Medieval chroniclers typically provide scant details on childhood, but the young sons of kings feature in their narratives for two principal reasons: association and diplomacy.Footnote 1 In the first instance, boys appear in the context of fathers securing recognition of their son’s position as heir, usually through oaths of fidelity and fealty, performances of homage or, most symbolically, the child’s inauguration as king during his father’s lifetime.Footnote 2 Actions which associated young boys in kingship and lordship were not only important for a child’s education and development but they also crucially incorporated the boy into a wider political community which had an increasingly vested interest in supporting him as heir and king. Secondly, underage sons (and equally daughters, although my treatment of the topic focuses on male children) appear in chronicles as a central component of the overlapping strategies, alliances and ambitions of medieval diplomacy.Footnote 3 Diplomatic negotiations often shaped the lives of royal children. Betrothals and marriages, for example, could result in children moving to new geographical locations, changes to their educational arrangements and language learning, and adjustment to new roles within different families, courts and communities. Royal families even used eldest sons to circumvent diplomatic norms, entwining strategies of association and diplomacy to demonstrate a boy’s place as heir on an international stage.
No set ‘system’ dictated the actions fathers used to associate their sons with royal rule – as Andrew Lewis shows for Capetian France – but there were underlying norms when it came to involving young children in practices of association and diplomacy.Footnote 4 The common emphasis on paternal agency in contemporary accounts shows that royal rulers across north-western Europe shared comparable concerns for their eldest son’s recognition by and socialisation within a wider political community. Narrative accounts less frequently considered maternal agency, but royal documents are a pertinent reminder that we should not ignore mothers’ involvement in their sons’ political instruction.Footnote 5 The exigency of securing such support for children differed from case to case, as did the exact nature of the political communities from which parents sought affirmation of their sons’ position. Some rulers targeted small groups of elites to recognise the boy’s place as heir, others focused on specific regions or localities, still others chose an international platform on which to display their child. Occasionally, cross-cultural influence may have encouraged rulers either to amend common practices for associating royal children with rule or to adopt entirely new strategies. It is impossible to understand the widespread acceptance of boy kings across Europe in the central Middle Ages without placing into a broader comparative context the actions rulers took to associate their young sons and heirs with kingship. Comparison between kingdoms also reveals the important political role children played in medieval diplomacy. Royal children were not merely pawns in the diplomatic and political games of adults (as modern scholarship often presents them); they were both enablers and facilitators of diplomacy. Although boys were rarely, if ever, able to negotiate their own involvement in actions of association and diplomacy, parents nevertheless had to factor their sons’ age and maturity into their associative strategies. Children’s active participation could be decisive to the occasion and thus vital to readying the realm for their succession and rule, as this chapter will show by examining, in turn, attempts to secure magnate loyalty to children, their incorporation within performances of diplomacy and the importance of their dynamic contribution at coronation.
Securing Loyalty to a Child
Whilst conducting a military campaign against the Flemish in 1047, Emperor Henry III stopped at Xanten, close to the kingdom’s western border, to celebrate the Virgin’s nativity (8 September). Archbishop Herman of Cologne, present at the feast, set a woeful tone for the gathering by publicly beseeching God to provide the emperor with a son, arousing the laments of those in attendance. Herman’s hopes, and indeed the hopes of all present, were pinned on the ruler’s unborn son, whom they deemed essential for the continuing peace of the realm.Footnote 6 When the much-longed-for boy finally arrived three years later, the emperor waited barely six weeks before arranging for some of the German princes to swear an initial oath of loyalty to his son at the Christmas court in Pöhlde.Footnote 7 Herman of Reichenau (d. 1054) describes how ‘many of the princes’ – in reality, probably only local Saxon and Thuringian magnates – promised Henry III’s son ‘allegiance and subjection by an oath’.Footnote 8 Writing two decades after Herman, Lampert of Hersfeld perhaps doubted the suitability of swearing an oath to an unbaptised child, since he notes that the boy was adhuc caticuminus, not yet a member of God’s spiritual community.Footnote 9 Lampert was less concerned about the new-born baby’s incapacity or inability to comprehend the events at Pöhlde and their significance. Lacking the blessing of baptism similarly counted against the two-year-old Frederick II in 1200 or 1201 when Pope Innocent contemplated the reasons for and against the recognition as emperor of each of the three kings elected by the Germans.Footnote 10 Neither Frederick’s young age nor his unbaptised status had prevented the princes electing him as king during his father’s lifetime, even if the pope could offer both factors as reasons not to provide papal support for the boy’s imperial candidacy after Henry VI’s death.
Securing group oaths from secular magnates to infantes – children still in the initial stage of the male life cycle, infantia, which commonly lasted until age seven – was a political strategy which the rulers of the Empire had in common with English kings from the mid-twelfth century onwards.Footnote 11 Less than two years after Henry II’s succession, he made the barons ‘swear fidelity … for the kingdom of England’ to his two-year-old son, William (1153–6), in a council at Wallingford fortress in April 1155.Footnote 12 The baronial oath incorporated a further promise that, if William died prematurely, they would instead recognise the king’s second son, Henry, then only five weeks old. Matthew Strickland has emphasised the symbolic choice of Wallingford for the oath, a location where, only two years beforehand, Henry II had reached a peace settlement with Stephen to bring an end to the warfare engulfing the kingdom.Footnote 13 In England, much as in the empire, the king’s underage son(s) embodied adult hopes for a kingdom’s future peace. It is impossible to tell, in these cases, whether the children were physically present as oaths were sworn to them, or whether they received the magnates’ fidelity in absentia. Nevertheless, the emperor chose Pöhlde as the location for his Christmas court because it was near his son Henry’s birthplace, in or close to Goslar.Footnote 14 In England, the young William was likely either at Wallingford with his father or, if not, only 50 miles away in London, where his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122–1204), had recently given birth to William’s younger brother. If boys were not in attendance at oath-swearing ceremonies themselves, then their fathers deliberately arranged for the ceremonies to take place near the children’s locations to reinforce the oaths’ significance. As leading members of the political community promised their allegiance to a royal infant, they renewed their commitment to the kingdom’s future security and stability by acknowledging that the king’s son (or sons) was central to this vision.
