House of Plantagenet

• 1. Introduction

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  The House of Plantagenet held the English throne from 1154, when Henry II acceded, until 1485, when Richard III died in battle. That is over three centuries from a single family line, yet the name Plantagenet was never used by the kings who supposedly bore it. Modern historians apply it to four distinct royal houses at once: the Angevins, the main line that followed the loss of Anjou, and two cadet branches called Lancaster and York. The name itself came from a flower. So how did a French county called Anjou come to rule England, and why did the dynasty's two branches eventually turn their swords on each other? Why does every English monarch from Henry VII to the present descend from this family? And how did a nickname for a 12th-century count become the label for the entire English Middle Ages? The answers run through a murdered archbishop, a forfeited empire, and a king's bones found beneath a car park in 2012.

• 2. The Flower And The Name

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  Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, adopted Plantagenet as his family name in the 15th century, near the end of the dynastic line. Plantegenest, or Plante Genest, had been a 12th-century nickname for his ancestor Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy. One popular theory points to the blossom of the common broom, a bright yellow flowering plant called genista in medieval Latin, as the source of the nickname. It is uncertain why Richard chose this specific name. During the Wars of the Roses, fought between 1455 and 1487, it stressed his status as Geoffrey's patrilineal descendant.

  The retrospective use of the name for all of Geoffrey's male-line descendants spread during the Tudor dynasty that followed. It may have been encouraged by the legitimacy it lent to Richard's great-grandson, Henry VIII. Only in the late 17th century did the name pass into common usage among historians. Before that, the word Angevin did much of the work. Angevin is French for of Anjou, and noble houses were regularly named for a territory or birthplace, as with the House of Normandy or the House of Wessex.

  The term Angevin Empire was coined by Kate Norgate in 1887. There was no contemporary collective name for all the territories under the Angevin kings, which forced clerks into phrases like our kingdom and everything subject to our rule whatever it may be. The Empire portion has been controversial, since the territories shared no unified laws and each kept its own traditions and feudal relationships. In 1986, a convention of historians concluded there had been no Angevin state and therefore no Angevin Empire, though they accepted the French phrase espace Plantagenet, meaning Plantagenet area. Historians have kept using Angevin Empire regardless.

• 3. From Anjou To England

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  Geoffrey of Anjou married Empress Matilda in the early 12th century, and that single marriage carried Anjou to the English throne. Matilda was King Henry I's only surviving legitimate child and heir from the House of Normandy. Their son Henry II inherited the English throne along with Norman and Angevin titles, marking the start of both the Angevin and Plantagenet lines. The later counts of Anjou descended from Geoffrey II, Count of Gatinais, and his wife Ermengarde of Anjou, who in 1060 inherited the Angevin title through cognatic kinship from a family tracing back to a noble named Ingelger, whose recorded history dates from 870.

  Fulk V, Count of Anjou, tried three times to build an alliance with Normandy, and the marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda was his third attempt. He first betrothed his daughter Matilda to William Adelin, Henry I's heir, but William drowned in the wreck of the White Ship. Fulk then married another daughter, Sibylla, to William Clito, son of Henry I's elder brother Robert Curthose. Henry I had that marriage annulled to avoid strengthening a rival claim to Normandy. Having finally succeeded, Fulk passed his titles to Geoffrey and became King of Jerusalem.

  When Henry II was born in 1133, his grandfather Henry I was reportedly delighted, calling the boy the heir to the kingdom. Henry I died in December 1135 while Geoffrey and Matilda were in Anjou, and Matilda's cousin Stephen seized the crown of England. Stephen's contested accession began the civil unrest later called the Anarchy. Count Geoffrey had little interest in England and instead waged a ten-year war for Normandy, transferring the duchy to Henry in 1150. Three events ended the conflict in the Angevins' favour. Geoffrey died in 1151. Louis VII of France was granted an annulment of his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine on the 18th of March 1152, and she married Henry on the 18th of May 1152, bringing the Duchy of Aquitaine. Then Stephen's wife and elder son both died in 1153, leading to the Treaty of Wallingford, which recognised Henry as Stephen's heir. Stephen died soon after, and Henry acceded in late 1154.

• 4. A King And His Archbishop

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  In 1162 Henry II appointed his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping to reassert his authority over the English Church. Becket's defiance in the role alienated the king instead. The two clashed over church tenures, the marriage of Henry's brother, and taxation. Henry forced Becket and other bishops to recognise sixteen ancient customs in writing for the first time in the Constitutions of Clarendon, which governed relations between king, courts, and church. Becket fled and stayed in exile for five years.

  Relations improved and Becket returned, then collapsed again when Henry's son was crowned coregent by the Archbishop of York. Becket saw this as a challenge to his authority and excommunicated those who had offended him. On hearing the news, Henry said: What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk. Four of Henry's knights then killed Becket in Canterbury Cathedral after he resisted a failed arrest.

  Throughout Christian Europe Henry was considered complicit in the death, which made him a pariah. In penance he walked barefoot into Canterbury Cathedral, where monks severely whipped him. The damage to his name outlived the act. When Henry was forced into humiliating peace terms in 1189 and died two days later, defeated and miserable, French and English moralists read his fate as retribution for Becket's murder. Even his favourite legitimate son, John, had rebelled against him, while his loyal illegitimate son Geoffrey stayed until the end.

• 5. Crusade And Captivity

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  Richard I departed on a Crusade to the Middle East soon after his coronation, having quickly put the kingdom's affairs in order. Opinion of him has swung widely. He was respected for military leadership and courtly manners, yet he rejected and humiliated the sister of the king of France, deposed the king of Cyprus and later sold the island, and made an enemy of Leopold V, Duke of Austria, by disrespecting his banners and refusing to share spoils. His ruthlessness showed in the massacre of 2,600 prisoners at Acre. He won victories on the Third Crusade but failed to capture Jerusalem.

