… Wherein King Louis uses the power of man's red flower to sack and burn Norwich, the barons rebel and … er … sack and burn Norwich and the good folk of Norwich become understandably revolting.
So let us wave a fond farewell to Mister Tanner and his boy and clamber back up the steep hill and the castle mound, away from the reek of the Great Cockey and its attendant trades, tread carefully past the pee and poo pool beneath the great poop chutes of Norwich Castle and up the stairs of the Bigod Tower, through the grand Norman arch and into the Great Hall itself.
It is late 1153 and our old friend Hugh Bigod still kicks his heels in Bungay Castle while King Stephen's son William of Blois enjoys Norwich Castle and the earldom of Norfolk.
Together with one Ranulph of Chester (who had committed a cheeky Red Wedding style banquet massacre at Lincoln Castle, thus kicking off the First Battle of Lincoln; tremendous fun, but alas not a part of our tale), Hugh Bigod threw his support behind the future Henry the Second when he invaded from Normandy.
It was the final throes of the Anarchy and when, the following year, King Stephen succumbed to a fatal fit of apoplexy, Henry was crowned king. Hugh, for his support, was reinstated as Earl of Norfolk and Constable of Norwich Castle and moved back in, the dispossessed William skulking off back to Blois.
Roger Bigot and his son Hugh Bigod both had a hand in the early development (and flat-roofed porch extension) of Norwich Castle. I hope you're taking notes because the Bigods star in our tale for several generations more, committing treason left, right and centre and somehow, miraculously getting away with it.
Anyhoo, Henry the Second inherited a trashed, burned and depopulated Britain after the ravages of the Anarchy and Normandy was in a pretty poor state, too. As Henry lived in Normandy and only ever spoke Norman-French and Latin, Normandy became his priority and for the next ten years, the surviving Britons were left pretty much to their own devices, which meant more ravaging of the poor folk by the barons and living here became not unlike the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Shitty …
Norfolk was one of the few places left relatively unaffected by the devastation of the Anarchy and with Hugh Bigod back in Norwich Castle things toddled along quite nicely for a decade or so. By 1163, however, Henry had sorted out his French domains and finally turned his attention to this sceptered isle.
First up came a big crackdown on crime, using travelling justices and force of arms to confiscate stolen goods and lands.
The barons got a good and well-deserved arse-kicking; all the counter-castles and most of the other castles built during Stephen's chaotic reign were now pulled down. Henry reformed the currency and the legal system and disinherited those earls and barons created by Stephen.
None of which really concerns Norwich Castle, but it helps the narrative to know that Henry the Second smacked the country like a naughty child (you could do that back then) and it started to behave itself for the first time since the Romans left, more than seven-hundred years before.
The rest of Henry's life was spent in France, where he appears to have gone off the rails big time. All he did concerning England during this period was to throw an almighty paddy about the behaviour of his old mucker Thomas Becket, at which four idiot Norman knights took him at his word, crossed la Manche* and hacked Becket to death in Canterbury Cathedral.
* La Manche (literally "the Handle") is Frogspeak for the English Channel.
This didn't go down too well over here but across the water Henry hit the big red "disaster" button, kicking off the Great Revolt in Normandy.
Other than Britain, Henry ruled Normandy and adjacent Anjou and - through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine - a big chunk of the bottom-left of France along the coast of the Bay of Biscuits.
Next up, we shall learn what went wrong for Henry and how disaster across the Channel spelled disaster at Norwich.
Sources:
Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society
East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009
Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976
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 Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010
Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004
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
4 comments:
Someday, when it's safe to travel again, I want to visit the Bay of Biscuits.
I've called it that ever since I was a kid, Petrea, and something tells me I won't stop now.
shades of Gormenghast there with the climb from the cesspool up the tower stairs to the great hall.
Ah, Steerpike! My hero.
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