General oaths sworn to royal children by large groups of secular magnates, clergy or freemen were less familiar practices in Scotland and France. Rulers of these kingdoms still recognised the importance of securing loyalty to their underage sons, but they relied on different strategies for displaying boys as heirs and obtaining assurances of fidelity. In France, kings often integrated young sons into performances of homage or secured affirmations of support from magnates and prelates at their coronations, events which will be discussed in more detail later. In twelfth-century Scotland, the physical presence of a royal child in the localities may have conveyed greater significance for the magnate community and the king. Alice Taylor has questioned whether mass oaths carried the same importance in the Scottish kingdom as they did elsewhere, such as in England, particularly in the context of oaths of loyalty sworn to maintain the peace.Footnote 15 The kings of Scots only took such oaths from their major lay and ecclesiastical landholders rather than from a wider community of freemen. Oaths of loyalty sworn to designate a successor appear to have been entirely absent in Scotland before the thirteenth century. Kings made decisions regarding the association and designation of their successors without recourse to general oaths from either the kingdom’s magnates or a wider political community. Possible royal designations in the early twelfth century – Edgar’s ‘designation’ of his brother Alexander I as heir in 1100, when Alexander was probably in his twenties, or Alexander’s ‘designation’ of David as his heir in 1107, when David was a similar age – involved adult men, and did not incorporate oaths from leading magnates or prelates, as far as it is possible to tell from the surviving sources.Footnote 16
It was necessity which led David I to seek magnate recognition of his eleven-year-old grandson, Malcolm (b. 1141), as ‘successor to the kingdom’ in 1152.Footnote 17 This was the first time a Scottish king had attempted to promote an underage child as his heir and was largely motivated by the unexpected death of Malcolm’s father and David’s only son, Henry (c. 1115–52), earl of Northumberland.Footnote 18 Previously, contenders for the kingship had all been adult males from the kinship group of a previous king. They were frequently collateral claimants, such as brothers, rather than direct descendants, such as sons or grandsons.Footnote 19 The succession of Duncan I (r. 1034–40) after Malcolm II’s death provides an earlier eleventh-century precedent for a grandson succeeding his grandfather. Although contemporary sources still saw Duncan as a young man at his death in 1040, his age at succession is unclear.Footnote 20 The twofold novelty of the situation in 1152 – Malcolm was a child and the reigning king’s grandson – swayed David, who was himself nearing seventy, to publicise the boy’s new position while, at the same time, seeking some guarantee of magnate backing for his grandson’s claim.
The king chose to exploit Malcolm’s itinerary by sending him on a tour through the prouinciae Scotie, probably the region of Scotia south of the Forth, accompanied by a loyal magnate, Duncan, mormaer of Fife (d. 1154).Footnote 21 In the earliest surviving manuscript of John of Hexham’s continuation of Symeon of Durham’s Historia regum (before 1199), a scribe inserted the word continuo above the account of these events, emphasising the urgency of David’s decision to send Malcolm with Duncan.Footnote 22 The king had little choice but to act quickly. As well as the lack of precedent for a general oath in the Scottish kingdom, directly approaching the magnates negated any need for them to travel to the royal court. It offered a swifter means of ensuring noble co-operation than, for example, incorporating the boy as witness to sporadic transactions as part of the normal royal itinerary. It was also an astute decision to entrust Malcolm to the mormaer of Fife’s care. Duncan was a regular witness to royal acts, a trusted member of the king’s court and an important native magnate.Footnote 23 His company provided a prominent visual display of support for the child as Malcolm toured the lands which his grandfather intended him to rule. David likely hoped Duncan’s presence would mitigate potential trouble from other Scottish magnates, and the king was right to be concerned.Footnote 24 When Malcolm succeeded after David’s death in 1153, the twelve-year-old king faced uprisings from local landowners as well as rebellion against his rule north of the Forth.Footnote 25
Malcolm’s association by itinerary was not unusual. While Malcolm travelled around the provinces of Scotia, David himself escorted one of Malcolm’s younger brothers, William, to Newcastle. At the city, the boy received hostages (obsides) from the Northumbrian magnates, whom David made subordinate to William’s rule as earl of Northumberland.Footnote 26 No extant record survives for similar demands being made of the Scottish magnates during Malcolm’s itineration with Duncan, but magnate loyalty was equally central to their circuit of Scotia. Beyond Scotland, other aristocratic and royal parents toured their lands with child heirs to promote their status and rule or sent the children with trusted magnates for the same purpose. Stephen-Henry of Blois (d. 1102) and his wife, Adela (d. 1137), publicly displayed their son, William, as principal heir in a tour of their comital domain in the late 1090s before Stephen returned to the Holy Land.Footnote 27 Henry, son of Empress Matilda and Geoffrey of Anjou, was accompanied by his uncle, Robert of Gloucester, when, aged nine, the boy made a hazardous winter crossing of the Channel in order to be displayed as the rightful heir to the English throne in 1142.Footnote 28 In a comparable situation in the Empire, Frederick II’s uncle, Philip of Swabia, was due to escort his two-year-old nephew to Germany to secure the princes’ recognition of the boy as king. The death of Frederick’s father in September 1197 meant that, although Philip continued north, the infant did not accompany him as planned.Footnote 29 Malcolm’s tour through the prouinciae Scotie therefore served a similar purpose to the general oaths sworn to royal children in larger gatherings in the German and English kingdoms. Both forms of association signified the boy’s place within the dynasty and laid foundations for his future reception as king throughout the realm.
Securing magnate loyalty to a royal child served multifarious interconnected purposes, which ranged from bolstering the king’s immediate political stability and strengthening the child’s position as heir to securing concessions for the magnates, binding them ever more tightly to the ruler’s dynastic intentions. In Germany, three years after the Pöhlde oath, Emperor Henry III felt it necessary to secure a further promise to elect his three-year-old son as king. Herman of Reichenau alone records the future Henry IV’s election by those present at an assembly in Tribur in 1053, which likely included ecclesiastical as well as lay magnates. There, Henry III ‘caused his own son and namesake to be chosen by all, and made obedience be promised to him [Henry IV] after his [Henry III’s] death, if he [who?] should be a just ruler in the future (si rector iustus futurus esset)’.Footnote 30
Herman’s account has attracted substantial interest from modern historians, primarily due to his suggestion that the princes imposed a proviso on the boy’s election and succession.Footnote 31 As Reuter rightly pointed out, the caveat does not necessarily relate to Henry IV’s future behaviour as ruler since Henry III could equally be the subject of the verb.Footnote 32 In many respects, the condition attached to the boy’s election makes far more sense if it concerns the adult emperor, who in 1053 was facing criticism for his handling of the deposition of Conrad, duke of Bavaria. Herman continues his account of the Tribur assembly by noting that the duke refused to attend, and the author is openly critical of Henry III’s decision to deprive Conrad of certain possessions quasi legaliter.Footnote 33
Determining whether the princes directed their proviso towards the father or the son is less important for my purpose here than the unambiguous detail that the magnates attached a condition to the boy’s election. Herman believed (or, at the very least, wanted to present the picture) that the royal child’s election as king could be mutually beneficial, advantageous for both the reigning monarch and the wider political community. For the emperor, acknowledging princely oversight of his, or possibly his son’s, future conduct was less risky politically than leaving the boy unelected. The young Henry also gained from his association with the throne, both in terms of an augmented status as rex electus and through his father’s accompanying gift of the duchy of Bavaria, a symbolic and material marker of the child’s preparation for rule.Footnote 34 Fathers hoped that repeated assurances of fidelity would bind individuals and communities even more closely to their sons in the future, but those swearing the oaths could likewise gain from promising their allegiance.
Oaths of fidelity relied on reciprocity because they created an important social bond between those swearing and those receiving them.Footnote 35 Magnate oaths did not always constitute a binding recognition of an underage child as heir, but they furthered the boy’s integration into the political community, publicly distinguishing his place in networks of lordship and alliances.Footnote 36 Combining the act of swearing fidelity with a performance of homage to the child reinforced the reciprocal nature of loyalty. In 1162, a few years after the death of Henry II’s eldest son William, the king sent his second son Henry, then seven years old, to England to receive the fidelity and homage of both clergy and secular magnates.Footnote 37 Bishops, abbots and laymen swore fidelitas and performed homagium in a council at London, after which the magnates proceeded to install Thomas Becket, Henry’s chancellor, as archbishop of Canterbury.Footnote 38 The common addition of a salva fide clause, saving loyalty to the senior monarch, equated the boy with his father while simultaneously emphasising the child’s lesser status in this partnership. Those performing homage recognised young Henry’s right to be placed alongside his father as lord. In return, they expected the son to maintain a system of lordship which guaranteed their lands and rights.
The English kings’ enduring reliance on general oaths to establish magnate recognition of their underage sons as heirs almost certainly influenced William, king of Scots, to introduce this practice into the Scottish kingdom. William had possibly accompanied his brother, Malcolm, on Henry II’s Toulouse expedition in 1159, so he may have witnessed first-hand some of Henry’s actions to promote his son as heir, or at least heard stories of the child’s promotion.Footnote 39 William was certainly at Woodstock in 1163 when Malcolm swore homage to Henry and his eight-year-old son.Footnote 40 Four decades later, in October 1201, the Scottish magnates swore fidelity (iurare fidelitas) to William’s three-year-old son, the future Alexander II.Footnote 41 This event, which took place at Musselburgh, a small town to the east of Edinburgh, is especially striking considering the lack of general oaths in Scotland before the late 1190s.Footnote 42 The absence of William’s younger brother, David, from the 1201 ceremony, and the delay of four years before he swore fidelity to the boy Alexander, provide further hints of the novelty of the situation within a Scottish context.Footnote 43
William had had a prolonged wait for a male heir, and concerns to secure the royal succession weighed heavily upon him throughout his reign. Falling ill in 1195, the king tried to seek support for his firstborn daughter, Margaret (d. 1259), as heir to the kingdom when she was eight years old at most.Footnote 44 Roger of Howden claimed that William established Margaret’s betrothed, Otto of Brunswick (d. 1218), as his successor.Footnote 45 This solution was unacceptable to the native Scots nobility, especially since Otto was the English king’s nephew. Although William recovered from his illness and the proposed betrothal between Margaret and Otto never took place, the English court still attempted to intervene in the Scottish succession.Footnote 46 When William and Queen Ermengarde (d. 1233) finally had a son in 1198, the king was now in his mid-fifties and ‘many rejoiced at his [Alexander’s] birth’.Footnote 47 Obtaining magnate support for the child as William’s successor became an immediate priority, especially since the king was also preparing to leave the kingdom on a military expedition into Caithness. The king of Scots’ decision to seek an oath to his son from the kingdom’s magnates – a method of association for which there were more English than Scottish precedents – served, moreover, to reinforce William’s designation of his successor to an English audience. The king’s choice of location for the oath was also significant. William’s grandfather had bestowed Musselburgh upon Dunfermline Abbey, a wealthy religious community that benefited from regular royal patronage. The town may have witnessed a royal assembly in 1190, when William met with the kingdom’s magnates to agree on the payment of a debt owed to King Richard.Footnote 48 If so, Musselburgh was a site already associated with royal counsel and collective decision-making. Swearing an oath to a child was a novel practice in Scotland, but it was far preferable to the possible succession of the English king’s nephew. The choice of location was intended to encourage magnate agreement to swear fidelitas to the infant Alexander.
Heightened concerns for inheritance and succession could encourage changes to established practices of securing magnate loyalty to their children. In England, when Henry II’s youngest son, John, became king, he continued his father’s habit of integrating royal children into performances of loyalty, but extended this practice to include a wider range of participants.Footnote 49 Several contemporary writers record that John demanded both homage and fidelity from all the freemen of England at the end of September 1209. The king needed to rally popular support for his hereditary position and dynasty in the shadow of the disappearance of his nephew, Arthur, and in the face of impending papal excommunication.Footnote 50 Gervase of Canterbury (d. c. 1210), writing within a year or so of the event, suggests that John incorporated his infant son Henry, who had not yet reached his third birthday, into the oaths sworn in 1209. At Marlborough in Wiltshire, ‘all the men of England, rich and poor and the middling sort, aged fifteen and upwards’ swore fidelity to John and to Henry, ‘as the king’s heir’ (utpote regis heres).Footnote 51 Record of the royal child’s inclusion in these oaths was not an addendum unique to Gervase’s account. The annals of Osney abbey, an Augustinian community 40 miles from Marlborough, similarly record how, in 1209, John ensured the swearing of fidelity to himself and his son Henry ‘throughout the whole of England’.Footnote 52 Isabella of Angoulême, John’s second wife and Henry’s mother, regularly frequented Marlborough castle at this time.Footnote 53 Later in John’s reign, the royal children sometimes accompanied Isabella on her stays there.Footnote 54 Since Richard, John and Isabella’s second son, had been born at Devizes in January 1209, only 15 miles from Marlborough, it is likely that the queen and their children were still in the region by the autumn. John’s choice of location to stage the swearing of loyalty to his son may well have been a practical one, ensuring the three-year-old boy could be present at the ceremony but then quickly returned to his mother, nursemaids or tutors.
John’s profound commitment to displaying Henry’s status as lord and heir extended beyond England and over the sea to the county of Angoulême, Isabella’s inheritance. In May 1212, the king announced that Bartholomew of La Puy (or ‘de Podio’), mayor of Angoulême, had given fidelitas to Henry, saving fidelity to John himself as long as he lived.Footnote 55 The king proceeded to order the rest of the knights and freemen of Angoulême to furnish his son with their fidelitas in the same way, without any pretext. That the full loyalty Bartholomew and others owed to John should divert to Henry on the king’s death reinforced primogenital dynastic notions of father–son succession through the ceremony of swearing loyalty. Neither John nor his six-year-old son was present in Poitou at this time, but Bartholomew’s oath of fidelity and the public address to the men of the county were clear statements that John intended Henry to have Angoulême as part of his inheritance.Footnote 56 Only a few years after John’s death, Isabella likewise stressed their eldest son’s links to Angoulême, ‘your land and ours’, in a letter encouraging Henry’s councillors to send support to her in Poitou.Footnote 57 Significantly, in this letter Isabella addresses Henry as lord of Angoulême, among other titles. Isabella’s later letters to her son never use the same title.
Loyalty and fidelity were central to John’s strategy for associating his son in rule, but there is little evidence that the English king attempted to secure mass performances of homage to Henry, either to the child himself at Marlborough or to another on his behalf in Angoulême. Gervase and the Osney annalist state only that the men of England swore fidelity to the boy (iurare fidelitas). Their vocabulary is analogous to Robert of Torigni’s record of the 1155 oath to Henry II’s two-year-old son and contains no explicit reference to homagium, unlike in the records of the 1162 council in London.Footnote 58 Without further evidence, it is unwise to assume that John included his son in the unusual performance of homage the king imposed upon freemen in 1209. John’s actions were distinctive within an English context, nonetheless. Whereas Henry II, in 1155 and 1162, had prioritised the loyalty of the leading men of England alone, John turned to a far larger audience, incorporating his underage son into networks of allegiance which spanned social strata and stretched throughout the kingdom and abroad.