  Steven Runciman called Richard a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, and Jonathan Riley-Smith described him as vain, devious and self-centred. John Gillingham offers the alternate view that for centuries Richard was considered a model king. Returning with a small band of followers, Richard was captured by Leopold and handed to Emperor Henry VI, who held him captive from 1192 to 1194 while his mother raised a ransom valued at 100,000 marks. In his absence, Philip II overran much of Normandy and John seized Richard's English lands.

  Richard forgave John after returning to England and rebuilt his authority. He left again in 1194 and fought Philip for five years to recover the lands lost during his captivity. Close to complete victory, he was struck by an arrow during a siege and died ten days later. He left no legitimate heir, which opened a succession crisis between supporters of his nephew Arthur and supporters of John.

• 6. The Empire Lost

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  John won a significant victory at the Battle of Mirebeau, seizing the entire rebel leadership while preventing Arthur's forces from capturing his mother. He also took his niece Eleanor, the Fair Maid of Brittany. Then he ignored his allies over the prisoners' fate, many of whom were their neighbours and kinsmen. He kept them, in the words of the Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, so vilely and in such evil distress that it seemed shameful and ugly to all those who saw this cruelty. The powerful Thouars, Lusignan, and des Roches families rebelled, and John lost Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and northern Poitou.

  The Margam annals fed John's ruin further with a rumour that, while drunk, he had murdered Arthur himself. If untrue, it is almost certain John ordered the killing. Historians dispute why his position collapsed so fast. Sir James Holt sees the inevitable result of superior French resources. John Gillingham blames diplomatic and military mismanagement, noting Richard had held the same territory on comparable finances. Nick Barratt calculated that Angevin war resources were 22 per cent less than Philip's.

  By 1214 John planned what Gillingham called a grand strategy to recapture Normandy and Anjou, drawing the French toward Paris while a northern army under his nephew Otto IV attacked. The plan failed when his allies were defeated at the Battle of Bouvines. John gave up the claim of Eleanor of Brittany and confined her for life. His weakened authority forced him to agree to Magna Carta in 1215, which limited royal power. Both sides broke its terms, sparking the First Barons' War, in which rebel barons invited Prince Louis of France to invade. Louis did, but in October 1216, before the conflict ended, John died. His son Henry III maintained the claim to the Angevin territories until December 1259, when he formally surrendered them and was granted Gascony as a vassal of the king of France.

• 7. The Making Of Parliament

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  William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, was appointed regent for the nine-year-old Henry III on John's death. After Marshal's victories at the battles of Lincoln and Sandwich in 1217, Louis renounced his claims in the Treaty of Lambeth, and the regime issued an amended Magna Carta as a basis for government. Henry confirmed the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest in 1225 with the royal seal, declaring them issued of his own spontaneous and free will, which gave them more authority than any earlier version.

  Henry was bankrupted by military spending and extravagance. The pope offered his brother Richard the Kingdom of Sicily, prompting Richard, as recorded by Matthew Paris, to reply: You might as well say, I make you a present of the moon, step up to the sky and take it down. Henry instead bought the kingdom for his son Edmund, angering the barons. Led by his brother-in-law Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, they forced him to accept the Provisions of Oxford in exchange for paying his debts.

  De Montfort captured most of southeast England in the Second Barons' War, defeating and capturing Henry and Prince Edward at the Battle of Lewes in 1264. He then assembled the Great Parliament, recognised as the first Parliament because cities and boroughs sent representatives for the first time. Edward escaped, raised an army, and defeated and killed de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Edward later joined Louis IX on the Ninth Crusade as one of the last crusaders, capturing Acre before an assassination attempt sent him toward Sicily, never to crusade again.

• 8. The Roses And The Bones

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  Edward III claimed the throne of France in 1337 after Philip of Valois confiscated Aquitaine and Ponthieu, opening the conflict later known as the Hundred Years' War. English victories came at the naval Battle of Sluys, at Crecy, and at Poitiers, where the Black Prince captured John II of France and forced a four million ecus ransom under the Treaty of Bretigny. The Black Death halted Edward's campaigns by killing perhaps a third of his subjects; the only Plantagenet known to have died of it was his daughter Joan, in Bordeaux. By the end of Edward's reign, Middle English had begun to establish itself as the language of government, which is why the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography considers him culturally the first English Plantagenet king.

  The rivalry between the two cadet branches, York and Lancaster, brought the Wars of the Roses, a decades-long fight for the succession. The House of Lancaster began with Henry IV, who deposed Richard II in 1399; Richard died in captivity early the next year, probably murdered, ending the main Plantagenet line. The House of York traced its descent through Lionel of Antwerp and asserted a superior claim. Richard of York was the first to assume the Plantagenet surname in 1448. After his death at the Battle of Wakefield, his head was set on display at Micklegate Bar, but his son was crowned Edward IV after victory at the Battle of Towton.

  The fight culminated at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where the reign of the Plantagenets and the English Middle Ages both ended with the death of Richard III. Henry VII, a Lancastrian, took the throne and five months later married Elizabeth of York, ending the wars and beginning the Tudor dynasty. The legitimate male line of the House of Plantagenet went extinct with the execution of Edward, Earl of Warwick, in 1499. Every monarch of England, and later the United Kingdom, from Henry VII to the present descends from the Plantagenets. The proof came in 2012, when the remains of Richard III were identified using mitochondrial DNA taken from a descendant of his sister Anne of York.