She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor
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Authors: Helen Castor
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soldiers at his back. Father and daughter were still estranged in November when the king retired for a few days to his lodge at Lyons-la-Forêt to enjoy the hunt. It would prove to be his last journey.
The bitter conflict of his last months had been rooted in Henry’s refusal to surrender any of his territories to his presumptuous son-in-law while his grip on government, even at the age of sixty-seven, remained as strong as ever. But that did not mean that hiscommitment to the succession of his own bloodline had wavered. Now, when he suddenly found himself facing the unanswerable reality of death, he spent his final hours insisting on his daughter’s right to his throne. But the unexpectedness of his illness allowed no time for remorse or reconciliation, and Matilda was not at his side when he died during the night of 1 December.
The next morning, his body was carried to Rouen, where it was reverently received into the hushed cathedral. An expert embalmer set to work on the corpse (‘lest it should rot with lapse of time and offend the nostrils of those who sat or stood by it’, William of Malmesbury explained), removing the internal organs, which were placed in an urn and buried at the nearby church of Notre-Dame-du-Pré, before filling the body with aromatic balsam, covering it with salt and sewing it into layers of ox-hide. It was then transported west to Caen, just twenty miles from the Norman coast, to lie in state in the austerely beautiful abbey church of St Etienne which had been founded sixty years earlier by Henry’s father, the Conqueror, and now housed his tomb. There the bier rested for four weeks, until in January 1136 favourable winds at last allowed the monks of St Etienne to escort the body across the Channel to Henry’s own foundation, the great Cluniac abbey at Reading, for burial before the high altar of the still uncompleted church.
Matilda was not among the noble mourners at the funeral who made precious offerings and distributed alms for the good of her father’s soul. For, by then, her claims as his heir had already been dealt an unexpected and desperate blow.
Lady of England
The chroniclers who described the events of the winter of 1135–6 made little mention of Matilda. They had dutifully reported the oaths to support her taken by the Anglo-Norman nobility in 1127 and again in 1131, and William of Malmesbury – the most sympathetic to Matilda’s cause – recounted Henry’s deathbed declaration of her right to succeed him. But she is conspicuous by her absence from most contemporary narratives of the aftermath of her father’s last illness.
That historiographical absence reflects a physical one. Henry’s strategic plan for Matilda’s marriage left her stranded on the sidelines, with her husband in Anjou, rather than at the centre of the action precipitated by his sudden death. It was not that she was slow to react. In the first week of December, as soon as the shocking news came from Lyons-la-Forêt, Matilda rode north to seize control of the disputed border castles of Domfront, Exmes and Argentan that she had been promised as her dowry. She was so successful in her mission that her grip on this frontier territory was never shaken, and it was from these fortresses that her campaign to claim Normandy and England would be launched. For the moment, however, she could reach no further. Geoffroi was detained by rebellion in Anjou, while Matilda, it seems, was immobilised by a pregnancy that had begun only a few weeks before her father’s death. She established her household at Argentan, the four-towered castle that King Henry had built forty miles south of Caen to serve as a garrison, a treasury and a favourite lodge from which he could hunt in the nearby Gouffern forest. She gave birth there to her third son, William, on 22 July 1136.
By that time, however, events in England had moved decisively beyond her grasp. Had Matilda stood at the centre of the Anglo-Norman
The bitter conflict of his last months had been rooted in Henry’s refusal to surrender any of his territories to his presumptuous son-in-law while his grip on government, even at the age of sixty-seven, remained as strong as ever. But that did not mean that hiscommitment to the succession of his own bloodline had wavered. Now, when he suddenly found himself facing the unanswerable reality of death, he spent his final hours insisting on his daughter’s right to his throne. But the unexpectedness of his illness allowed no time for remorse or reconciliation, and Matilda was not at his side when he died during the night of 1 December.
The next morning, his body was carried to Rouen, where it was reverently received into the hushed cathedral. An expert embalmer set to work on the corpse (‘lest it should rot with lapse of time and offend the nostrils of those who sat or stood by it’, William of Malmesbury explained), removing the internal organs, which were placed in an urn and buried at the nearby church of Notre-Dame-du-Pré, before filling the body with aromatic balsam, covering it with salt and sewing it into layers of ox-hide. It was then transported west to Caen, just twenty miles from the Norman coast, to lie in state in the austerely beautiful abbey church of St Etienne which had been founded sixty years earlier by Henry’s father, the Conqueror, and now housed his tomb. There the bier rested for four weeks, until in January 1136 favourable winds at last allowed the monks of St Etienne to escort the body across the Channel to Henry’s own foundation, the great Cluniac abbey at Reading, for burial before the high altar of the still uncompleted church.
Matilda was not among the noble mourners at the funeral who made precious offerings and distributed alms for the good of her father’s soul. For, by then, her claims as his heir had already been dealt an unexpected and desperate blow.
Lady of England
The chroniclers who described the events of the winter of 1135–6 made little mention of Matilda. They had dutifully reported the oaths to support her taken by the Anglo-Norman nobility in 1127 and again in 1131, and William of Malmesbury – the most sympathetic to Matilda’s cause – recounted Henry’s deathbed declaration of her right to succeed him. But she is conspicuous by her absence from most contemporary narratives of the aftermath of her father’s last illness.
That historiographical absence reflects a physical one. Henry’s strategic plan for Matilda’s marriage left her stranded on the sidelines, with her husband in Anjou, rather than at the centre of the action precipitated by his sudden death. It was not that she was slow to react. In the first week of December, as soon as the shocking news came from Lyons-la-Forêt, Matilda rode north to seize control of the disputed border castles of Domfront, Exmes and Argentan that she had been promised as her dowry. She was so successful in her mission that her grip on this frontier territory was never shaken, and it was from these fortresses that her campaign to claim Normandy and England would be launched. For the moment, however, she could reach no further. Geoffroi was detained by rebellion in Anjou, while Matilda, it seems, was immobilised by a pregnancy that had begun only a few weeks before her father’s death. She established her household at Argentan, the four-towered castle that King Henry had built forty miles south of Caen to serve as a garrison, a treasury and a favourite lodge from which he could hunt in the nearby Gouffern forest. She gave birth there to her third son, William, on 22 July 1136.
By that time, however, events in England had moved decisively beyond her grasp. Had Matilda stood at the centre of the Anglo-Norman
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