In the central Middle Ages, kings commonly first sought and secured allegiance to their eldest son before the child turned seven, and certainly before he had reached puberty, the end of pueritia or legal maturity. In many cases, the exigency for acquiring an heir’s recognition at such a young age stemmed from the adult ruler’s own apprehensions. Old age or illness turned the king’s thoughts to his impending mortality; experiencing a prolonged wait before the birth of his first son and male heir compounded these anxieties.Footnote 59 Political events served as a further catalyst to these personal circumstances. Although contemporary sources are rarely forthcoming in discussing the reasons rulers chose to associate their sons as heirs, the usual motivations offered for requesting oaths to young boys include preparing to leave the kingdom on pilgrimage or crusade, or the decision to undertake a military campaign.Footnote 60 It is striking that royal fathers consistently chose infancy or early childhood as the timing for the first demonstrations of loyalty to their sons, rather than waiting until the boys could categorically attend oath-swearing ceremonies, participate more actively or fully comprehend the significance of the promises being made. Scholars seldom consider the unique attributes of the earliest stage of the male life cycle in this regard, nor the benefits of securing oaths to children when they were so young. However, there are hints that rulers viewed a legally and socially defined period of childhood as possessing a distinct value when ensuring the extension of loyalty to their heirs and successors. Childhood’s specific merits in this regard became more entangled with legal terminology and ideas by the early thirteenth century.
Early in 1212, after Louis, son and heir of Philip Augustus, had seized the towns of Aire and Saint-Omer in the Flemish Artois, local castellans and citizens offered personal securities to the king for loyalty to Louis, then in his mid-twenties. These securities were all sworn with a promise that, if Louis died, the men and towns would remain loyal to Philip until Louis’s heirs reached a lawful and full age (‘ad legitimam et perfectam etatem’), saving the right of the most beloved Lady Blanche, Louis’s wife.Footnote 61 At this point in time, Louis only had one son, Philip, born in 1209 (he died before his ninth birthday). The promises from Flemish castellans and citizens to Louis’s underage heirs – not just the son already living but also any children born in future – demonstrate that the period of childhood assumed a protected status as far as loyalty was concerned. Fidelity was expected to encompass both the father and his adult son, but if the son’s untimely death broke this link in the network of lordship, loyalty defaulted to the king’s grandchildren until they reached an age where they could legally renegotiate the terms of this fidelity themselves. Such an arrangement protected the king and his dynasty, safeguarding the expansion of their lordship into these northern territories, but it also provided a form of surety for the castellans and citizens. The king could not use his son and heir’s death as an excuse to retract promises already made to these individuals and communities.
Around the same time in England, Peter de Maulay (d. 1241) may have sworn an oath (iuramentum) to John to hold several royal castles until the king’s son, Henry, was likewise of a legitimate age.Footnote 62 As well as entrusting to Peter the custody of castles such as Corfe in Dorset, John additionally commended his younger son, Richard, into the councillor’s safekeeping during the warfare of 1215.Footnote 63 Record of Peter’s oath only features in the querimonia of Falkes de Bréauté (d. 1226), a soldier who played a central role in the closing years of John’s reign and during Henry’s minority. The querimonia was an extensive defence of Falkes’s actions which he presented to the pope at Rome in 1225. It survives only because a Crowland monk appended the document to that year’s annal in his abbey’s chronicle.Footnote 64 The chance survival of a possible oath concerning John’s underage son, of which we would otherwise be ignorant, warns against assuming the available chronicle and documentary sources are a complete record of the various ways in which rulers incorporated their children within networks of loyalty and allegiance. Although many of Falkes’s querimonia statements are of questionable veracity, John’s strategy made perfect sense in this case since Peter de Maulay was in royal favour and had had charge of at least some of the royal children. Once again, the promise of future support for a royal child proved mutually beneficial to both the king and the magnate swearing the oath. John may well have intended his eldest son’s legal majority to mark a point of renegotiation concerning Peter’s custody of royal property, but it does not necessarily follow that the king envisaged the same concept of legal maturity should apply in the case of his own death and Henry’s succession as a child.Footnote 65
Customary and legal conceptions of maturity had more of an influence on how fidelity was sworn to royal children by the thirteenth century.Footnote 66 Underpinning these ideas was an expectation that castellans, citizens and soldiers would uphold oaths of loyalty sworn to royal children and protect the property to which they had a legitimate right. Falkes mentioned Peter’s concern that he had broken his oath when compelled to surrender the castles during Henry’s minority, but we do not know whether John ever intended such an oath to continue past his own death. Similar obligations of loyalty and penalties for oath-breaking did not necessarily apply to children themselves. In a letter from Philip Augustus to the pope in 1219, the French king agreed in writing that he would prolong a truce with the English king. Philip was unwilling to swear a truce in person, however, because, although he was obliged to observe his oath, he knew that John’s sons were underage so were not bound to observe any oath they swore.Footnote 67 Though this was evidently a politically strategic move on Philip’s part, the ruler’s comments are also revealing of the ways in which childhood could impact, and even alter, diplomatic norms between realms.
Royal Children and Performances of Diplomacy
Royal children had important roles in cross-kingdom interactions. Childhood often aided, and even sanctioned, adult rulers to adapt and revise customs of cross-cultural diplomacy. To date, however, the passivity of children’s incorporation within medieval diplomacy has drawn most attention, with young boys and girls described as ‘pawns in diplomatic marriage games’ or ‘underdogs’ with little say in how they interacted with an adult world.Footnote 68 By centring on children’s inactivity, emphasising adult manipulation and exploitation of children as passive tools, we can lose sight of the full pertinence of diplomatic exchanges to children themselves, to their families and to transnational audiences. These interactions were part of a child’s education, familiarising them with practices of royal diplomacy and preparing them for future political involvement as heir and king.
Underage sons had diplomatic capital in enabling their fathers to secure royal support from foreign rulers while simultaneously sidestepping more contentious issues involving lordship, hierarchy and subjection. This is overt in twelfth-century Anglo-French royal relations, where the young ages of children involved in homage transactions benefited the rulers of both England and France. Since, typically, the king of the English was concurrently duke of the Normans, he owed fidelity to the French king as his lord for Normandy. English rulers did not use their sons solely to bypass performing acts of homage to the kings of France themselves. Instead, English kings actively sought opportunities for their sons to perform homage. They requested their young sons’ participation for the far more pressing reason of securing French support for their inheritance of continental territories, often in the face of contested successions to Normandy.Footnote 69 In such cases, kings were not simply exploiting their children for political benefit or using them as diplomatic pawns; fathers recognised the advantage additional royal support provided for their sons, both at the time of the ceremony and in future. The argument that royal children were nothing more than passive participants, manipulated for diplomatic purposes by their parents, fails to account for the highly symbolic nature of these events for the boys themselves. These performances had children at the centre, and they served as a highly significant form of public recognition.Footnote 70
Sons who performed homage in their fathers’ stead embodied the diplomatic strength of their family and dynasty. It was only in times of favourable Anglo-French relationships that the English ruler could persuade the French king to accept homage from a son.Footnote 71 Stephen’s son, Eustace (c. 1129–53), for example, did homage to Louis VI in 1137 when the boy was probably between the ages of six and eight.Footnote 72 Royal children therefore endorsed their fathers’ attempts to circumvent diplomatic norms and to secure future political ties. A child’s active participation in ritual transactions of homage and fidelity indicated their father’s strength in cross-cultural relationships. Rulers valued the flexibility children afforded them in diplomatic negotiations, but a young boy’s performance of homage equally demonstrated and enhanced his own status as heir or successor in front of a larger international audience, forming part of his training for kingship. The child’s presence and active participation were crucial in representing future ideas of peace, prosperity and co-operation between realms; his agency, especially in terms of his efficacy, was therefore essential.Footnote 73
It was not only English kings who involved their young children in homage transactions. French rulers likewise incorporated their infant sons into the rituals. Often, when a French king conceded that an English king’s son could perform homage for Normandy, the French ruler followed suit and incorporated his own young son into the homage transaction. As part of the peace arrangements following the battle of Brémule, the sixteen-year-old William Adelin, Henry I of England’s eldest son, performed homage to Louis VI in 1120.Footnote 74 The Warenne chronicler claims that, at the same time: ‘the king of the French agreed that his son, a boy (puer), would give Normandy to William, son of King Henry, and that this same William would do fidelity owed for Normandy to the same boy, son of the king of the French’.Footnote 75 Thus, Louis’s three-year-old son Philip received William’s submission (subiectio) for the territory of Normandy. Promises of fidelity and displays of homage from a prominent prince whose lands closely bordered the French royal domain became an opportune occasion for the rulers of France to promote their sons as rightful heirs. Similarly, in February 1169, the fourteen-year-old Henry, son of the English king Henry II, performed homage (fecit homagium) in Paris to the three-year-old Philip, Louis VII’s son.Footnote 76 Young Henry had already done homage to Louis himself, both for Normandy in 1160 when Henry was only five years old, and for Anjou and Brittany in 1169.Footnote 77
Even if children’s performances of homage connoted lesser acts of submission than homage performed by an adult king, this did not make a child’s actions any less legitimate.Footnote 78 After the coronation of Henry II’s son in 1170, for instance, Louis VII did not expect the adolescent to reperform his earlier homage for any of the continental territories. Age limits were not imposed on infants receiving homage or fidelity, as the cases involving the sons of Louis VI and Louis VII demonstrate, but nor were restrictions always imposed on those performing homage, at least not at this elite level. The reciprocal inclusion of royal sons within these performances was an opportunity to re-emphasise status and hierarchy, but it also hints at how royal rule shifted the boundaries of age-related norms.Footnote 79 While the English king was able to use these diplomatic events to assert his adolescent son’s rightful place as ruler of Normandy, the French king matched, or even surpassed, this with a demonstration that his three-year-old infant son already possessed the right to receive acts of submission as king and lord. Children’s participation in royal diplomacy was mutually beneficial, helping to maintain diplomatic hierarchies between rulers and kingdoms from one generation to the next.
That kings valued the foreign recognition of their son as heir, even when the boy was only a child, and that they incorporated attempts to gain this recognition into diplomatic dealings with other rulers, is further evident in Anglo-Scottish relations in the first half of the thirteenth century. King John did not put his faith solely in the public oath sworn by the freemen of England to provide for his son’s association. The 1209 Marlborough oath was not even the first time the young Henry had appeared at his father’s side as lord and heir. A copy of a letter from John in a cartulary of Saint-Augustine’s, Canterbury, is insightful in this regard, outlining the terms of the Treaty of Norham (August 1209) with William, king of Scots.Footnote 80 Chroniclers focus on the aspect of the settlement which led the Scottish ruler to send his two eldest legitimate daughters, Margaret and Isabella, south for John to arrange their marriages.Footnote 81 By contrast, the Saint-Augustine’s cartulary letter reveals that young boys – John’s one-year-old son Henry and William’s ten-year-old son Alexander – were central to the treaty’s terms. If the king of Scots died, John, his sons and his men would aid William’s son Alexander ‘as our man’ (tanquam homo noster), helping to maintain him in his land and dignities.Footnote 82 In return, William, his son and his men would aid Henry ‘as their lord’ (tanquam dominus suus) if the English king died.Footnote 83 A final promise that John, William and their sons would ‘help each other for as long as we live’ reiterated the kings’ mutual intention to sustain support across the generations in a manner which was reciprocal and beneficial for their young sons.Footnote 84 From childhood, Henry and Alexander began to be integrated into systems which relied on social and hierarchical notions of lordship. At the core of these systems was a shared belief that boys would be educated to uphold their responsibilities as dominus and homo in future, as the terms of this treaty make clear. The ten-year-old Alexander then performed ‘a homage for the future’ at Alnwick, instigating his own relationship with John distinct from the existing ties between the boy’s father and the English king.Footnote 85
An additional agreement between John and William in early 1212 provides further evidence that the English king secured oaths to consolidate his son’s lordly status. William and his son Alexander swore on the Holy Gospels to maintain loyalty (fides et fidelitas) to Henry as their liege lord (ligius dominus), and to help support the boy in his kingdom, saving only the fides they already owed to John.Footnote 86 Although this agreement only survives in a thirteenth-century copy or draft of an original document, Taylor made a compelling case for its authenticity in light of the Marlborough oath to Henry.Footnote 87 The parallels between the terms of the 1209 treaty in the Saint-Augustine’s cartulary and the wording of the 1212 agreement serve as further corroboration that doubts regarding the agreement’s authenticity are unfounded.Footnote 88
Part of the apprenticeship which many royal sons experienced throughout their childhood was their presence at or inclusion in negotiations with foreign rulers. These events were not only about kings stage-managing their children as diplomatic pawns for political whims. They were also an important means of incorporating children into networks of diplomacy, and of securing recognition of the child’s position from the rulers and aristocracy of other kingdoms. Royal charters and diplomas issued throughout the childhood of the future Philip II of France record the boy’s presence with his father at various events involving the kingdom’s magnates and prelates, such as property confirmations or ceremonies of gift-giving.Footnote 89 In addition to these more commonplace transactions, anecdotal evidence suggests that Philip was sometimes present with Louis VII and the royal court at less routine diplomatic proceedings, especially at meetings with Henry II, king of the English and duke of the Normans.
