Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown: The Kings and Queens Who Never Were

Introduction

William the Conqueror died on 9 September 1087. He had held England in his iron grip for almost twenty-one years, wiping out the old aristocracy and causing untold misery and suffering across large parts of the realm as he went. He had seized the throne by violence in 1066, but he did not want his own death to result in another Hastings, or in a revival of any Anglo-Saxon claims; no, he would create his own Anglo- Norman dynasty, which would rule England by blood right. With this in mind, he made it clear that the English crown should pass to his son … his second son.

Naturally, his eldest son had a few thoughts of his own on the subject, and thus began four centuries of bloody disputes as the English monarchy’s line of hereditary succession was bent, twisted out of shape and finally broken when the last Plantagenet king fell in battle in 1485. History is written by the winners, but every game of thrones has its losers too, and their fascinating stories bring richness and depth to what is a colourful period of history. King John would not have gained the crown had he not murdered his young nephew, who was in line to become England’s first King Arthur; Henry V would never have been at Agincourt at all had his father not seized the throne by usurping and killing his cousin; and as the rival houses of York and Lancaster fought bloodily over the crown during the Wars of the Roses, life suddenly became very dangerous indeed for a young boy named Edmund.

This book will tell the stories of all of these people and more; the many medieval kings – and the occasional queen – who could have been but never were. It features a very distinct group of people: it does not include illegitimate children who had no expectation of ruling; nor those who sought to invade and claim the throne by conquest, as Prince Louis of France did in 1216; nor unrelated impostors such as Lambert Simnel, who unconvincingly pretended to be Edward, earl of Warwick, whose untimely death closes our story. Instead it focuses on those who were genuinely considered to be next in line to the throne and who expected to be crowned but who – for a number of different reasons – never made it to the top. Very few of them reached old age; those who did went to their graves disappointed or imprisoned, and those who did not were in many cases the victims of violence or murder.

Each chapter will open with a simplified family tree, making it clear how each of our ‘lost heirs’ was related to the previous monarch, and why they expected to sit on the throne themselves. We will then explore how and why each of them failed to reach their ultimate goal. Readers should be aware that there are very few happy endings in store …

Chapter 1

Robert Curthose and William Clito

In September 1100, Robert, duke of Normandy, the eldest son of William the Conqueror, returned in triumph from the Holy Land. He was a hero of the First Crusade, his name renowned throughout Christendom. He was newly married to a rich and beautiful wife and he was the recognized heir to the throne of England. He was, at long last, a success. But his joy was to be short-lived; as Robert neared his native Norman soil, the shocking news reached him that the king of England was dead and that, for the second time in his life, he had been beaten to the crown by a younger brother. What, his followers wanted to know, was he going to do about it?

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Robert had been born sometime around 1052 at a time when his father was duke of Normandy and not expected to be crowned king of anywhere.¹ He was approximately 14 years old when William embarked for England with the intention of conquering it; he remained in Normandy where, as its recognized heir, he governed under the guidance of his mother, Matilda. When she too sailed for England in 1068, to be crowned and later to give birth to her youngest son Henry, Robert was deemed to be of an age to assume the reins of Norman rule in his own name.

Robert was a very different man from his father. They had one physical similarity, in that Robert had William’s burly physique and barrel chest – useful attributes for a man who was expected to take part in armed combat – but he inherited his mother’s relative lack of height.² This resulted in his being given the nickname ‘Curthose’ (‘Shortbreeches’ or ‘Short-legs’) in his youth, an epithet that stuck for the rest of his life and by which he is generally known today. They were also different in character; Robert was affable and easy-going, not adjectives generally applied to the king, and he was also described as ‘talkative and extravagant’.³

There was no specific conflict between father and son for around ten years, as William concentrated on subduing resistance in England and Robert took his first steps into governance in Normandy. But as he grew out of his teens and into his twenties he gained in confidence and in expectation, and not unnaturally wanted more responsibility. He was supported in this by a group of companions of his own age who were the sons of his father’s Norman magnates and who encouraged him to be extravagant. They urged him to ask William for more money and more power: ‘It is a great dishonour to you and injury to us and many others that you should be deprived of royal wealth […] why do you tolerate it?’⁴

Although Robert was in nominal charge of Normandy, the duchy that had once been the height of his expectation and the heart of the family’s power base, he was actually by now on the periphery of his father’s lands, as England took up more and more of his time and energy. Robert was not helped by the fact that his brothers Richard and William Rufus were in England at their father’s side and therefore had more of his attention and more of a chance to impress him at first hand. Richard was killed in an accident sometime in the early 1070s, when he was in his mid-teens, but William Rufus continued to prosper.⁵ He took after his father in temperament as well as physique, and Robert – his status as the eldest aside – may have justifiably felt that Rufus was supplanting him as the favoured son. He needed to bolster his position; in 1077 he asked William to relinquish Normandy to him permanently.

William’s answer was in the negative. He might be king of England, but he was also duke of Normandy; he had spent his youth fighting for it – had narrowly escaped being murdered for it several times – and he was not inclined to let the reins of power slip from his own grasp. Robert, having worked himself up to make the demand, now suffered a disastrous loss of face at being denied and felt obliged to leave the duchy entirely. He was, however, fortunate in having relatives and friends in high places who were ready to help him out and to cause some mischief for King William, whom they felt to be too powerful. Robert was welcomed both in Flanders, where the count was his maternal uncle, and at the court of Philip I of France.

Within a short time, Robert found himself fighting in Philip’s campaign in the Vexin (an area lying on the border between Normandy and France, which was to be the scene of much conflict between the rulers of the two territories over the years). He held a castle at Gerberoy and was able to cause trouble from there by launching raids into his father’s territory; William, who had crossed the Channel to deal with matters in Normandy in person, moved to assault it at the end of 1078. During one of the skirmishes that took place at the beginning of 1079, he was wounded. In another, Robert apparently nearly killed William when they met in the heat of battle, before recognizing the man behind the helmet, at which point he let him escape.⁶ But their relationship was damaged, and an attempt by his magnates to broker a peace was met with angry words from William: ‘He [Robert] has stirred up civil dissent against me, lured away my young knights […] Which of my ancestors from the time of Rollo ever had to endure such hostility from any child as I do?’⁷ Robert got on well with everyone else – to the point that he was regularly exploited because he was so generous – but he and his father seemed to have a blind spot when it came to each other.

Outright and catastrophic war between them was more or less averted thanks to the strenuous efforts of Queen Matilda, who mediated between her husband and her son. Such was the reconciliation she effected that Robert accompanied William when he returned to England in 1080; now he could start to stake his claim as the heir to the kingdom. On his father’s behalf, Robert led a campaign north against Malcolm Canmore, king of Scots, but in his characteristic genial style he managed to end it both on friendly terms with Malcolm and as godfather to Malcolm’s infant daughter Edith.

Robert stayed in England until the spring of 1081 before returning to Normandy, but he remained dissatisfied with his position. He was nearly 30 but was still only his father’s regent in Normandy, not duke in his own right, and he had not been publicly declared heir to the throne of England either. Queen Matilda managed to keep the peace for a while longer, but her death in November 1083 broke the hearts of her husband and her son and led to a more serious breakdown in the relationship. Robert went into exile once more, and he was still away from Normandy in September 1087 when news reached him of King William’s death.

Now was Robert’s chance. He first made sure of Normandy: his accession as duke there was not contested, as he was the eldest son of the previous incumbent and had been recognized as heir since at least 1063.⁸ With that title firmly under his belt, Robert could turn his attention to England, but he had already been outmanoeuvred and he was hit by two unwelcome pieces of information: that William Rufus had already been crowned king, and that this had been done with his father’s prior blessing.

The fact that this could happen perhaps requires some explanation. The practice of the dukes of Normandy for several generations had been that all sons should have at least some share in the inheritance, with the tendency being to leave the patrimony – the inherited family lands – to the eldest son, and any additional gains made through conquest or marriage to the second. Third or subsequent sons could be left money or minor lordships, or be given to the Church.⁹ Under this system the idea of leaving Normandy to the eldest son, Robert, England to the second surviving brother, William Rufus, and a bundle of cash to young Henry was logical. However, the system did not often have to cope with the fact that the supplementary gain comprised a greater title and more extensive lands than the patrimony – never mind a crown – so Robert could feel himself hard done by.

The situation with regard to the transfer of the English crown was also unclear. Although there had been a tendency in the past for kings to favour their own sons, and for one selected individual to be name Aetheling (literally meaning ‘man of royal blood’, but understood more precisely to mean the designated heir to the throne) the Anglo-Saxons had in practice used an elective system whereby all men of royal blood might be considered candidates. This had the dual advantages of keeping it all in the family while also ensuring that the vagaries of fertility and birth order did not result in a child, a woman or an unsuitable man ascending the throne.

