Chapter 4

For overviews of the Plantagenets, see Martin Aurell (trans. David Crouch) The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224 (Harlow 2007); John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd edn (London 2001), and Richard Mortimer, Angevin England, 1154–1272 (Oxford 1994). There is only one modern biography of Henry II that can be wholeheartedly recommended, although it is a very long book: W.L. Warren, Henry II (London 1973). It can be supplemented with various of the essays collected as Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (Woodbridge 2007). For Henry II’s marital infidelities, see Marie Lovatt, ‘Archbishop Geoffrey of York: A Problem in Anglo-French Maternity’, in Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm, ed. Nicholas Vincent (Woodbridge 2009), pp. 91–123. For the question of precedence, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘Did Henry II Have a Policy Towards the Earls?’, in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150–1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. C. Given-Wilson and others (Woodbridge 2008), pp. 1–25. Amongst the most evocative primary sources for the court of Henry, see Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford 1983), and the Magna Vita Hugonis: The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. Decima L. Douie and David H. Farmer, 2 vols (Oxford 1985). For the King’s hawks, Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven 2004); Richard Almond, Medieval Hunting (Stroud 2003). For class and the emergence of aristocratic privilege, David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London 1992), and Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900–1300 (London 2005). There are two excellent modern biographies of Becket, each taking a very different approach to its subject: Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (London 1987), and Anne Duggan, Thomas Becket (London 2004), whilst no one should pass by the opportunity to dip into Duggan’s magnificent edition and translation of The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162–1170, 2 vols (Oxford 2000). Much of the detail above is taken from Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Murderers of Thomas Becket’, Bishofsmord im Mittelalter, ed. N. Fryde and D. Reitz (Göttingen 2003), pp. 211–72, partly reprinted as Becket’s Murderers, William Urry Memorial Lecture (Canterbury 2004). For aspects of the aftermath, see Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings of England 1154–1272’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge 2002), pp. 12–45; Hans Eberhard Mayer, ‘Henry II of England and the Holy Land’, English Historical Review, 97 (1982), 721–39; Christopher R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester 1956). For heraldry, Adrian Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to 1199 (Reading 1982), and Ailes, ‘The Knight, Heraldry and Armour: The Role of Recognition and the Origins of Heraldry’, in Medieval Knighthood IV, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge 1992), pp. 1–21. For English attitudes to Celtic subject peoples, see John Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge 2000), esp. 41–58. For William of Malmesbury, Rodney M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge 1987). For Wace, there is an accessible English translation by Glyn S. Burgess, The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou (Woodbridge 2004). For Geoffrey of Monmouth, besides the various English translations of his History, see Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century, pp. 19–39. For aspects of the twelfth-century renaissance, the classic work remains that by Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge Mass. 1927), to be supplemented, as an introduction, by various of the studies collected as Richard Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford 1970). For technology, a starting point is provided by Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine (New York 1976), with particular examples above drawn from J. D. North, ‘Some Norman Horoscopes’, in Adelard of Bath: An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century, ed. C. Burnett (London 1987), pp. 147–61. For Glastonbury and Arthurian lore, a starting point is supplied by Reginald F. Treharne, The Glastonbury Legends (London 1971), and various of the essays, especially that by Julia Crick, ‘The Marshalling of Antiquity: Glastonbury’s Historical Dossier’, in The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Lesley Abrams and James P. Carley (Woodbridge 1991). For Gerald of Wales, besides the translated works noted above in the general introduction to sources, see Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1145–1223 (Oxford 1982). For Ireland and Laudabiliter, see Anne Duggan, ‘The Making of a Myth: Giraldus Cambrensis, “Laudabiliter”, and Henry II’s Lordship of Ireland’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd series 4 (2007), 107–70. For Grosseteste, see Richard Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford 1986). For the Gothic, see Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (London 1956), and Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven 2004). For the wooden door at Westminster, see Warwick Rodwell, ‘New Glimpses of Edward the Confessor’s Abbey at Westminster’, in Edward the Confessor, ed. Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge 2009), pp. 163–6. For the ‘volvelles’ of Matthew Paris, see Daniel K. Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris (Woodbridge 2009). For the senses, C.M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven 2006). For the king’s evil, the classic study remains that by Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch (trans. J.E. Anderson, New York 1961). For leprosy, Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge 2006). For categorization, Nicholas Vincent, ‘Two Papal Letters on the Wearing of the Jewish Badge, 1221 and 1229’, Jewish Historical Studies, 34 (1997), 209–24. William fitz Stephen’s description of London is translated in the relevant volume of English Historical Documents, ed. D.C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. For Eleanor of Aquitaine, the best of the modern biographies are those by Ralph V. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine (London 2009) and Jean Flori (trans. Olive Classe), Eleanor of Aquitaine (Edinburgh 2007), though the details above are drawn from Nicholas Vincent, ‘Patronage, Politics and Piety in the Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine’, in Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et héritages, ed. Martin Aurell and N.-Y. Tonnerre (Turnhout 2006), pp. 17–60.