Gerald of Wales, writing in around 1216, mentions Philip’s attendance at two colloquia between Louis and Henry. The first meeting took place at Montmartre in November 1169, when Philip was four years old, and the second at Gisors, probably early in 1175 when Philip was nine.Footnote 90 Gerald’s account of these proceedings can hardly be trusted as accurate. He claims, erroneously, that the first meeting took place when Philip was around seven years old, and the second when the boy was around twelve. Exaggerating Philip’s age may simply have been a factual error, but it is also worth considering that Gerald did this deliberately to increase the plausibility of the speeches he attributes to the young boy. On both occasions, Gerald places highly articulate dialogue into the child’s mouth to convey prophetic meanings which were relevant to the later time at which the author was writing. These speeches also reflect Gerald’s personal disillusionment with the English rulers. At Montmartre, Philip was said first to have requested Henry’s love and loyalty towards Louis before threatening to act as a ‘most severe avenger’ in future if anyone troubled his ageing father.Footnote 91 At Gisors, hearing men heaping praise on the beauty and strength of the fortress, Gerald claims Philip told his men that he wished the castle was even stronger and richer for the greater pleasure it would then bring when it was in his hands rather than in the English king’s possession.Footnote 92
Gerald’s words have often been taken as in some way representative of the child Philip, despite these descriptions stemming from a highly partisan author writing more than forty years after the actual meetings.Footnote 93 Gerald’s accounts of the Montmartre and Gisors meetings are a pitifully inadequate foundation from which to psychoanalyse or pass judgement on royal children’s behaviour and actions. This does not mean the stories are unimportant or irrelevant as evidence for royal childhood. Used judiciously, they furnish an insight into children’s involvement in royal diplomacy, and the symbolic meaning adults could bestow upon young sons and heirs. Philip’s presence with his father and some of the French barons at Gisors – a strategically important border location between the royal domain and Normandy – was significant since it followed shortly after the signing of a peace treaty with Henry at Montlouis in 1174.Footnote 94 Philip’s inclusion in his father’s entourage at this moment served both an educational function, introducing the child to practices of peace-making, and also a symbolic purpose, as a young boy once again represented hopes for continued peace between realms in future. Gerald’s insinuation that Philip could simultaneously embody both a future hope to the ‘great audience’ of French aristocrats at Gisors as well as a future threat to a ‘great ruler’ such as Henry are probably not too far from the mark.Footnote 95
Gerald of Wales is the only author to place the young Philip at the Gisors meeting, but a near-contemporary letter from Thomas Becket corroborates the boy’s presence at Montmartre with Henry II towards the end of 1169. Interestingly, Becket’s account does not place Philip within his father’s entourage. Instead, when Henry passed near Montmartre on his return from Saint-Denis, the ‘lord Philip … was brought to him’.Footnote 96 Becket, who was present at this encounter, does not clarify whether it was at the royal court’s initiative or whether Henry himself requested to meet with the four-year-old French prince. Either way, the meeting was deemed important enough for the infant to journey with his own entourage beyond the city walls of Paris. Dominus Philip assumed the dominant diplomatic position, since it is the boy who dismisses the English king from his presence. Becket claims God ‘shaped and directed his [Philip’s] tongue to advise and request him [Henry] to love the king and realm of France and himself’, making the boy’s words once again central to the story.Footnote 97 Regardless of whether this was truly Philip’s conception of his own place alongside the king and realm, or the way the royal court perceived his position, the Montmartre encounter was a significant display of the child’s diplomatic status.
Two further aspects of this letter have received little comment despite their pertinence to an understanding of royal childhood. First, Becket addresses his letter to William, archbishop of Sens (1169–76), one of Philip’s maternal uncles and the man who, a decade later, as archbishop of Reims (1176–1202), would anoint his nephew as king. The familial relationship between William and Philip is fundamental, since it hints at why Becket included the story. Would the English archbishop have deemed an aside concerning the young prince to be as relevant if he had been addressing any other member of the French episcopate? The second aspect of Becket’s letter which is important here is the author’s clear concern for the education royal children received. At the conference at Saint-Denis from which Henry had just come, the ruler had agreed to place his twelve-year-old son Richard into Louis’s care for ‘nourishing and instruction’ (alendum et instituendum).Footnote 98 Becket, who had previously been responsible for the education of Richard’s elder brother, was evidently concerned that the English king had failed to deliver Richard to Louis. In this context, the story told about the young Philip performs another function besides recounting a young boy’s actions to his uncle. Philip’s status, divine inspiration and ability to amaze those around him demonstrate that God blessed children educated at the court of Louis, Christianissimus rex. The royal family and court played a significant role in preparing young sons for their future roles and the responsibilities of rule, but the wider political community also prepared themselves to receive these children as rulers and had a vested interest in the way they were raised and educated.
Royal parents were aware that, in many ways, young children were indeed ‘underdogs’ on an international stage. They were still in training for a position of rule and lacked the reinforcing support of bonds of fidelity, obligation and assistance. Securing early acknowledgement from neighbouring rulers of a boy’s position as heir was one important means of mitigating children’s diminished status, integrating them into a wider political community and attempting to ensure their acceptance as kings.
Proclaiming a Child’s (Co-)Kingship
Anointing and crowning a young son during his father’s lifetime established the social, political and spiritual acceptance of the boy’s right to rule, both at the time of the ceremony and in the future. Coronation ceremonies were ritualised, liturgical occasions at which the ruler promised to uphold good kingship, surrounded by his household, members of the episcopate, clergy and monastic orders, lay magnates and nobles, local citizens, and sometimes papal legates or representatives from other kingdoms. The ceremony was also a rite of passage, a recognition of the individual’s increased status and power. Henceforth, the individual bore not only the title of rex but also the prestige and authority of a ruler anointed by God.
Coronation was not a consistent strategy of associating royal children in rule over the central Middle Ages. Even a brief overview of cases where fathers promoted their sons to the throne suggests geographical and chronological boundaries to the prevalence of associative coronation. Co-kingship was never a feature of Scottish associative practices, in part due to the nature of royal inauguration in the kingdom. Inauguration ceremonies did not incorporate the wearing of a crown before Alexander III’s succession in 1249, and royal unction was not part of the proceedings until a papal bull of 1329 granted this privilege.Footnote 99 In England, two twelfth-century kings experimented with the idea of crowning young sons during their own lifetimes: Stephen in vain, since he could not convince the pope to agree to his plans, and Henry II, whose success in crowning his eldest surviving son later proved to be more of a curse than a blessing. A child’s coronation during the reigning king’s lifetime was far more common in the French and German realms. Three of the eight boy kings who form the central case studies for this book were crowned and consecrated during their fathers’ reigns: Henry IV of Germany on 17 July 1054 at Aachen, Philip I of France on 23 May 1059 at Reims and Philip II on 1 November 1179, also at Reims. Plans were likewise underway for the coronation of Henry VI’s son Frederick, although the emperor’s death postponed his son’s inauguration.Footnote 100 In addition to these cases, many other royal sons were crowned during their childhood, some predeceasing their fathers and others remaining junior kings until well into manhood.Footnote 101
An account of a fifteen-year-old boy’s associative coronation is central to the epic poem Le couronnement de Louis. This chanson de geste – which survives in several thirteenth-century manuscripts, but was likely first written down during the twelfth century – therefore serves as a valuable lens through which to consider contemporary perceptions of royal childhood and coronation.Footnote 102 In particular, the narrative suggestively highlights two aspects of crowning a child which modern scholarship has tended to neglect: first, the boy’s active participation (to which I will turn initially) and, secondly, the wider political community’s investment in the child as king (a topic to which I will return).
