Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Chapter I

 

I couldn't resist. One of my all time favourite cartoons.

Anyhoo … to the matter at hand. My long-standing series of monthly lunchtime lectures is supposed to be on historic building conservation, teaching our young graduates stuff they no longer teach at university. Covering one or more of the RIBA's CPD Core Curriculum subjects gives attendees an hour off their annual Continual Professional Development duties. Occasionally I veer a little off topic, hence the opening paragraphs of this one below. Here goes …

Hokay, so I started writing the notes for this presentation and then had to stop at the Matilda versus Matilda smackdown because I found I'd written over ten-thousand words before I even got part way through the Anarchy. And that's just the notes; I hadn't even put in any bum jokes yet.

Mostly it was just about ghastly people doing ghastly things to other ghastly people; great fun for me as a mad mediævalist, and I know also for the odder folk among you, but the RIBA CPD Core Curriculum subjects don't specifically include madness, murder and mayhem, or indeed bum jokes, more's the pity and I am required to include at least some history and conservation of buildings to give you a legit hour's CPD.

So instead of a narrative of nineteen years of earls, barons, kings, queens and an empress chasing one another all round the country like the end of a Benny Hill show you'll be getting the bits that affected Norwich Castle … er … mostly.

Henry the First. Courtesy of the interweb.

At the end of our previous talk we left Norwich Castle at Christmas 1121, with the porpoise-eating party of Henry the First and Adeliza of Louvain.

As we learned, Henry lived on until the beginning of December 1135, when his chugging of a surfeit of lampreys caused a week-long, agonising death by bowel cramps and bum-gravy.

So we rejoin our tale in 1135. Plenty went on between 1121 and 1135 but none of the juicy bits occured anywhere near Norwich Castle so for today's purposes we can fast-forward over those years.

First week of December 1135, however, saw Henry the First emit his last, dying, fishy, wet fart and the real life Game of Thrones kicked off.

Let's start with Empress Matilda. Only surviving legitimate child of Henry the First and his queen Matilda, the king had married her off at age eleven to the elderly Holy Roman Emperor, another Henry (I hope you're keeping notes; I'll be asking questions later … though all the answers will probably be Matilda or Henry, there are so many of the buggers).

In 1125, elderly Emperor Henry popped his clogs and two years later Henry the First brought Matilda back to England to be declared his true heir.

A woman? A WOMAN? This was too much for your typical twelfth-century misogynist and the aristocracy let Henry know in no uncertain terms that they would only accept a queen if she was suitably married to a noble who would rule as king; preferably one of their own. But Henry cocks it up … He marries Matilda to Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou, traditional enemy of the Norman aristocracy. Henry had to force the barons to swear oaths of allegiance to Matilda and Geoffrey in 1127, 1128 and again in 1131.

NOT the mummified hand of Saint James, but the severed hand of Sir John Heydon, which you can find in Norwich Castle Museum should you be so inclined. Photo - courtesy Old Dive.

Empress Matilda was a bit of an odd fish in that she carried the mummified hand of Saint James wherever she went. And where she went now was off to Anjou with her new hubby, leaving the barons and earls to grumble and rhubarb amongst themselves.

Enter one Stephen of Blois. Remember him? As Henry's nephew he had a lesser but still legitimate claim to the throne and Henry had married him off to wealthy Matilda (surprise) of Boulogne. He was also the guy who chickened out of sailing with William Adelin on the White Ship as he felt the passengers and crew were too drunk to sail. Smart move.

In another smart move, he gathered his military retinue and raced across the Channel as soon as he heard news of Henry's demise, landing in London on the eighth of December.

The London Mob traditionally claimed a right to elect the sovereign of England (as later they elected Mary Tudor, usurping Edward VI's nominated heir, Queen Jane after only nine days as monarch). They liked the look of Stephen and they liked his promise of tax cuts and bribes even more. 

Stephen's brother - yet another Henry - was Bishop of Winchester and delivered Stephen the support of the church in exchange for his granting the church the right to extort even more money from the people. Bishop Henry bribed Hugh, the son of Roger Bigot to swear that King Henry had changed his mind on his deathbed and had named Stephen his heir in place of Matilda.

This was good enough for the London Mob, so on the twenty-sixth of December 1135, Stephen was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

Meanwhile, back in Norwich Castle our old chum Roger Bigot, the Norman Knight and ruthless exploiter of the local population was succeeded at the turn of 1136 by his son, Hugh (he of the above bribe), who changed the family name to Bigod (pronounced By-God apparently) and who was named the First Earl of Norfolk and Constable of Norwich Castle.

Hugh was marginally less rapacious than his dad had been and rather enjoyed living at the castle, so recently completed and fitted out as a royal palace.

Like anyone moving into a new home, however, he felt the urge to fiddle with it. The splendid Norman entrance archway was at that time reached by a simple timber stair with a drawbridge at the top. Quite rightly, Hugh felt it kinda let the rest of the castle down.

And so we can lay at his feet the blame for one of the English people's more horrendous perversions as at this point he decided to build England's first known flat-roofed porch extension …

The horror … the horror. Photo courtesy of the interweb.

But this wasn't just any old flat-roofed porch extension … oh no … this was the utterly blinging flat-roofed porch extension that has become known as the Bigod Tower.

The Bigod Tower today … or rather last March. Photo courtesy Old Dive.

This enclosed the main entrance arch and provided a much grander covered stairway into the castle's Great Hall.

The Bigod Tower and Stair, prior to the Victorians buggering it up. Courtesy Old Dive's personal collection.

 

You can make out the dashed line of the stair and drawbridge on the picture above. This no longer exists since Edward Boardman (of whom much more later) realigned the stair in the 1880s and replaced it with the current, awkward dog-leg configuration. As part of our Royal Palace Reborn project we're going to put it back the way it should be. Yay, us!

Back in early 1136, Empress Matilda was exceedingly dis-chuffed at the news of Stephen usurping the English throne that was hers by right. Matilda and Geoffrey gathered their army and invaded Normandy, trashing and looting as they went in preparation for an invasion of England to take back her throne.

Stephen, king de facto rather than de jure, ventured south across the Channel to stop them. We end today with perhaps the silliest battle in English history.

Stephen's army consisted of his own Flemish mercenaries under the command of William of Ypres together with the personal armies of his Norman Barons. Each side loathed the other. 

Hence, Matilda and Geoffrey were rewarded with the Pythonesque sight of a pitched battle between the two halves of Stephen's army, hacking and slaughtering one another while Matilda's army could only roll their eyes and probably giggle a lot.

The surviving barons then deserted King Stephen, who slunk back to England with his tail between his legs, promising to pay Matilda and Geoffrey 2,000 marks a year to leave him alone.

Next time, the Anarchy really kicks off and Norwich Castle comes under siege again.

Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (various): C. Clark (ed): 1970

Historia Novella: William of Malmesbury. In translation as William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen: J. A. Giles: 2016

Historia Anglorum: Henry of Huntingdon: In translation as The History of the English People, 1000 - 1154: Diana Greenway: Oxford World Classics: 2009

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume 3: 1067 - 1140: In translation by R. R. Darlington: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1995

Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976 

Feudal Documents from Bury St. Edmunds: British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales: Donald C. Douglas: 1932

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994

Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994

Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource