On about the 22nd of March, 1159, King Henry II
announced throughout all of his kingdom and French provinces that he was going
to raise an army in order to take possession of Toulouse, in France. There
had been relative peace in his kingdom for a brief period and he was growing
restless. It was time to expand and establish
his domains in France.
Henry laid claim to the county through his wife Eleanor of
Aquitaine. Eleanor’s previous husband,
Louis VII, the reigning king of France, had also claimed the region through her
right of inheritance (jus uxoris).
He came to an arrangement with Raymond, Count of St. Gilles,
however. Raymond married the French king’s
sister and took the region en fief as the Count of Toulouse.
In order to raise an army for the invasion, Henry imposed both
a tallage tax and a tax called the scutagium or scutage. While the tallage was common in preparation
for hostilities, the scutage had rarely been levied before. In England, church primates held the rank of
barons of the realm. Being religious, they
were excepted from providing fighting men for the king. Once the king’s new Chancellor, Thomas
Becket, began running the daily operations of the kingdom, however, they began
being charged the "scutage,” in lieu of each man at arms — each scutus or
“shield” — required from feudal barons.
There was a furious backlash.
Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, led the opposition to the tax. He had
reason to be particularly enraged as the Chancellor served as an
Archdeacon — a high lay office — in his see and had been awarded numerous other
benefits. Thomas Becket was a commoner
and had shown particular skills and connections that Theobald had wished to use. He was so impressed, in fact, that he
recommended Becket for the post of Chancellor.
This meant the church would have a highly placed ally in the councils of
the king.
Once he became Chancellor, Becket never looked back. He abandoned his duties as Archdeacon and
preaching duties attached to his other positions. He outfitted a lavish household and lived like a secular lord. Under his chancellorship the church was being
taxed like never before to supply the ambitions of the young king who had come
to love him as something of an older brother.
By the time of the invasion of Toulouse, some five years
later, Becket arrived, on the 1st of July, at the muster of forces
for the campaign, with seven hundred knights from his household, twelve hundred
mercenaries, and four thousand servants to attend to their needs. His retinue far outnumbered all others with
the exception of the king himself. The
daily expense of such a force would have been ruinous for even a baron of the
realm.
Financial ledgers had not become standardized and were not
audited at that time in English history. It cannot be determined whether Becket paid
his force out of the King’s treasury or out of his own pocket. The same is true of other lavish spending he
had been doing, the couple of years before, on clothing, jewelry, gold and
silver household items, etc. However he
paid for his lavish lifestyle, the King must have been aware of the expenditure
and does not seem to have immediately objected.
In time, however, he would hint that the Chancellor’s handling of the
kingdom’s finances hadn’t been proper.
Henry’s expedition was thwarted when he unexpectedly found he
was laying siege to Toulouse with King Louis VII himself inside. Becket, being modern in his judgments,
advised taking the city and ransoming the French king. Henry, being a feudal king, owed his French
possessions to Louis and the homage that went with them. He raised his siege and harassed the countryside
and nearby towns.
Having taken the city of Cahors, Henry left Becket in charge
and proceeded to ravage the countryside more to the south. Becket could not resist the temptation to put
his force to use and attacked the French with such success that he became renowned. He commanded each engagement personally, in
full armor and arms, leading charges and unhorsing professional knights.
While Henry had been laying siege to Toulouse, Nicholas
Breakspear, Pope Adrian IV, was demanding the respect of the Holy Roman Emperor,
Frederick Barbarosa, in a conflict that was threatening to bring Europe to war.
Diplomatic pouches were full with tense correspondence
back and forth. Adrian has been the only
English Pope in history thus far. He had
shown great favor to his home country, in particular, by granting Ireland to
Henry, in 1155.
- Medieval Scavagers: First, what they were not. November 18, 2018. ‘The fact that the professor quoted Riley — regardless that neither he nor Riley were able to give a single citation to support their claim — began a now venerated commonplace that Medieval “Scavagers” began by collecting the English tax called the “Scavage”.’
- The Nymphs of Doctor Foreman’s Macbeth. October 21, 2018. “How did Foreman make the mistake of describing them precisely as Holinshed? But differently from the text we have of Macbeth? To consider Foreman’s account a simple mistake would require an astronomically improbable coincidence.”
- Let the sky rain potatoes! December 16, 2017. "In fact, the sweet potato had only just begun to be a delicacy within the reach of splurging poets and playwrights and members of the middle classes at the time that The Merry Wives of Windsor (the play from which Falstaff is quoted) was written. The old soldier liked to keep abreast of the new fads."
- Sir Anthony Bacon: a Life in the Shadows. January 25, 2016. "Somehow Sir Anthony had the habit of ingratiating himself in circles of the highest historical interest and most questionable mores."
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Questi
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