Le couronnement furnishes its audience with a fictional account of the coronation of Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious. Born in 778, the historical Louis was thirty-five years old when he was crowned during his father’s lifetime at Aachen in 813. The chanson’s imagined Louis is, instead, fifteen at the time of his associative coronation. The author pointedly describes him as enfant, a term which had broad semantic connotations denoting a male youth.Footnote 103 The poem emphasises the importance and necessity of the boy’s active participation in his coronation ceremony. Charlemagne asks his son if he sees the crown, telling Louis that, if he takes it, he will be emperor of Rome.Footnote 104 The decision to accept the kingship is one that the emperor’s young son must make for himself. Louis must assess his own readiness for rule, not only weighing up his current preparedness but also looking ahead to visualise his future actions, before making a committed choice whether to receive the crown. The ultimatum which accompanies the decision-making places substantial pressure on the child: ‘If you are willing to do this, I give you the crown; but if not, then never dare to accept it’.Footnote 105 Louis’s response to his father’s dialogue is a speechless, motionless hesitation, causing the king rashly to retract the offer of the crown and even to renounce his paternal ties to the cowardly child who has failed him. Charlemagne interprets the boy’s passivity as reluctance to accept the burden of kingship or inability to live the exemplary life expected of him. Taken as a whole, then, Le couronnement suggests that, at least within a northern French context, a child’s coronation relied on the protagonist’s active participation. Equally, a lack of enthusiastic involvement on the boy’s part could pose a problem for his recognition as king. Comparing the chanson’s construction of a fictional ceremony in the historical past to contemporary evidence for the associative coronations of royal children exposes a similar, although subtler, accent on children’s cognitive capacities and ability to consent, at the same time revealing cultural differences between kingdoms.
The coronation of Emperor Henry III’s three-year-old son on 17 July 1054 had less to do with Henry IV’s understanding of the position into which he was being consecrated, and more to do with securing the political community’s recognition of future intentions for the succession.Footnote 106 Sigebert of Gembloux records the infant’s coronation directly alongside the emperor’s decision to undertake a military campaign against Count Baldwin V of Flanders.Footnote 107 The preparations for imminent warfare may well have provided an additional motivation for the boy’s associative coronation at such a young age. Sigebert was writing at least three decades after the event, however, and both the author’s annalistic style and error in recording the boy’s age warn against accepting his account as an unproblematic insight into the emperor’s motivations or intentions. Henry IV’s coronation as an infant was a little unusual within a broader Salian context. Henry III had been eleven years old, well past infancy, at the time of his coronation as German king at Easter 1028. And when Henry IV crowned his eldest son, Conrad, in Aachen in 1087, the boy was about thirteen, much older than his father had been and far more capable of comprehending the significance of the change in status being conferred.Footnote 108 It was not until August 1169, more than a century after Henry IV’s coronation, that another infant was anointed as German ruler, this time the four-year-old son of the Staufen king Frederick Barbarossa.Footnote 109 Barbarossa’s memory of his own succession to the German throne – which had passed over the claims of his predecessor’s seven-year-old, as yet uncrowned, son – probably encouraged the new king to promote his child to the throne as quickly as possible. In Germany, political necessity, or the reigning king’s wishes, had more impact on the arrangements for associative coronations than any consideration of the child’s agency and mental comprehension. The same was not true in France.
The requirements of the Capetian inauguration ceremony necessitated that kings wait for their sons to reach an age of comprehension associated with the end of infancy. The memorandum of Philip I’s coronation in 1059, written by Gervais of Reims, specifies that the archbishop set out the catholic faith to the child, ‘asking him whether he believed in it and whether he was willing to defend it’.Footnote 110 The boy, ‘who was then only seven years old’, had to affirm his faith vocally as part of the ceremony, then read and sign a declaration of faith.Footnote 111 The wording of Philip’s profession, which Gervais cites in full, may have been designed to acknowledge the child’s incapability, since Philip swore to uphold his coronation promises as far as he was able (quantum potuero).Footnote 112 The age of seven was important within the context of consent to kingship even if royal documents testify that Philip’s introduction to kingship had begun far earlier in his childhood.Footnote 113 Theoretical traditions had long emphasised seven as the start of pueritia and the point at which children could provide meaningful consent.Footnote 114 Differences in the placement of the oath within medieval ordines and coronation ceremonies may help, in part, to account for why a child’s consent was more important to the Capetian rulers than to their Salian counterparts. In the German tradition, the oath was sworn only after the king’s position had already been affirmed.Footnote 115 Although the associative coronations of royal children were a common feature of Capetian rule in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Philip was younger than most other Capetian heirs at inauguration. The sons of French kings, excepting Philip, were all between the ages of ten and fourteen when they were crowned, reinforcing the idea that, in France, fathers waited until their sons were out of infancy before crowning them.Footnote 116 Philip, whose coronation took place on the day of his seventh birthday, was significantly younger than other Capetian heirs and only just over the threshold of pueritia. In considering why Philip’s father chose to crown his son at such an uncommonly young age, inspiration from the contemporary German example offers a persuasive motive for the French king’s actions.
Henry I met Emperor Henry III three times.Footnote 117 Neither ruler yet had a son or heir at their first two meetings in 1043 and 1048 but, by their final reunion at Ivois around Pentecost 1056, both king and emperor had infant sons. The emperor’s son, Henry IV, had been crowned at Aachen two years previously and the child king travelled with his parents extensively. Henry IV appeared in every surviving diploma his father issued during 1056, meaning that the boy was almost certainly present or very close nearby when his father met the French king.Footnote 118 Henry I’s wife and son, Anne of Kyiv and Philip, may also have been in attendance at the Ivois colloquium, although eleventh-century French royal diplomas, which survive with less frequency than corresponding German acts, do not allow a similarly detailed reconstruction of the royal family’s itinerary. The 1056 meeting between king and emperor did not go well. Henry I appears to have left earlier than planned after accusing the emperor of a breach of contract.Footnote 119 Less than six months after the meeting’s fractious end, the emperor died, leaving the five-year-old Henry IV as sole ruler. Hearing of the emperor’s death, and the accession of a child who Henry I had likely met as an infant only two years before, may very well have spurred the French king to consider his own son’s position with regard to the throne. Lest a similar situation arise, Henry secured Philip’s coronation as soon as the boy reached an appropriate age. This would not have been the first time that cross-cultural interaction inspired decisions regarding performances of association and the promotion of young sons as kings. Geoffrey Koziol suggested that Lothar’s arrangements for the coronation of his thirteen-year-old son Louis in 979 can be understood within the context of the growing rivalry between the kings of the Franks and the Ottonian emperors.Footnote 120
Other proposals put forward for why Henry I crowned his son in 1059 are less convincing. Tradition explains the king’s predisposition to crown his son during his own lifetime, but knowledge of a precedent set by Capetian predecessors does not clarify why Philip was crowned at such a young age.Footnote 121 The suggestion of martial concerns is unpersuasive as a sole motivating factor since the French king had been engaged in military campaigns throughout the 1050s, including a coalition invasion of Normandy in 1053 and 1054 and a second foray in 1057.Footnote 122 Nor do we have any evidence that Henry, in his early fifties, arranged his son’s coronation because he knew he was ailing.Footnote 123 Instead, cross-cultural influence offers a far more convincing reason for the coronation of a seven-year-old boy as king. Without the French ruler’s knowledge of political events in Germany and his familiarity with a recently crowned infant king, it seems unlikely that Philip’s coronation would have taken place quite so early in his childhood. Henry was not simply following Capetian practice; he was reacting to the emperor’s untimely death. The king waited only for his infant son to reach an acceptable age of cognitive capability and consent before organising the coronation.
