492 – The War for Perception

Welcome to the British. My name is Jamie and this is episode four. The war for perception. This show is ad-free. member support. And as a way of thanking members for keeping the show independent, I offer members only content, including extra Transcripts. InstantAccess. By signing up for membership. The British History Podcast.com for about the price of a latte per month. And thank you very much to Andrew, Marco, and Ginny for signing up already.

In sixteen sixty eight, John Dryden became England's very first poet laureate. But he had a rival. This man's name was Thomas Shadwell, and I can't overstate how much Dryden hated him. He hated him so much, in fact, that in 1682, wielding the full influence that he had as England's poet laureate, Dryden wrote McFleckno. Now, this was a poem that was written in heroic couplets, much like the English translations of Homer's epic. However, instead of being a grand tale of adventure and god,

McFleckno was about Thomas Shadwell. Specifically, it was about how Shadwell was an unfunny jackass and a terrible writer. Seven years later, in sixteen eighty nine, Dryden was dethroned, and a new poet laureate was proclaimed. It was Thomas Shadwell. So Shadwell won the poetry battle, right? Wrong. Because while most of you have probably read some of Dryden's works in school at some point in your lives.

Most people have never heard of Shadwell, and those who have heard of him mostly know of him through Dryden's torrent of abuse in McFleckno. Dryden's burn was so effective that for hundreds of years Shadwell was mostly just a punchline, and it wasn't until relatively recently that scholars even took a serious look at his work. And then we're all

Wow, you know what? He's actually a pretty good writer. Which, you know, duh, he was England's second poet laureate, but no one even bothered to check because of how thoroughly Dryden dunked on him. Even today, if you look up Shadwell, it's very likely that McFleckno will be included in his biography, sometimes with the most savage burns quoted for good measure. That is the power of the pen. It doesn't just reflect public opinion, it creates it.

It's the same power that Kendrick Lamar used against Drake, whose legacy I suspect is gonna have a similar fate. So, why am I telling you this? You know, other than because I love poetry and messy drama.

Well, it's because it matters right now. Because in a minute, we're going to talk about Duke Robert of Normandy crossing the Channel. And as armies are marching, another war is also being fought, and it will continue to be fought long after the armies return home. It's a war for perception, and orderic is right in the middle of that war. If you're a particularly sharp listener, you've probably been wondering why Orderick keeps tying himself into knots just to trash Robert Kurthose.

Well, there's a context for that, and it's actually quite simple. Orderic was writing during the reign of King Henry. And while Henry Stagfoot might not have been the world's most enjoyable hunting companion, for at least a couple reasons, he absolutely understood the power of public perception. And more importantly, how to actively shape it.

I mean, consider the Charter of Liberties, or the letters that he recently sent out to the nobility reminding them of the promises that he had made in that charter. He didn't do that lightly. Henry, like his father, didn't relinquish power willingly. When Henry made those promises, he did that because his reign was questionable at best and outright usurpation at worst. And so he needed to reframe it. This wasn't a seizure of power. This was a reformation.

and reform was a word that was on everyone's minds right now. Locally, because Rufus's reign had been, well, let's just call it a lie. And internationally, because the investiture controversy had everyone arguing about what rightful authority even looked like. And so Henry was making a bargain with the public. Stop asking inconvenient questions and let me seize power, and I will improve things. You will get more rights, your standard of living will improve, you will be safe and happy.

But that is only half of it, especially if you're not planning to institute many of those reforms. And so if you promise to improve things once you get in power, and then life doesn't get better when you do get in power, what do you do? Well, you insist things are better. And even if they aren't, well, they would be way worse under that other guy. And that is where Ordoric comes in. Because King Henry was well aware of Ordoric's Abbey. In fact, he had given them fabulous cash and prizes.

And Orderic's writings weren't some private diary. His histories were a hot topic among the literate. I mean, remember when I read to you Orderic's meltdown over the criticism he'd received about his earlier works? That only happens when people are, you know, reading your work. And Henry, unlike his father and brother, was literate. He was also ruthlessly attentive, and he just happened to have taken an interest in Ordric's Abbey.

So I think we can pretty safely assume he was aware of what our monk was writing. And while King Henry wasn't gonna sit down and write his own history, or publish a hilariously catty poem in heroic couplets, He was too busy for stuff like that. He still did need to shape public opinion, which made orderic a valuable resource. Especially since his presence and his patronage would have done quite a bit of editorial work all on its own.

So I suspect that Henry's influence played a role in how his arch rival, Duke Robert of Normandy, was portrayed. And this clearly worked, because we don't remember him as Duke Robert of Normandy. We remember him as Robert Shortpack.

And this actually highlights a structural problem within the record that goes much farther than Henry and Orderick. Because the cold hard reality of our written records is that they were recorded after the fact, and they were under the influence of some very powerful people in direct and indirect ways. Noble culture carried an implicit threat of violence, and everyone knew it.

These men killed, they tortured, they pillaged, and they did this to their own friends and their own family members and their own brothers. So do you think they'd hesitate even for an instant to seek vengeance against just a scribe? And while King Henry was the apex predator in this social structure, any local lord could make your life miserable.

So even if no noble ever walked into a scriptorium and said, hey, leave that out, it's a very reasonable guess that self-censorship was baked into the process. And even if we set the violence aside, there's still the softer pressure. These religious houses needed noble patronage. They needed donors. They needed protection. And they needed those violent men to go be violent elsewhere.

So, when Orderic veers off into trash talk that feels like it's straight off the page of a Dryden poem or a Kendrick Lamar track, we would do well to keep in mind that King Henry was ruling while Orderic was writing. and Henry was a man who understood the power of public perception. And, for what it's worth, it worked. Because historians, hundreds of years later, will just casually repeat Ordric's self-contradictory sneers about Kurt Hose like they're just facts, and they've been proven.

It is genuinely wild to read, and this has been prevalent enough that if you were aware of Kurtos before this podcast, I'm guessing your opinion of him was relatively similar to that of Thomas Shadwell. And I'm not here to do a Kurt Hose rehabilitation. I'm sure that Robert had plenty of flaws, and stupid people and bad leaders exist in every era. But our sources are not impartial.

And I would be shocked if there wasn't an effort to shape how we remember this conflict and how we view Henry's claim to the throne.

And with that in mind, let's get back to the growing conflict between the sons of the Conqueror. So when we left off, King Henry had used hat based diplomacy to gather an army, and he had positioned them at Pevensey, in anticipation of an attack by his brother, Duke Robert of Normandy. The trouble though was that not everyone was on Team Henry.

Some were on Team Robert. Quite a lot of people, in fact. And some of them had been talking to the Duke and his chief advisor, Ranolph Lambard, which is why this fleet wasn't going to Pevensey. They knew that was defended by Henry and his army, and so they had another destination in mind. Now, unfortunately, we don't know exactly when Robert crossed the channel. Orderic says that it was on the 20th of July. John of Worcester says that it was on or about August 1st.

And while I'm sure that Robert could have told us, it was Henry's people who were doing the writing, not Robert's. But whenever he launched, Duke Robert and his fleet crossed the Channel and sailed right past Pevensey. And King Henry, standing there with his army, could do absolutely nothing to stop him. That would have been a nerve wracking and terrifying development, because he would need to move his army and quickly. However, he wouldn't have known precisely where Robert was headed.

So he'd just need to go in the general direction of them as quickly as possible and keep a watchful eye. which meant that Robert would get his pick of locations, would likely have time to disembark and dig in, and his army would be well rested, while Henry's army would be tired from their march. And so Robert continued on, voyaging about seventy miles to the west to the harbor town of Portsmouth.

And thanks to Henry going all in on his pevancy plan, Portsmouth was left completely undefended. So, the Duke landed without any trouble and began to disembark. But that would take a bit of time. Because while Portsmouth was big, so was Robert's fleet. We're told that he crossed the channel with 200 ships, which impressed most of our sources.

Most of them. But not Oric. Now, Oric doesn't give us the number of the ships. Instead, he tells us, quote, his fleet was vastly inferior to that of which his father had invaded England, end quote. And to be fair to Ordoric, this fleet was smaller than what the Conqueror brought. But by leaving out the actual number of ships, Orderic is implying that Robert crossed the channel with a handful of pals.

