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On this day, 850 years ago, in a meadow close to the village of Fréteval in the Touraine region of France, King Henry II of England and Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, two estranged friends, enjoyed a long private meeting. This by itself was quite an accomplishment. Just six weeks previously, Henry had crowned his son Henry, now known as the Young King, as co-monarch of England, in...
Prof David Carpenter is a professor of medieval history at King’s College London. The first volume of his brilliant new biography of King Henry III (1216-72) has just been published in the Yale English Monarchs series. He joined me to discuss his book, Henry’s action-packed rule, his magnificent abbey of Westminster and his relations with the citizens of London. You can listen to the interview...
‘He is great, indeed the greatest of monarchs, for he has no superior of whom he stands in awe, nor subject who may resist him’. So wrote Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, to Thomas Becket in March 1165. The object of Arnulf’s praise was King Henry II (1154-89). True, no one would count Arnulf among the greatest thinkers and theologians of his age, but he was...
In my last blog we saw how, on 19 January 1170, an exasperated Pope Alexander III had given King Henry II of England forty days to end the quarrel with Thomas Becket, his archbishop of Canterbury. The threat to Henry was real enough: failure to comply would lead to an interdict being imposed across Henry’s extensive continental lands. A month beforehand, Becket had threatened to lay...
On this day 850 years ago, Pope Alexander III (1159-81), by now weary and exasperated with both King Henry II of England (1154-89) and Thomas Becket, Henry’s archbishop of Canterbury, issued letters which set out terms for a ‘form of peace’ between the two men. Becket had been in exile since 2 November 1164 following his clashes with Henry over the rights and liberties of...
The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde was built in 1969 to house the five so-called 'Skuldelev' ships. In the late eleventh century, these ships were sunk in a channel at Skuldelev to block access to Roskilde in Denmark. Why the ships were sunk is unknown; perhaps to block attacks from the sea, perhaps to control and facilitate the collection of customs. Local fishermen had long known...