castle for twenty years, before dying in Cardiff Castle in 1134 in his early eighties. William Rufus (red-haired or of ruddy complexion), ruled England from 1187 to 1100 according to Orderic Vitalis as a debaucher-in-chief: he gave himself up insatiably to obscene fornications and repeated adulteries. Stained with sins, he set a culpable example of shameful debauchery to his subjects. And many chose to copy his ways. In the year of Rufus' death, Abbot Fulchred of Shewsbury gave a fiery sermon, referring to the leprosy of villainy, unrestrained lust and the sickness of evil that stalked the land. Rufus' stalking (and hunting) time was over. On the following day, he somewhat mysteriously met his end (unlike King Harold) with an arrow in the New Forest.
Robert de Bellême symbolises the very worst of these times, perhaps only outclassed by his diminutive mother Mabel. After a poisonous, and poisoning, career, justice finally caught up with her. Relaxing on her bed, having just emerged from her bath, a vengeful enemy decapitated her with his sword. Robert continued in her devilish ways, becoming a byword for malevolent cruelty throughout Normandy. He chose not to ransom his prisoners because he preferred to keep victims on hand for torture and mutilation. In early 1105 de Bellême incinerated the church of Tournai-sur-Dive, forty-five people were stuck inside and perished in the flames.
The meat of the book, of course, is concerned with Henry I's reign, in England at first then triumphing over Curthose in Normandy. Spencer is good at keeping the tabs on the large cast of important characters - Louis the 'Fat' of France; Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury (whose arguments with Henry I foreshadowed the problems between Becket and Henry II); Roger of Salisbury, Henry's valuable Justiciar; the Montgomery, Beaumont and d'Avranche families; William Clito (son of Curthose who, being allowed to leave Henry's control, became the latter's biggest error); not to mention Henry's twenty-two illegitimate offspring. But the apple of his eye was his legitimate heir, William Ǣtheling who, by his father's indulgence, possessed everything but the name of king (William of Malmesbury). Whilst not subscribing to William of Malmesbury's view that no ship that ever sailed brought England such Disaster, the loss of the White Ship (Blanche-Nef) with all on board (bar one, Berold a butcher from Rouen, only there because he was trying to get payment for his meat!), it was clearly a family tragedy. William Ǣtheling was never found: The head which should have worn a crown of gold, was suddenly dashed against the rocks; instead of wearing embroidered robes, he floated naked in the waves; and instead of ascending a lofty throne, he found his grave in the bellies of fishes at the bottom of the sea (Henry of Huntingdon).
His father was to live for another fifteen years, but he left a dangerous vacuum as an inheritance. The vacuum would spew out the Anarchy. Only in 1154, could his grandson, another named Henry, start to rebind the wounds and usher in strong rule again and The Age of the Plantagenets.
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