Taking into account the customs in both kingdom and duchy, William would have felt entirely justified in overlooking his eldest son for the crown. Moreover, it kept the two entities distinct. England was one kingdom, under one crown: it was therefore not to be divided and the rule of it could not be shared between two of his sons. But equally, England and Normandy were not one entity: they were separate titles that both happened to be held by the same man, so it was entirely legal and acceptable for him to leave them to different sons. The union that had chanced to occur for twenty-one years while William was both king and duke would now be dissolved, on the assumption that Rufus and Robert would each have sons of their own who would inherit England and Normandy separately.

However, this fine plan failed to take into account several factors. The first was that although the union of kingdom and duchy had been in place for only a generation, many of the magnates by now welcomed it; they held lands on both sides of the Channel and it made their lives easier to have only one overlord in both places. The second was that Robert felt aggrieved that, as the eldest, he had not been left the greater title. And the third was that Rufus, having inherited his father’s kingdom and his bellicose temperament, did not see why he should not have Normandy as well as England. Conflict, therefore, seemed inevitable.

However, in one of the strange lapses of initiative that would come to characterize his career, Robert does not seem to have been champing at the bit to take immediate action to claim the crown. Perhaps he wanted to consolidate his hold on Normandy first; perhaps he wanted to consider his options. After all, Rufus now had control of England’s royal treasury, which far outweighed Robert’s resources. But he was not to be allowed to let matters lie, and was pushed into action by others. Chief among these were three close relatives: his youngest brother Henry (now in his late teens and with no expectation of inheriting any lands or titles, and therefore ripe for causing trouble between his older siblings); and his uncles, Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Count Robert of Mortain, the maternal half-brothers of William the Conqueror. Henry kick-started his own territorial ambitions by exchanging the £3,000 he had been left by his father for Robert’s lands in the Cotentin – an area now more commonly known as the Cherbourg Peninsula, comprising at the time around a third of Normandy – while Odo and his brother travelled to England to prepare the way for an invasion and to garner support for it among the magnates there. They succeeded in causing some agitation but, in the event, Robert never got round to raising an army or sailing himself, so they were forced to return in some humiliation.

This was to become a pattern in Robert’s life. He was skilled in combat and keen to take part in war – nobody doubted his personal courage or prowess – but he simply had no head for strategy; he preferred direct and simple action while others took care of the long-term planning and the logistics. He often started things that he did not have the inclination or the will to carry through.

Meanwhile, William Rufus had his own designs on Normandy, and, in contrast to his brother’s apparent lethargy, he actually put his plans into action and arrived there in February 1091. All-out war did not ensue; as noted above, many of the magnates held lands in both territories, or they were members of families that held such lands between them, so there was no great enthusiasm to fight against their brothers and kin. Instead, Robert and Rufus negotiated; neither was married, and neither had a legitimate child, so the outcome of the talks was that each would name the other as his heir. Robert was not the king of England, but he was secure in his possession of Normandy and he now had official recognition of his status with regard to the English throne – and all without having to organize a campaign to claim it.

Rufus sailed back to England and Robert turned his attention to the business of ruling his duchy. Unfortunately for him, and indeed for all concerned, he turned out to be ill-equipped for the task. The geniality that had won him friends in his youth and helped him to make peace with the rather saintly royal family in Scotland was no use in ruling Normandy. The magnates there were in general an unruly lot, who had only been kept in tolerable order by the iron fist of the Conqueror and the harsh punishments he was liable to deal out if crossed. ‘All men knew that Duke Robert was weak and indolent; therefore troublemakers despised him and stirred up loathsome factions when and where they chose,’ said one chronicler, ¹⁰ and Robert certainly experienced many more problems than his father had in keeping peace in the duchy. Throughout the period 1092–4 he was busy putting down small-scale revolts in Normandy, some incited by William Rufus and others by lords out for their own self-interest. He had no time to think of England, where his best prospect was simply to hope for the natural death of his brother.

Then, in 1095, an event occurred that was to change Robert’s life and his reputation forever. Pope Urban II preached his great call to crusade, and Robert – for once motivated and impassioned enough to get himself organized – was one of the first and highest-ranking among those who responded. This was his great opportunity, but he needed money to equip a force, and he needed it quickly. Without, perhaps, thinking of the long-term consequences, he pawned the whole of Normandy to William Rufus for the sum of 10,000 marks in cash, ¹¹ mustered his troops and set off in the autumn of 1096.