When in actual fact, this was probably comparable to some of the Scandinavian invasion fleets that we covered in previous centuries. So it was clearly quite a threat. But Orderic wasn't done yet. Even the manner in which Robert landed was portrayed as weak. Apparently, going to the more strategic landing site of Portsmouth was poor form, and Robert should have been a man and gotten ambushed by Henry at Pevensey, fair and square.

And this is what I mean about the perception wars. Orderic is just setting the details aside and replacing them with editorial.

But Spin doesn't change the fact that two hundred ships had landed at Portsmouth, carrying a large combined force of mounted knights, footmen, and archers. And that was a huge problem for Henry. Word of Robert's landing would have reached Pevensea quickly, and Henry's heart must have sank when he learned that they had landed at Portsmouth.

Because that meant that the Norman army was less than forty miles from the ancient seat of power of Wessex and one of the most politically and economically powerful cities in the region. Winchester. And I'm guessing that prior to this landing, Henry never even considered this as a possibility. Because despite the incredible importance of that city, and it was very important.

After all, this was where the treasury was housed, and it was the seizure of that treasury that secured Henry's rise to king. Well the city itself, at this point, wasn't heavily garrisoned for war. Instead, it appears they had just their normal garrison on hand. On top of that, guess who the king left in Winchester? His wife, Queen Matilda. Even worse, she was pregnant. Yeah, based on the birth records, Matilda was pregnant with their first child, who they would end up naming Matilda.

And fun fact about Henry here, he already had a lot of sons and daughters, and three of those daughters were already named Matilda. Which means that Queen Matilda, having married the son of Queen Matilda, was pregnant with Matilda. And this was actually the King's fourth Matilda, not counting his wife Matilda, and his mom Matilda. And this Matilda was currently in Winchester,

which very well might come under attack by the son of Matilda, who had actually proposed to another Matilda while he was on crusade, and that was when he was part of a group that historians refer to as, and I'm not making this up here, the Matildines. We good? So, yeah, this was bad news for Henry. His queen was very likely to come under attack, would probably be captured, and the city and the treasury would be lost.

Which would be a disaster for his grip on power. So Henry gathered his army and rushed towards Winchester.

And because it was Henry, he was probably also giving his army helpful tips on how to march faster as they went. But he wasn't taking the direct route to Winchester. Instead, he went northwest into Surrey, and then arced southwest into Hampshire. Now why would he do that? Well, if you recall how this family behaves and what they've done in the past, and then you take a good look at a map, it'll become very clear. If Winchester fell, which it probably would, where would he go next?

Well, about sixty five miles from Winchester was London. So Henry, anticipating that Robert would either quickly take Winchester or would bypass it entirely and instead move on to the even bigger economic prize, placed his army on an intercept course. But Duke Robert hadn't bypassed the city. Instead, they had marched directly to it. And just like his landing at Portsmouth, Robert's march to Winchester was completely unopposed.

Once there, knowing that Henry and the full army of England were still days away, Robert and his army got out their tents, got some firewood gathered, and set up camps somewhere in the vicinity. Possibly at Warrenford, which lay about nine miles outside of Winchester. And you might be thinking, wait a minute, he's near one of the most important cities in England. He's got a huge army, and he's apparently unopposed. So why didn't he march in there and take it?

Even if the garrison holding the walls tries to resist him, there's no way they could withstand two hundred ships worth of knights and soldiers. Or if he didn't want to assault the walls, why didn't he start laying waste to the countryside like his father and his siblings would have done? And that's a very good question. And I think the answer to that question is related to another mystery of Robert. Why was he the only member of his family to go on crusade?

And why did he incur all of the expense and pain of such an expedition? only to, at the end of it, just go home, while the other members of his class had entrenched themselves as new feudal lords over the captured cities. Or here's another one. Why did Robert show Henry mercy after defeating him in ten ninety one? Or show his father mercy after defeating him in ten seventy nine? Now Orderic would say that the answer here is obvious.

Robert was a weak loser who sucked. And I'm sure that was Henry's assessment as well. But I suspect that the real answer might be that Robert was out of keeping with the chivalric culture of the age. In that, while many of his peers were the kind of knights that existed in reality, Robert might have been the kind of knight who mostly exists in fiction. It's quite possible that Robert believed in living up to the cultural standard of being a prodom, a worthy man.

