Henry II

In the aggressively heterosexual humour of Henry II’s court we perhaps see yet another response to the pathetic affability of Stephen’s reign. Testosterone-charged masculinity is often a feature of conquering or restored monarchies, be it in the rampant Norman stallions of the Bayeux Tapestry or the notorious womanizing of King Charles II. Just as the bloodshed at Hastings was still wet to the touch in 1135, so the confusions and disputes of the 1140s further dented the already tarnished reputation of England’s kings. To Henry II, determined to rule in a very different way, the reign of Stephen was something to be struck from historical memory. After 1154, Henry II’s new regime chose to look back to the circumstances of the reign of Henry I, Henry II’s grandfather, deliberately consigning the intervening period to oblivion, described as the ‘shipwreck’ of Stephen’s reign (with deliberate reference, perhaps, to the White Ship disaster of 1120).

We can see this in Henry II’s approach even to the tombs of his ancestors. Henry I’s resting place, at Reading Abbey in Berkshire, was richly endowed by the new king. Faversham, where Stephen was buried, was effectively ignored. A vast ground plan, laid out by Stephen was never completed and the abbey’s lands, grudgingly confirmed by Henry in accordance with his promises to the late King, led to no great prosperity. We can see precisely this same contempt for Stephen even in the timing and arrangements for Henry II’s coronation.

Stephen died in October 1154. Henry waited almost two months before crossing to England. The date he chose for his crossing, the night of 7–8 December, was the vigil of the feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary, a feast day intimately connected to English identity, sacred to the memory of the mother of Christ, herself ‘the star of the sea’ and the patron of all mariners. When he next returned to France, it was for a crown-wearing in Rouen cathedral on 2 February 1156, the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Purification, and it was on 14 August, the vigil of the feast day of the Virgin’s Assumption, that he crossed to Normandy again in 1158.

Meanwhile, on his first landing as King, Henry did not immediately seek coronation at Westminster. Instead, he waited until Sunday, 19 December, the 4th Sunday in Advent, precisely the same day of the liturgical calendar on which Stephen himself had been crowned in 1135. The symbolism was obvious. The coronation of 1135 had been a mistake, to be re-enacted nineteen years later more or less to the day, now with the rightful claimant rather than a usurper installed on his grandfather’s throne.