The crusade was a situation that played to Robert’s strengths. He was free from the boring and difficult aspects of administering a duchy and therefore able to concentrate more fully on his military exploits, and moreover he could claim to be fighting in the just cause of the holy Church. He lived up to expectations, demonstrating personal courage and dedication to the ideal, as noted by a number of contemporary or near-contemporary chroniclers: he was ‘the invincible duke of the Normans’¹² who ‘performed many fine deeds there […] he won great renown as a result of his exploits’.¹³ When surrounded by the Turks in battle and in dire peril, Robert rallied his comrades:

There, at last, one who was of the royal blood of William recalled to himself his lineage and the fact that he was a fighter. He uncovered his head and shouted ‘Normandy! […] We should make our stand here for we will have either the glorious punishment of the defeated or the victor’s crown. I say that both of these chances are glorious, but the first is even more blessed.’¹⁴

Robert was greatly esteemed by his fellow crusaders; his prowess was admired, and as many of the other lords who had taken up the call were of Norman descent, they saw him as their natural leader. He was apparently offered the crown of Jerusalem after the capture of the holy city in 1099, but declined it, ‘not through awe of its dignity, but through the fear of endless labour’.¹⁵ This sounds like the Robert who is depicted similarly by other contemporaries, but it should also be noted that – unlike many other crusaders – he also declined to make a personal profit by plundering. He was crusading out of idealism, not to gain riches or a crown.

With Jerusalem now in Christian hands, Robert’s mission was accomplished and he began his journey home, travelling via Constantinople and southern Italy, where he married Sybil, daughter of the count of Conversano, who was of Norman stock. With William Rufus still unmarried and childless, Robert could now hope to return to Normandy with a renewed and enhanced reputation and the possibility of fathering a son who would inherit both Normandy and England in due course. The dowry he received along with his bride was in cash and would enable him to redeem his duchy when he got home.

However, by the time Robert reached Normandy in September 1100, circumstances had conspired against him. William Rufus had died unexpectedly in a hunting accident the previous month, exactly the situation that would have been favourable to Robert, had he been in England or even in Normandy. But he was not, and so another man had taken the initiative: Robert’s youngest brother Henry, who had conveniently been on the spot in the New Forest, had hurriedly secured the royal treasury at Winchester, rushed to London and had himself crowned as king of England, all within a week of Rufus’s death.

What is important to note here is that, at this time, it was the act of coronation that turned an ordinary mortal into a king, God’s chosen. The death of a king did not mean that the throne passed automatically to his nearest heir or designated successor; rather it signalled an interregnum until a new king was crowned – and once he was crowned, he was the king. It would not be until 1272 that an English king was proclaimed on the death of his predecessor rather than on the occasion of his own coronation (following the death of Henry III, at which time his eldest son Edward I was on crusade abroad), ¹⁶ and the phrase ‘the king is dead, long live the king’ was not used until the fifteenth century. That was all in the future; in 1100, following his coronation and anointing, Henry’s kingship was considered divinely approved, and it could not be undone. Whether Robert liked it or not, his youngest brother was now King Henry I of England, and he had been passed over once more.

The situation was very different from that of 1087. Robert had been the elder brother of the new king in both cases, but now he had the additional status of being the designated heir (since his agreement with Rufus in 1091), so he could consider himself even more hard done by; moreover, he had spent the last four years fighting for Christendom and winning renown while Henry had stayed safely at home. This time he needed to take more decisive action. Leaving his new wife in Normandy to act as his regent, Robert mustered troops and sailed; he landed in England in July 1101.

However, once again armed conflict inexplicably failed to ensue. A tale circulated that Robert had withdrawn from his approach to Winchester because he had heard that Henry’s queen was within the city and in the final stages of pregnancy; chivalrous hero that he was, he did not wish to frighten or disturb a woman in her condition. However, the date does not fit with the dates of birth of either of the queen’s known children, so unless she had another that nobody thought to mention, the story is apocryphal. Still, the fact that it was taken at face value shows that contemporaries believed such behaviour from Robert to be plausible. Of perhaps greater import is that the queen in question was Matilda, formerly known as Edith, the daughter of King Malcolm Canmore of Scots, so she was not just Robert’s sister-in-law but his goddaughter as well. This was not a conflict of enemies but of close family, so bloodshed should be avoided if possible.

Whatever the precise reasons, Robert ended up negotiating again, in which endeavour he