Now, many cultures, including ours, have an aspirational culture, what we think is good and admirable to do, and a lived culture, what we actually do. And it looks to me like Robert believed in medieval aspirational culture down to his bones. which would mean that the ends justify the means ruthlessness that his siblings and father tended to employ, things like exterminating the countryside surrounding Winchester in order to compel a surrender,

Well that wasn't something he thought he should do. And so he didn't. There's also the possibility that the crusade had changed Robert's view on war. Orderic writes quite a bit about how Robert was reluctant to go to war with Henry. Now, naturally, he says that this happened because the Duke was lazy. But Robert might have wanted to avoid returning to the horrors of war.

And now he was here, he might have wanted to avoid siege warfare and seek a diplomatic resolution, especially since he was intending to rule these people, and many of their nobles were signaling that they were willing to switch sides. Now, the chronicler Waste takes it actually one step farther. And he tells us that Robert specifically didn't want to launch into a siege and assault Winchester because he worried about what would happen to his pregnant sister-in-law, Queen Matilda.

And considering what Robert and the Crusaders had experienced at Antioch, and what they had done at Jerusalem, you could see why he'd be concerned for her well being and the well being of his future niece or nephew. He knew what siege warfare looked like from both sides. So yeah, to answer the question that I posed myself.

I suspect that Robert halting his army here, just like many of his other behaviors that order it condemned, is just one more piece of evidence that Robert was averse to his family's way of doing things.

And he might have seen a bit too much of war while on crusade, and wasn't eager to return to it. And honestly, taking a light touch here actually had some benefits, because while Robert was encamped, nobles began coming to visit. Specifically, they were coming to pay him homage. Now, curiously, we're not told who these nobles were. And that is weird, because we're not lacking in detail anymore. In fact, there's an entire book that is nothing but the day-to-day itinerary of King Henry I.

And you're actually listening to a guy who has poured over that damn thing like he's playing an extremely dorky hat-based version of Clue. And yet right here, right where it matters, We suddenly get the unnamed White House officials treatment. So while we do know that Henry's support among the Anglo-Norman nobility was dwindling, and his grip on authority was so tenuous that he had to take extreme measures like making grandiose promises, making threats.

and even forcing people to talk to Anselm just to keep his remaining nobles from defecting. And while Mommesbury goes so far as to tell us that upon Robert's landing, quote, almost all the nobility of this country violated the fealty they had sworn to the king, some without cause, some feigning slight pretenses, end quote.

And while Edmer also said something very similar, when it comes to who was involved, well suddenly the scribes don't want to name names. And I doubt it's because no one knew who these people were. At the end of the day, the elite class is a pretty small group and they all knew each other. So the details weren't unknown. Just like if you went to an island for a weekend of crimes against humanity, you would know exactly who else was there.

And so this silence here is probably because naming names was seen as too dangerous to do. It exposes how weak Henry looked. It paints a target on any barons who might survive this mess. And it puts a big please retaliate sign upon any scribe who wrote that entry. And so for the most part, it seems like the scribes all took a path. But luckily for us, there was an outlier.

The Hyde Chronicle actually names three ringleaders among the nobility. There were Robert of Beleme, Count William of Mortain, and William de Warren. Now these were all powerful nobles with vast estates, numerous castles, and they had the support of similarly powerful kin. So why were the scribes brave enough to mention them? But once again, the scribes don't tell us, though it is possible that outing them carried no risk, as they were already open opponents of Henry.

Belem and Mortain were well known for having pre-existing beefs with Henry. In fact, Mortain's dislike of Henry goes all the way back to when they were children, as they were cousins. And for all we know, DeWar N might have also had a beef. It's not like our records are comprehensive, after all. Basically, you can't out people who have already outed themselves. So perhaps that's why the Hyde Chronicle names them.

But regardless, we're in this odd situation where we know that Henry was in deep trouble, that the nobility was turning against him, and Robert was accepting homage from nobles outside of Winchester. And yet the record is doing the medieval equivalent of blacking out large portions of each page anytime someone powerful gets mentioned. But, while we don't know who those nobles were, Duke Robert of Normandy, and Ranolph Lombard absolutely did.