The notion that seven was a suitable age from which an heir could receive coronation remained influential into the later twelfth century, not only in France but also elsewhere in Europe. In August 1172, the month Louis VII’s son Philip turned seven, Pope Alexander III wrote to Henry, archbishop of Reims (1162–75) and the king’s brother, requesting that he try to persuade Louis to co-crown his son.Footnote 124 Ideas regarding the interrelationship between consent, kingship and the male life cycle similarly influenced the English king Henry II when he began to consider crowning his eldest son. Seven was seen to be a minimum age for the young Henry’s coronation in 1162, even though the boy was not crowned until 1170, when he was fifteen.Footnote 125 Only a few years later, a letter from Henry the Young King to Pope Alexander emphasises the significance vested in active consent to kingship. Henry attempted to defend his rebellion against his father by claiming that he been made king reluctantly and against his will.Footnote 126 Some fathers therefore took their young sons’ age into account when considering suitable methods of royal association, and the boy’s will could be an important consideration. Much as depicted in Le couronnement, children were expected to participate in the ceremonies at which they were crowned and anointed, actively providing their consent to rule and demonstrating their own agency in the process.
The involvement of the wider political community, which had a vested interest in accepting the child as king, is the second aspect of associative coronation which Le couronnement helps illuminate. The barons and knights assembled at Louis’s coronation are emotionally invested in the boy’s kingship: they show great pleasure ( grand joie) when the archbishop states Charlemagne’s intention to crown his son, whereas Louis’s hesitation in accepting the crown causes them immense sadness (bien en pleurèrent).Footnote 127 It is only through the involvement of the text’s hero, William of Orange, that an attempt by the magnate Arnéïs of Orléans to usurp the crown is prevented. After killing Arnéïs, William places the crown onto the child’s head.Footnote 128 According to the chanson, one magnate’s loyalty could deflect another’s treason, and aristocratic strength could compensate for royal weakness.
While we cannot expect the impression of royal-aristocratic relationships within this literary text to be directly transferable to specific historical cases, Le couronnement does reflect contemporary norms, expectations and ideals within the French aristocracy. As such, the epic narrative draws attention to the significance associative coronations held for other members of the political community besides the reigning king, the royal family and the child himself. Historians have sometimes been dismissive of associative coronations, even to the extent of questioning whether they were truly ‘inaugural’ events.Footnote 129 These ceremonies are deemed to have had little impact on the power balance in a kingdom because the senior king usually retained all the responsibilities, functions and authority of royal rule. From a contemporary perspective, however, such inaugurations were never seen to be inferior.Footnote 130 Even adolescent co-kings who predeceased their fathers continued to be commemorated as full members of royal dynasties and rulers in their own right.Footnote 131
A child’s coronation during their father’s reign was equivalent to any other inauguration and the ceremony was important to a wider community. In the first half of 1060, when the brothers of Anzème gave their monastery to the cathedral chapter of Limoges, they dated their donation jointly by the reigns of two kings (reges), Henry and his son Philip.Footnote 132 Henry’s name appeared in majuscule, unlike Philip’s, emphasising the child’s subordinate position within the hierarchy of kingship in much the same way as salva fide clauses in later records of oath-swearings. Itier, bishop of Limoges, whom the Anzème brothers mention in their donation, had been a participant and observer at Philip’s coronation in Reims the year before. His presence at the ceremony was especially unusual because he represented a location far from the centre of royal power.Footnote 133 Bishop Itier’s links to the coronation ceremony may have been one of the reasons for including this unusual dating clause. That a small group of religious men outside the royal domain not only knew of Philip’s coronation, but also, by the following year, considered it important within the context of their transaction to commemorate the boy’s place in rule with his father, shows how quickly certain communities invested in and accepted a child’s kingship.
Rulers sought ways to tighten the bonds between their sons and the individuals and communities whose support they would need to rely on if they were to succeed to the throne, even in kingdoms such as England and Scotland where associative kingship was rare or entirely absent. The evidence presented in this chapter therefore demonstrates the value of a comparative study of association across monarchies.Footnote 134 Comparing such strategies across kingdoms and over time reveals the significant role associative and diplomatic actions played in preparing political communities to support royal children in the future. The aristocracy and nobility, episcopate and other clergy, foreign rulers and even smaller localised communities were often primed for a boy’s succession well before he became sole king. These groups were already invested in the child’s future rule because he had been integrated within mutually beneficial networks of loyalty, had been flaunted as successor within the context of international diplomacy, or had even received God’s blessing as king through the liturgy and ritual of coronation and anointing. Adopting a comparative perspective also confronts the idea of children as entirely passive pawns, receptacles only of the king’s diplomatic and political whims. In this regard, Helgaud of Fleury provides a pertinent reminder – within the context of the ten-year-old Hugh’s coronation at Saint-Corneille-de-Compiègne in 1017 – that the ruler of the Franks, Robert the Pious (r. 996–1031), was a ‘glorious king, who was also a father’.Footnote 135 Royal politics were interwoven with familial decision-making. Parents considered both the necessity and symbolism of their young son’s presence, as well as the boy’s age and development, as magnates swore their loyalty, performed homage and confirmed the child’s place as lord, heir and, eventually, king. In a similar vein, interpreting children’s submission to adult decisions solely within a binary of powerless versus powerful risks erasing the fact that compliance with an adult world can also be a form of agency. A balance must be struck which gives due weight to parental investment in a son’s future and to the child’s progression through the early stages of their life, without entirely discounting the political motivations spurring royal rulers to associate their heirs with the kingship.
Means of incorporating children more firmly within systems of royal rule and lordship, such as demanding an oath of fidelity to a young boy, securing a magnate’s performance of homage or organising a child’s coronation, shared one common feature: the reigning king was unaware that his death was imminent. The ruler may have feared death was close, and illness or old age could certainly turn his mind to smoothing plans for royal succession or heighten the urgency of decision-making, but the situations discussed in this chapter were rarely conceived as responses to crises of mortality. By contrast, when the inevitability of the king’s death was close at hand and there was near certainty that a child would succeed as king, preparations had to be even more reactive and consider provisions for the guardianship of boy kings and their kingdoms.