And here is where that gap in the record gets extra complicated for us. Because it's possible that this is also hiding not just an embarrassing element for Henry, but also an embarrassing element for Robert. Because what if Robert had halted at Winchester and refused to assault the walls, not for fear of Queen Matilda, as Wace says? But instead, because he anticipated a lot more local support than what he was getting.

I mean, when they have begun building this fleet, the Anglo Norman aristocracy had been wobbly at best. But since then, King Henry and Archbishop Anselm had been doing a full court press to secure the loyalty of the barons, and they have been relentless in that effort. Even now, as they were marching to Winchester, apparently Anselm was still working to keep everyone in line and on Team Henry.

I also suspect that having Queen Matilda in Winchester would have made any trip to Robert's camp awkward to say the least. So maybe Henry did see Winchester as a possible target, and he was playing a particularly shrewd and ruthless gambit here, risking his queen in exchange for political advantage.

It's hard to know for sure, because these scribes are just so painfully vague here. But historian Hollister is similarly baffled by this turn of events, and he too wonders if Robert's support wasn't as large as anticipated. Well, actually, in the case of Hollister, who seems to largely take orderic at his word, he wonders if it was Flambard who was losing support in England.

Or perhaps that Flambard was maneuvering against Robert now, in hopes of securing a deal with Henry that would get him out of trouble with the Pope.

It's hard to know for sure, and the whole thing gets soupy when you consider that at the same time here, the Worcester Chronicle is making it clear that Robert of Beleme, William of Warren, and many other nobles again, they're resorting to that whole unnamed White House officials thing, had joined Robert's forces along with their own forces, which gives the impression that his army was swelling. Though, given the fact that Robert's events had stalled out in the outskirts of Winchester,

Maybe that was also causing a loss of support. Because I'm willing to bet that Belem in particular would have been throwing an absolute fit over the lack of aggressive action. And something like that really can create problems for morale within an army.

So maybe that's what happened. It really is hard to know with this gaping chasm in our record. But regardless, Henry was racing towards Winchester, and it wasn't long before Robert's scouts arrived back at camp to inform him that an army was on approach. Robert ordered his forces to break camp and begin marching towards the oncoming ford.

And while Henry's army had been marching for days, covering over seventy miles in their wide arc towards Winchester, Robert and his army only had to march fifteen miles before they were within range of the enemy. Now, by this point, it won't surprise you to learn that Robert was reluctant to face his brother in battle. But what might surprise you is that we're told that both armies feared facing off with one another.

In particular, they both feared what might happen if they fought it out in the nearby wood. Now that suggests to me that both armies were large and probably roughly comparable in size. If one had a clear advantage over the other, I imagine that this staring contest would have immediately exploded into violence. But it didn't. They just stared. And here's the thing with that.

Large-scale pitched battles were actually quite rare during this era. Events like the Battle of Hastings were very uncommon, and the prospect of such a fight would have been terrifying for many. And a pitch battle was not what Robert had been expecting. According to Edmer, Robert had been led to believe that there would be widespread defections among the nobility, that basically he would be greeted as a liberator.

And looking at everything in total, it seemed clear to me that Robert had crossed the channel expecting to scare Henry off the throne through the sheer weight of the local support that he had received. But while some barons did flip, clearly it was not enough to avoid a battle. So now they stared.

Eventually, Henry sent messengers to Robert's side, and he asked what the hell he was doing here and why he had brought an army. Robert responded that he had entered his father's kingdom with the support of his magnates, and that he had come to take possession of what was his by right as the eldest son of the Conqueror. After that, I'm sure there were some more tense exchanges being made. But eventually, it was agreed that they would both send barons to a meeting spot at Alton to discuss terms.

Now, according to Wace, Henry sent Robert Fitzhammon, one of his steadfast supporters, while the Duke sent Robert of Baleme and William of Mortain. And as for Robert's chief counselor, Ranolph Lombard, He's not mentioned as one of the negotiators. I'm not sure if that's because his support was dwindling at this moment.

or if he was starting to get cold feet because of that letter from the Pope, or if it was simply a negotiating tactic, and Roberts Camp felt that Flambard, having recently escaped from the Tower of London, might only serve to inflame the situation. It's hard to know for sure. But even though Flambard wasn't involved, tempers were still high.

Orderic in particular suggests that the barons were spoiling for war, and that their efforts at peacemaking were not being made in good faith. Rather, they were deliberately seeking an excuse to fight. And given the presence of Belem, I wouldn't be surprised if he was right. And honestly, the king's man, Robert Fitzammond, wasn't exactly a peace lily himself. In fact, he was enough of a fighter that he had actually married into the Belem family, having married Robert of Belem's sister.

So basically, nearly everyone here was related, nearly everyone here was named Robert or Matilda, and nearly everyone wanted war. They were all gussied up, might as well dance. And you can see why. The Norman nobles had come all the way over here and incurred the expense because they had been promised rewards if Robert became king. And they wanted those rewards.

And as for the Anglo Norman nobles who had joined Robert's fight, well they had risked death simply by supporting Robert. So, you know, might as well see this thing through. On the other side, Henry had made a lot of promises for reforms. He'd also been making promises of rewards. And given that many of Robert's supporters had English lands, if Henry fought this out and won, well there would be plenty of estates to be seized and then distributed to loyal nobles.

So you can see why these negotiations might have been a bit half-hearted.

But they weren't the ones in charge. Henry and Robert were And when it comes down to it, I really don't think Robert wanted England bad enough to fight a bloody war against his brother. And I definitely don't think he wanted England bad enough to risk excommunication. And excommunication was definitely on the table.

because Anselm was there, and he was threatening to excommunicate Robert if he continued this campaign. And can you imagine how shocked Robert must have been when that was leveled against him? He was a victorious crusader. He was the only victorious crusader in this conversation, in fact. And yet Anselm was backing his usurping baby brother and threatening to excommunicate him and was basically framing him as the usurper.

And you can kind of see the shape of how this had all played out, can't you? Because Robert probably could have seized the throne of England. Or at least he could have months ago. But he had acted too slowly. And thanks to Henry's promises and Anselm's lectures, this coup was complete, and Robert had missed his chance. I'm guessing Robert saw this too. And so did Flambard. Because despite the warlike nature of Robert's negotiators, the Duke wanted peace.

And so when it was clear that the barons weren't getting the job done, Henry and Robert sat down and they talked things out between themselves. Now Orderic loves that they did this, and I bet he did. Henry was shrewd and ruthless, and Robert was Robert. Even with Flambard's help, he didn't stand a chance in a direct negotiation. And given that papal letter, I'm guessing that Flambard wasn't much help. Or at least he wasn't much help to Robert.

He was definitely helping himself though, as you're gonna see in a moment. Now, what came out of their meeting is referred to as the Treaty of Alton. In it, Henry agreed to pay Robert a pension of either two thousand pounds or three thousand pounds. Reports vary. Henry also promised to surrender all of his Norman properties except for Dom Franc. In return, Robert renounced his claim upon England, recognized Henry as king, and freed him of his duties of homage.

Then both brothers agreed that there would be an amnesty for anyone who supported either side of this conflict. And this, it seems, was where Flambard was most involved. Because Simeon of Durham implies that Flambard wasn't just forgiven for his actions in this conflict, he was forgiven. period for the embezzling, for the jailbreak, for whatever he had done in church that got him in trouble with the Pope, for all of it. And we're told that Flambard was fully restored to the bishopric of Durham.

It's incredible how this guy always manages to find a way to come out on top. But hey, at least peace was secured. Well, peace for Henry. Maine and France were another matter entirely, as the two brothers agreed that they would help each other recover the lost domains of their father in Maine and the Vexons. And as for peace for Robert, well there wasn't much peace secured there either. Because did you notice what was missing from that treaty?

That bit that Robert forgot to negotiate for. The really, really important thing he should have demanded back when they were renouncing claims. Did you spot it? Yeah. Henry never renounced his claim of I'm sure it'll be a little bit more. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can reach me at the British History Podcast at gmail dot com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, the best way to do that is to sign up for membership at the British History Podcast.com.

Thanks for listening.